n a
goddess of something. In our century, when we are not so lavish with
incense, and especially for living merit, we are contented to say that
there is not a woman of your age more virtuous and more amiable than
are you. I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, great lords
with princely manners, great captains, gentlemen, ministers of state,
who would be off and away for you, if you would permit them. Can you
ask any more?"

Such eulogies came not only from men like the perfidious and cruel
cousin, but from her friends everywhere. The finest of these is
the one by her friend Mme. de La Fayette, contained in one of the
epistolary portraits so much in vogue at that time, and which were
turned out, _par excellence_, in the salon of Mlle. de Luxembourg:
"Know, madame,--if by chance you do not already know it,--that your
mind adorns and embellishes your person so well that there is not
another one on earth so charming as you when you are animated in a
conversation in which all constraint is banished. Your soul is great,
noble, ready to dispense with treasures, and incapable of lowering
itself to the care of amassing them. You are sensible to glory and
ambition, and to pleasures you are less so; yet you appear to be born
for the latter, and they made for you; your person augments pleasures,
and pleasures increase your beauty when they surround you. Joy is the
veritable state of your soul, and chagrin is more unlike to you than
to anyone. You are the most civil and obliging person that ever lived,
and by a free and calm air--which is in all your actions--the simplest
compliments of seemliness appear, in your mouth, as protestations of
friendship."

The originality which gained Mme. de Sevigne so many friends lay
principally in her force, wealth of resource, intensity, sincerity,
and frankness. M. Scherer said she possessed "surprises for us,
infinite energy, inexhaustible variety--everything that eternally
revives interest."

The interest of the modern world in this remarkable woman is centred
mainly in her letters. Guizot says: "Mme. de Sevigne is a friend whom
we read over and over again, whose emotions we share, to whom we go
for an hour's distraction and delightful chat; we have no desire to
chat with Mme. de Grignan (her daughter)--we gladly leave her to her
mother's exclusive affection, feeling infinitely obliged to her for
having existed, inasmuch as her mother wrote letters to her. Mme.
de Sevigne's letters