Housset's room, and they made me up a fire. Agnes
sat looking at me without speaking: that was our bargain. I staid there
till five o'clock, without ceasing to sob: all my thoughts were mortal,
wounds to me. I wrote to M. de Grignan, you can imagine in what key.
Then I went to Madame de La Fayette's, who redoubled my griefs by the
interest she took in them. She was alone, ill and distressed at the
death of one of the nuns; she was just as I could have desired. I
returned hither at eight; but when I came in, O! can you conceive what I
felt as I mounted these stairs? That room into which I used always to
go, alas! I found the doors of it open, but I saw everything
disfurnished, everything disarranged, and your little daughter, who
reminded me of mine. The wakenings of the night were dreadful; I think
of you continuously: it is what devotees call an habitual thought, such
as one should have of God, if one did one's duty. Nothing gives me any
distraction. I see that carriage, which is forever going on and will
never come near me. I am forever on the highways; it seems as if I were
afraid sometimes that the carriage will upset with me. The rains there
have been for the last three days reduce me to despair; the Rhone causes
me strange alarm. I have a map before my eyes, I know all the places
where you sleep. This evening you are at Nevers; on Sunday you will be
at Lyons, where you will receive this letter. I have received only two
of yours; perhaps the third will come; that is the only comfort I desire:
as for others, I seek for none." During five and twenty years Madame de
Sevign~ could never become accustomed to her daughter's absence. She set
out for the Rochers, near Vitry, a family estate of M. de Sevigne's. Her
friend the Duke of Chaulnes was governor of Brittany. "You shall now
have news of our states as your penalty for being a Breton. M. de
Chaulnes arrived on Sunday evening, to the sound of everything that can
make any in Vitry. On Monday morning he sent me a letter; I wrote back
to say that I would go and dine with him. There are two dining-tables in
the same room; fourteen covers at each table. Monsieur presides at one,
Madame at the other. The good cheer is prodigious; joints are carried
away quite untouched, and as for the pyramids of fruit, the doors require
to be heightened. Our fathers did not foresee this sort of machine,
indeed they did not even foresee that a door required to be highe