180

THE SAINT-HER GRANDMOTHER.

Her life has indeed two sides, the romantic and the practical. Her early life, her devotion to her husband, and her absorbing passion for her daughter, belong to the former. The rest is so sober, that some have called her cold, and even her greatest admirers confessed her lukewarm.

In the old abbey-house of Livry, in the forest of Bondi, near Paris, there lived, about the year 1642, an old man and a young girl, like a dusty, black-letter folio lit up by a stray sunbeam, when the bookcase is opened. Christophe de Coulanges is the Abbé of Livry, a worthy old man, visited from time to time by men of learning, and, though of severe piety, not quite separated from the outer world. His niece, Marie de Rabutin, is an orphan of fifteen, his charge and his pupil. This young girl is indeed a joy in his quiet house. Her face alone is beautiful. The fresh delicate complexion, the oval form, the features regular if not classical, the rich abundance of fair hair, are all in themselves enough for beauty. La Fontaine wrote of her

"With bandaged eyes you seem the God of Love;

His mother, when those eyes illume the face."

But those large blue eyes, dreamy one moment with falling lids, and the next lit up with thought and mirth, are the centrefires of the whole, and in them the expression is forever changing. Add to this a slight and graceful figure, and it is easy to understand that even her beauty dazzled the world of Paris at her first appearance. And this girl, beautiful and gay as she is, is now studying Greek and Latin with her old uncle, now receiving learned lessons from Ménage and Chapelain, and collecting a stock of erudition which was to fit her in after life for the companionship of men whose names are classical.

It is remarkable that a woman, who, if she had nothing further to distinguish her, would remain to the world as the type of a mother's devotion, should not only have been left motherless when six years old, but have had a grandmother so little aware of maternal duty, that she could abandon her young children to enter a convent, though her son threw himself across the threshold of her house to prevent her departure, for which act, and the building eighty convents, the Church of Rome thought fit to canonize her. The husband of this infatuated woman was Christophe de Rabutin, Baron de Chantal and Seigneur de Bourbilly, which lies near Semur, in the department of the Côte d'Or, and between thirty and forty miles from Dijon. The family was old and respectable, but not one of the great families of France. The son of this Christophe married a Mademoiselle Coulanges, daughter of an influential house. Their only child was Marie, afterward Madame de Sévigné. She was

born at Paris on the 5th of February, 1626, and brought up at the Château de Bourbilly. In 1628, her father died in the defense of the Ile de Rhé against the English; and not long after his widow followed him, leaving the little child of six years old with no nearer relative, on her father's side, than her grandmother, who, as indifferent to her grandchild as she had been to her own children, left her to the care of a maternal uncle, the Abbé de Coulanges. At Livry, of which she so often speaks in her letters, she passed the next nine years of her life, under the protection of this uncle, thus escaping that education of the convent to which young girls were then subjected, and of which she afterward herself expressed her disapproval.

At fifteen the beautiful Mademoiselle de Rabutin-Chantal, sole heiress to an estate of three hundred thousand francs, was introduced by the De Coulanges to the court and court circles of Paris, and was at once pronounced fascinating. She had indeed qualities which made such a verdict universal. It was not only the gay and light who were charmed with her mirth and beauty; the more serious found in her a fund of solid learning after the fashion of those times, and a power and taste for reflection. And these qualities were set in the yet more valuable attributes of a rare modesty free from all prudery, and a good heart ready for the cultivation of friendship.

The young girl was beset with candidates for her hand, among whom were members of the noblest families in France. Her choice was unfettered. She was an orphan, an only child, and an heiress; and there is therefore every reason to believe that the choice she made was that of her own heart. It does but add one instance more to the hundreds that might be quoted of women actuated in this most solemn matter purely by fancy. Young as she was, for she was married at seventeen, Marie de Rabutin had sufficient perception of character already not to be misled by mere appearances, or dazzled by external attractions. Yet the Marquis de Sévigné was a man who had little but these to offer. Handsome, dashing, and courageous, he was at the same time selfish, sensual, and incapable of a sincere attachment. He accepted the devotion she offered him with careless indifference; and, insensible alike to her superiority of mind and integrity of character, threw her over for acquaintances utterly unworthy of comparison with his young wife. He was of an old Breton family, and a maréchal de camp, and held a good position at court. To add to this, he was a relation and favorite of the Cardinal de Retz, then coadjuteur to the Archbishop of Paris; and the Abbé de Coulanges, influenced by these considerations, favored rather than opposed the match. The Cardinal de Retz was at that time the rising star in

182

SOCIETY UNDER LOUIS XIV.

France. Richelieu had been dead about two years: his mantle had descended on the shoulders of Mazarin; but there was already a party formed against the crafty Italian, and Paul de Gondy, then about thirty years old, was on the look-out for an opportunity of putting himself forward. Richelieu had already pronounced him a "dangerous spirit," on reading his book, The Conjuration de Fiesque," which De Gondy had written when eighteen years of age. On the death of his uncle, in 1643, he was made Archbishop of Paris. Like his predecessors, he had been destined for a courtier or a soldier, rather than a priest. Richelieu was educated for the army, Mazarin served in it: De Gondy was forced to take orders against his will, and had passed his early days in duels and gallantries. Like his predecessors, again, he was a man of ambition, but, unlike them, he had no definite purpose in view. He caballed and plotted more for the pleasure of being in the opposition than to gain a step toward an end. The power he obtained was immense, but he trifled with it. Wavering and hot-headed, he rushed into new intrigues while the old ones were yet incomplete; and while for a time he was more popular than either Richelieu or Mazarin had ever been, he failed to make use of the advantage, and wasted his energies in petty enterprises. Yet he seems to have been a lovable character, and in after years Madame de Sévigné, who saw more of him than any one else, was much attached to her "dear cardinal." Her intimacy with him was afterward fatal to her favor at court. Louis XIV. hated nothing so much as the recollection of the Fronde, in which De Retz had taken so prominent a part, and this dislike he extended even to the cardinal's friends.

Monsieur de Sévigné then might be considered certain of promotion from his connection with the cardinal, and the marriage was therefore looked upon as a good one. It was destined to prove very different.

The life of a Frenchwoman then, as much as in the present day, began with marriage; and Madame de Sévigné entered upon hers in an age of great promise, the forerunner of the Augustan age of France. The turbulent ministry of Richelieu was followed by a reaction in favor of letters, learning, and the measures of peace. Anne of Austria was guided by the wily but conciliating Mazarin; and the factions which had disturbed France so long were reduced for a time to mere intrigues of court. The society of Paris had at length breathing space from stormy politics, and turned to the softer allurements of wit and letters. This society, circling round the court, influenced and controlled by it, yet possessed a freedom of thought which has been little known in France since those days. The