Question si = M.F. question de savoir si

18. Notice how Pascal at the end of this letter plays on words often used by Jesuits.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNE

Life and Works. — Marie de Rabutin Chantai, marquise de Sévigné, was born in 1626. The story of her life is soon told. In 1644 she married Henri de Sévigné, who was killed seven years later in a duel, leaving his wife with two children — a son and a daughter. To them she devoted the rest of her life. In 1669 her daughter married the Count of Grignan and went to live with him in Provence. It was to her daughter that some of the best of Madame de Sévigné's letters were written, and it was in nursing her that she caught the fever which ended her days in 1696. Her life has been excellently resumed by M. Emile Trolliet, in the Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française (edit. Petit de Julie ville) : • Toute sa vocation, toute sa destinée fut d'être une femme, une mère, une grande dame, et si, par surcroît, elle fut un grand écrivain, c'est surtout pour avoir fourni entièrement, mais uniquement sa tâche féminine . . . Cette femme naquit, charma, aima, mourut : toute sa mission tient en ces quatre mots.'

The following is a portrait of her, drawn by her friend Madame de La Fayette in 1659: 'Sachez, madame, si, par hasard, vous ne le savez pas, que votre esprit pare et embellit si fort votre personne, qu'il n'y en a point sur la

MADAME DE SEVIGNE xi

terre d'aussi charmante, lorsque vous êtes animée dans une conversation d'où la contrainte est bannie. Tout ce que vous dites a un tel charme et vous sied si bien que les paroles attirent les ris et les grâces autour de vous ; et le brillant de votre esprit donne un si grand éclat à votre teint et à vos yeux, que, quoiqu'il semble que l'esprit ne dût toucher que les oreilles, il est pourtant certain que le votre éblouit les yeux.'

Madame de Sévigné's work is contained in her Letters, which fill several volumes. They deal with ail subjects under the sun ; they narrate, day by day, what Madame de Sévigné saw and heard around her, and they give us a strikingly faithful picture of the society in which she moved. They are written with an ease, vivacity and spontaneity not common among the writers of the seventeenth century, and this, no doubt, is partly due to the fact that she was writing, not a book for publication, but letters on subjects of immédiate personal interest to herself and her friends. But, unlike most letter- writers, Madame de Sévigné was not content merely to narrate ; she watched her words with an artist's eye, and it is because she was a great artist that her letters are the perfect expression of her fresh, original and charming personality.

The first published Letters of Madame de Sévigné appeared a year after her death in 1697 » others hâve been added at différent dates and may still be added.

EDITION, Monmerqué. Coll. des Grands Écrivains (Paris, 1862), 14 vols. ; Lettres inédites, edit. Capmas (Paris, 1876), 2 vols. ; Lettres choisies, edit. Régnier Hachette (1 fr. 80). BIOGRAPHY AND CRITI- CISM. — Boissier, Mme. de Sévigné; Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de Femmes ; Faguet, X VIL siècle.

MAPAM1 IGNE

NOTES