f the springtime. "It
seems to me that in case of need I should know very well how to make a
spring," she writes. She loves too the "fine, crystal days of autumn."
Sometimes, in the evening, she has "gray-brown thoughts which grow black
at night," but she never dwells upon these. Her "habitual thought--that
which one must have for God, if one does his duty"--is for her daughter.
"My dear child," she writes, "it is only you that I prefer to the
tranquil repose I enjoy here."

If her own soul is open to us in all its variable and charming moods, we
also catch in her letters many unconscious reflections of her daughter's
character. She offers her a little needed worldly advice. "Try, my
child," she says, "to adjust yourself to the manners and customs of the
people with whom you live; adapt yourself to that which is not bad; do
not be disgusted with that which is only mediocre; make a pleasure
of that which is not ridiculous." She entreats her to love the little
Pauline and not to scold her, nor send her away to the convent as she
did her sister Marie-Blanche. With what infinite tenderness she always
speaks of this child, smiling at her small outbursts of temper, soothing
her little griefs, and giving wise counsels about her education.
Evidently she doubted the patience of the mother. "You do not yet too
well comprehend maternal love," she writes; "so much the better, my
child; it is violent."

Unfortunately this adoring mother could not get on very well with her
daughter when they were together. She drowned her with affection, she
fatigued her with care for her health, she was hurt by her ungracious
manner, she was frozen by her indifference in short, they killed each
other. It is not a rare thing to make a cult of a distant idol, and to
find one's self unequal to the perpetual shock of the small collisions
which diversities of taste and temperament render inevitable in daily
intercourse. In this instance, one can readily imagine that a love
so interwoven with every fiber of the mother's life, must have been a
little over-sensitive, a little exacting, a trifle too demonstrative for
the colder nature of the daughter; but that it was the less genuine and
profound, no one who has at all studied the character of Mme. de Sevigne
can for a moment imagine. How she suffers when it becomes necessary for
Mme. de Grignan to go back to Provence! How the tears flow! How readily
she forgives all, even to denying that there is anything