ght, for friendship and for books. For
the moment each one seems dominant. "I am always of the opinion of the
one heard last," she says, laughing at her own impressibility. It is an
amiable admission, but she has very fine and rational ideas of her own,
notwithstanding. In books, for which she had always a passion, she
found unfailing consolation. Corneille and La Fontaine were her favorite
traveling companions. "I am well satisfied to be a substance that
thinks and reads," she says, finding her good uncle a trifle dull for
a compagnon de voyage. Her tastes were catholic. She read Astree with
delight, loved Petrarch, Ariosto, and Montaigne; Rabelais made her "die
of laughter," she found Plutarch admirable, enjoyed Tacitus as keenly as
did Mme. Roland a century later, read Josephus and Lucian, dipped into
the history of the crusades and of the iconoclasts, of the holy fathers
and of the saints. She preferred the history of France to that of Rome
because she had "neither relatives nor friends in the latter place."
She finds the music of Lulli celestial and the preaching of Bourdaloue
divine. Racine she did not quite appreciate. In his youth, she said he
wrote tragedies for Champmesle and not for posterity. Later she modified
her opinion, but Corneille held always the first place in her affection.
She had a great love for books on morals, read and reread the essays
of Nicole, which she found a perpetual resource against the ills of
life--even rain and bad weather. St. Augustine she reads with pleasure,
and she is charmed with Bossuet and Pascal; but she is not very devout,
though she often tries to be. There is a serious naivete in all her
efforts in this direction. She seems to have always one eye upon the
world while she prays, and she mourns over her own lack of devotion.
"I wish my heart were for God as it is for you," she writes to her
daughter. "I am neither of God nor of the devil," she says again; "that
state troubles me though, between ourselves, I find it the most natural
in the world." Her reason quickly pierces to the heart of superstition;
sometimes she cannot help a touch of sarcasm. "I fear that this trappe,
which wishes to pass humanity, may become a lunatic asylum," she says.
She believes little in saints and processions. Over the high altar of
her chapel she writes SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA. "It is the way to make
no one jealous," she remarks.

She was rather inclined toward Jansenism, but she could not fat