ty of her
retreat, and lent an added luster to its intellectual attractions. But
the Marquise had many conflicts between her luxurious tastes and her
desire to be devout. Her dainty and epicurean habits, her extraordinary
anxiety about her health, and her capricious humors were the subject of
much light badinage among her friends. The Grande Mademoiselle sketches
these traits with a satiric touch in the "Princesse de Paphlagonie,"
where she introduces her with the Comtesse de Maure. "There are no hours
when they do not confer together upon the means of preventing themselves
from dying, and upon the art of rendering themselves immortal," she
writes. "Their conferences are not like those of other people; the fear
of breathing an air too cold or too hot, the apprehension that the wind
may be too dry or too damp, a fancy that the weather is not as moderate
as they judge necessary for the preservation of their health--these are
sufficient reasons for writing from one room to another...." If one could
find this correspondence, one might derive great advantages in every
way; for they were princesses who had nothing mortal, except the
knowledge of being so... Of Mme. de Sable she adds: "The Princess
Parthenie had a taste as dainty as her mind; nothing equaled the
magnificence of her entertainments; all the viands were exquisite, and
her elegance was beyond anything that one could imagine." The fastidious
Marquise suffered, with all the world, from the defects of her
qualities. Her extreme delicacy and sensibility appear under many forms
and verge often upon weakness; but it is an amiable weakness that does
not detract greatly from her fascination. She was not cast in a heroic
mold, and her faults are those which the world is pleased to call
essentially feminine.

The records of her life were preserved by Conrart, also by her friend
and physician, Valant. They give us a clear picture of her character,
with its graces and its foibles, as well as of her pleasant intercourse
and correspondence with many noted men and women. They give us,
too, interesting glimpses of her salon. We find there the celebrated
Jansenists Nicole and Arnauld, the eminent lawyer Domat, Esprit,
sometimes Pascal, with his sister, Mme. Perier; the Prince and Princesse
de Conti, the Grand Conde, La Rochefoucauld, the penitent Mme. de
Longueville, Mme. de La Fayette, and many others among the cultivated
noblesse, who are attracted by its tone of bel esprit and