d is reflected in a thousand varying colors. The sparkling wit,
the swift judgment, the subtle insight, the lightness of touch, the
indefinable charm of style--these belong to her temperament and her
genius. But the clearness, the justness of expression, the precision,
the simplicity that was never banal--such qualities nature does
not bestow. One must find their source in careful training, in wise
criticism, in early familiarity with good models.

Living from 1626 to 1696, Mme. de Sevigne was en rapport with the best
life of the great century of French letters. She was the granddaughter
of the mystical Mme. de Chantal, who was too much occupied with her
convents and her devotions to give much attention to the little Marie,
left an orphan at the age of six years. The child did not inherit much
of her grandmother's spirit of reverence, and at a later period was wont
to indulge in many harmless pleasantries about her pious ancestress and
"our grandfather, St. Francois de Sales." Deprived so early of the
care of a mother, she was brought up by an uncle, the good Abbe de
Coulanges--the "Bien-Bon"--whose life was devoted to her interests.
Though born in the Place Royale, that long-faded center of so much that
was brilliant and fascinating two centuries ago, much of her youth was
passed in the family chateau at Livry, where she was carefully educated
in a far more solid fashion than was usual among the women of her time.
She had an early introduction to the Hotel de Rambouillet, and readily
caught its intellectual tastes, though she always retained a certain
bold freedom of speech and manners, quite opposed to its spirit.

Her instructors were Chapelain and Menage, both honored habitues of that
famous salon. The first was a dull poet, a profound scholar, somewhat of
a pedant, and notoriously careless in his dress--le vieux Chapelain,
his irreverent pupil used to call him. When he died of apoplexy, years
afterwards, she wrote to her daughter: "He confesses by pressing the
hand; he is like a statue in his chair. So God confounds the pride of
philosophers." But he taught her Latin, Spanish, and Italian, made her
familiar with the beauties of Virgil and Tasso, and gave her a critical
taste for letters.

Menage was younger, and aspired to be a man of the world as well as a
savant. Repeating one day the remark of a friend, that out of ten things
he knew he had learned nine in conversation, he added, "I could say
about the same th