To feel the point of this joke the reader should recollect
that Madame de Grignan was Gouvernante de Provence.] "Madame de Tarente
etait hier dans ces bois par un temps enchante: il n'est question ni de
chambre ni de collation; elle entre par la barriere et s'en retourne de
meme. . . ."

In another letter she adds:--

"Vous me parlez bien plaisamment de nos miseres; nous ne sommes plus si
roues; un en huit jours, pour entretenir la justice. Il est vrai que la
penderie me parait maintenant un refraichissement. J'ai une tout autre
idee de la justice, depuis que je suis en ce pays. Vos galeriens me
paraissent une societe d'honnetes gens qui se sont retires du monde pour
mener une vie douce."

It would be a mistake to suppose that Madame de Sevigne, who wrote these
lines, was a selfish or cruel person; she was passionately attached
to her children, and very ready to sympathize in the sorrows of her
friends; nay, her letters show that she treated her vassals and servants
with kindness and indulgence. But Madame de Sevigne had no clear notion
of suffering in anyone who was not a person of quality.

In our time the harshest man writing to the most insensible person of
his acquaintance would not venture wantonly to indulge in the cruel
jocularity which I have quoted; and even if his own manners allowed him
to do so, the manners of society at large would forbid it. Whence does
this arise? Have we more sensibility than our forefathers? I know not
that we have; but I am sure that our insensibility is extended to a far
greater range of objects. When all the ranks of a community are nearly
equal, as all men think and feel in nearly the same manner, each of them
may judge in a moment of the sensations of all the others; he casts a
rapid glance upon himself, and that is enough. There is no wretchedness
into which he cannot readily enter, and a secret instinct reveals to him
its extent. It signifies not that strangers or foes be the sufferers;
imagination puts him in their place; something like a personal feeling
is mingled with his pity, and makes himself suffer whilst the body
of his fellow-creature is in torture. In democratic ages men rarely
sacrifice themselves for one another; but they display general
compassion for the members of the human race. They inflict no useless
ills; and they are happy to relieve the griefs of others, when they can
do so without much hurting themselves; they are not disinterested, but
they are humane