position held by men of letters, not born in the purple, and the social licence they assumed in the Hôtel Rambouillet. Madame de Sévigné might have said the same of her former tutor and persevering admirer, Ménage, who employed the language of passion as freely as a marquis or a duke; whilst she trifled with him in the precise manner which, without driving him from her or depriving her of her daily dose of flattery, was most annoying to his vanity and fatal to his hopes. One of Liston's best parts was an old bachelor who boasted, without suspecting why the distinction was conferred upon him, of being universally pronounced a safe man, with whom a husband or father might trust the prettiest wife or daughter without risk. This is the very part which Ménage was unwilling to play. He felt like Rogers, who, when Lady Beresford offered to take him home from an evening party in her carriage, walked off in a huff, complaining that it was an unkind mode of reminding him of his age.

One day, Ménage happening to call just as Madame de Sévigné was going out shopping, she told him to get into her carriage and accompany her. The savant, vainly trying to hide his pique under raillery, told her that it was hard upon him for her, not content with the rigorous treatment he received, to appear to have so little fear of him or of scandal in connection with him. "Get into my carriage, I tell you," was her rejoinder. "If you make me angry, I will come and see you at your own house." She was as good as her word. Before leaving for the country, she went to bid him farewell. On her return she complained to him of his not having written to her. "I have written to you," he made answer, "but after reading my letter over again, I found it too

passionate, and thought it had better not be sent."

If she bestowed a favour, it was always provokingly before the world. He relates in Ménagiana, that he had been holding one of her hands in his; and on her withdrawing it, M. Pelletier said to him, "Voilà le plus bel ouvrage qui soit sorti de vos mains." He made the most of these harmless freedoms. Finding himself alone in a carriage with the Marquise de Lavardin on their journey to the Rochers, he leant forwards to kiss her hands: "Monsieur Ménage," she remarked with a laugh, “you are conning your lesson (vous vous recordez) for Madame de Sévigné." She once (according to Bussy) kissed her old master before a circle of admirers, and answering to their looks of surprise, exclaimed, "It was thus that they kissed in the Primitive Church."

The worst of these things was that they were related without the accompanying circumstances, so that ill-natured conclusions might be based upon them. Thus Bussy:

"There is no woman who has more wit than she, and very few who have so much: her manner is diverting; there are some who say that, for a woman of quality, her character is a little too reckless. When first I was in the habit of seeing her, I thought this judgment ridiculous, and I excused her burlesque under the name of gaiety; now that I am no longer dazzled by her fire, I agree that she aims too much at jocularity. If one has wit, and particularly this sort of wit, which is gay, one has but to see her, one loses nothing with her: she listens to you, she enters justly into all you say, she divines you, and leads you ordinarily much further than you think of going. Sometimes also one opens a wide expanse of country to her: she is carried away by her heated fancy, and in this state she receives with joy anything one feels disposed to say to her, provided it is wrapped up: she even replies with

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usury, and conceives that she should lose ground if she did not go beyond what has been said to her. With so much fire, it is not strange that the discernment is moderate: these two things being commonly incompatible, nature cannot work a miracle in her favour. With her, a lively fool will always get the better of a serious man of sense."

This was written with studied malice, after more than one rebuff, owing to that very discernment which he denies. All her admiration for his brilliant qualities did not blind her to his defects. The worst that could be truly said of her was what Voltaire's Zadig says of Astarte: "Unhappily confident in her innocence, she neglects the necessary appearances. I shall tremble for her so long as she has no subject of self-reproach." This is the pith of Joseph Surface's sophistical argument with Lady Teazle: "What is it makes you so negligent of forms and careless of the world's opinion? Why, the consciousness of your innocence. What makes you thoughtless in your conduct, and apt to run into a thousand little imprudences? Why, the consciousness of your innocence. Now, my dear Lady Teazle, if you would but once make a trifling faux pas, you can't conceive how cautious you would grow."

There are two other passages of arms between her and Ménage which throw light on their relations to each other. She was in the habit of making him the confidant of her most secret affairs. After an interview of this kind, he said to her, "I am now your confessor, and I have been your martyr."—" And I your Virgin," was her laughing

retort.

On her inquiring after Ménage's health, he replied, "Madame, je suis enrhumé."-" Je la suis aussi." Assuming the tutor, he told her that, according to the rules of the language, she should

say, "Je le suis." "You will speak as you please," she sharply replied; "but as for me, if I spoke so, I should believe I had a beard on my chin."

Small credit would redound to her for resisting temptation, had there been no more dangerous suitor; but, besides a long list of accomplished courtiers who laid siege in the received and permitted fashion to her heart, there was her cousin Bussy, in whom she retained an affectionate interest through life, always ready to take advantage of an unguarded moment, and utterly unscrupulous as to the means by which he attained any end, good or bad, in love or ambition, that he had proposed to himself. He was also the intimate friend of her husband, of whom he says, "Although he had esprit, all the attractions of Marie could not restrain him: he loved in all directions, and never loved anything so lovable as his wife." She did not hear of his irregularities, or turned a deaf ear to them, till he became attached to the celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos, born to be her evil genius; for, wonderful to relate, her husband, her son, and her grandson were successively enslaved by this French Aspasia―

"Age could not weary her, nor custom tire

Her infinite variety."

"The Marquis de Sévigné," says Conrart, in his Memoirs, "was in the habit of telling his wife that he believed she would have been very agreeable for another, but that, for his part, she could not please him. It was also said that there was this difference between her and her husband, that he esteemed and did not love her, while she loved and did not esteem him."

The Marquis was boasting to Bussy of an agreeable evening he had passed, adding, "You

may well believe it was not with your cousin: it was with Ninon."-" So much the worse for you, replied Bussy; "my cousin is worth a thousand of her, and, if you were not her husband, you would think so too."-"Likely enough," rejoined the marquis. Bussy goes on to say that as soon as he could get away from the husband, he hurried to repeat what had passed to the wife, who reddened, as she well might, with vexation. A brief colloquy ensues: Madame de S.-"You must be mad to give me such advice, or you must think me mad." Bussy." You would be much more so, Madame,

if you did not pay him off in his own coin, than if you repeated to him what I have told you. Revenge yourself, my fair cousin: I will go halves in your revenge; for, after all, your interests are as dear to me as my own." Madame de S.-" This is all very fine, Monsieur le Comte: I am not so exasperated as you think."

When he and the Marquis met the next day, the Marquis began: "I suspect you have let something drop to your cousin of what I told you yesterday about Ninon, because she has glanced at it to me."-"I," exclaimed this pattern of confidants; "I have not uttered a word about it to her. But, clever as she is, she has been so discursive on the chapter of jealousy that she sometimes hits upon the truth." The Marquis went away satisfied, and Bussy forthwith indited this epistle to the Marquise :

"I was not wrong yesterday, madame, in distrusting your imprudence. You have told your husband what I told you. You must be well aware that it is not on my own account that I make you this reproach, for all that can happen to me is to lose his friendship; and for you, madame, there is much more to fear. I have, however, been fortunate enough to disabuse him. Besides he is so