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'I'll send the horse round to the stable, and begin at once! exclaimed Louis, all eagerness; but Mary demurred, as she had promised to read to her mother and aunt some of their old favourites, Madame de Sevigne's letters, and his attention flew off to his restless steed, which he wanted her to admire. 'My Yeomanry charger, he said. 'We turn out five troopers.
Isidore and his friend jumped out of a cab at the moment when the doors of Madame de Sevigne's old mansion were opening. "Hullo! M. Beautrelet!" A dozen voices greeted his arrival. To his great surprise, he recognized the whole crowd of reporters who were following up "the mystery of the Hollow Needle." And one of them exclaimed: "Funny, isn't it, that we should all have had the same idea?
Mme. de Sévigné's affection for that daughter amounted almost to idolatry; it was to her that most of the mother's letters were written, telling her of her health, what was being done at Vichy, and about her business and for that child the authoress gave up her life at Paris in order to economize and thereby to help Mme. de Grignan in her extravagance, her son-in-law being an expert in spending money.
"Oh, she is still at Grignan, as usual; she is well, thank God. But, dear duchesse, after all these years of separation I suffer still, cruelly." The tears sprang to Madame de Sevigne's eyes, as she added, with passion and a force one would scarcely have expected in one whose manners were so finished, "the truth is, dear friends, I cannot live without her.
Unfastening her cloak with its pathetic lining of old rabbit-skin, she produced a small dog's-eared book. "They are Madame de Sévigné's letters," she said. "You know that next Sunday I am going to give a reading of the best of Madame de Sévigné's letters." "Where?" asked Fagette. "Salle Renard." It must have been some remote and little known hall, for Nanteuil and Fagette had not heard of it.
For thirty years her friends had had to listen to Madame de Sevigne's rhapsodies over the perfections of her incomparable daughter.
In this instance the taste had perhaps really been borrowed from France, though often enough we impute to France what is the native growth of all minds placed in similar circumstances. Madame de Sevigne's Letters were really models of grace. But Balzac, whose letters, however, are not without interest, had in some measure formed himself upon the truly magnificent rhetoric of Pliny and Seneca.
There is evident sincerity in his reproof of one of his correspondents who had expressed a most flattering opinion: "You say such extravagant things of my letters, which are nothing but gossiping gazettes, that I cannot bear it; you have undone yourself with me, for you compare them to Madame de Sévigné's. Absolute treason!
Mme. de Sévigné's letters to her daughter are superior to all her other epistles, charming as they all are; when she writes to M. Pomponne, to M. de Coulanges, to M. de Bussy, the style is less familiar, the heart less open, the soul less stirred; she writes to her daughter as she would speak to her—it is not a letter, it is an animated and charming conversation, touching upon everything, embellishing everything with an inimitable grace."
So you like to hear of all our little doings, so I will tell you that, about eight o'clock, Fanny being by that time up and dressed, and at her little table, Harriet comes and reads to me Madame de Sevigne's letters, of which I never tire; and I almost envy Fanny and Harriet the pleasure of reading them for the first time.