n her generous
affection for the friends who were out of favor. The loyalty of her
character was notably displayed in her unwavering attachment to Cardinal
de Retz, during his long period of exile and misfortune, after the
Fronde.

But one must go outside the ordinary channels to find the veritable
romance of Mme. de Sevigne's life. Her sensibility lent itself with
great facility to impressions, and her gracious manners, her amiable
character, her inexhaustible fund of gaiety could not fail to bring her
a host of admirers. She had doubtless a vein of harmless coquetry, but
it was little more than the natural and variable grace of a frank and
sympathetic woman who likes to please, and who scatters about her the
flowers of a rich mind and heart, without taking violent passions too
seriously, if, indeed, she heeds them at all. Friendship, too, has
its shades, its subtleties, its half-perceptible and quite unconscious
coquetries. But the supreme passion of Mme. de Sevigne was her love
for her daughter. It was the exaltation of her mystical grandmother,
in another form. "To love as I love you makes all other friendships
frivolous," she writes. Whatever her gifts and attractions may have
been, she is known to the world mainly through this affection and the
letters which have immortalized it. Nowhere in literature has maternal
love found such complete and perfect expression. Nowhere do we find
a character so clearly self-revealed. Others have professed to unveil
their innermost lives, but there is always a suspicion of posing
in deliberate revelations. Mme. De Sevigne has portrayed herself
unconsciously. It is the experience of yesterday, the thought of today,
the hope of tomorrow, the love that is at once the joy and sorrow of all
the days, that are woven into a thousand varying but living forms. One
naturally seeks in the character of the daughter a key to the absorbing
sentiment which is the inspiration and soul of these letters; but one
does not find it there. More beautiful than her mother, more learned,
more accomplished, she lacked her sympathetic charm. Cold, reserved,
timid, and haughty, without vivacity and apparently without fine
sensibility, she was much admired but little loved by the world in which
she lived. "When you choose, you are adorable," wrote her mother; but
evidently she did not always so choose. Bussy-Rabutin says of her, "This
woman has esprit, but it is esprit soured and of insupportable egotism.
Sh