ctical side of Mme. de La Fayette's character was remarkable in
a woman of so fine a sensibility and so rare a genius. Her friends
often sought her counsel; and it was through her familiarity with legal
technicalities that La Rochefoucauld was enabled to save his fortune,
which he was at one time in danger of losing. In clear insight, profound
judgment, and knowledge of affairs, she was scarcely, if at all,
surpassed by Mme. de Maintenon, the feminine diplomatist par excellence
of her time, though her field of action was less broad and conspicuous.
But her love of consideration was not so dominant and her ambition not
so active. It was one of her theories that people should live without
ambition as well as without passion. "It is sufficient to exist," she
said. Her energy when occasion called for it does not quite accord with
this passive philosophy, and suggests at least a vast reserved force;
but if she directed her efforts toward definite ends it was usually to
serve other interests than her own. She had been trained in a different
school from Mme. de Maintenon, her temperament was modified by her
frail health, and the prizes of life had come to her apparently
without special exertion. She was a woman, too, of more sentiment and
imagination. Her fastidious delicacy and luxurious tastes were the
subject of critical comment on the part of this austere censor, who
condemned the gilded decorations of her bed as a useless extravagance,
giving the characteristic reason that "the pleasure they afforded
was not worth the ridicule they excited." The old friendship that had
existed when Mme. Scarron was living in such elegant and mysterious
seclusion, devoting herself to the king's children, and finding her main
diversion in the little suppers enlivened by the wit of Mme. de Sevigne
and Mme. de Coulanges, and the more serious, but not less agreeable,
conversation of Mme. de La Fayette, had evidently grown cool. They had
their trifling disagreements. "Mme. de La Fayette puts too high a price
upon her friendship," wrote Mme. de Maintenon, who had once attached
such value to a few approving words from her. In her turn Mme. de La
Fayette indulged in a little light satire. Referring to the comedy of
Esther, which Racine had written by command for the pupils at Saint Cyr,
she said, "It represents the fall of Mme. de Montespan and the rise of
Mme. de Maintenon; all the difference is that Esther was rather younger,
and less of a precieu