style--natural _eclat_, originality of expression, grace, color,
amplitude without pomposity and abundance without prolixity; moreover,
she invents nothing, but, knowing how to observe and to express in
perfection everything she had seen and felt, she is a witness and
painter of her century: also, she loves nature--a sentiment very rare
in the seventeenth century."

Mme. de Sevigne was endowed with the best qualities of the French
race--good will and friendliness, which influence one to judge others
favorably and to desire their esteem; of a very impressionable nature,
she was gifted with a natural eloquence which enabled her to express
her various emotions in a light or gay vein which often bordered on
irony. Affectionate and appreciative and tender and kind to everyone
in general, toward those whom she loved she was generous to a fault
and unswerving in her fidelity.

Her last years were spent in the midst of her family. She died in
1696, of smallpox, thanking God that she was the first to go, after
having trembled for the life of her daughter, whom she had nursed back
to health after a long and dangerous illness. Her son-in-law, M. de
Grignan, wrote to her uncle, M. de Coulanges:

"What calls far more for our admiration than for our regret, is the
spectacle of a brave woman facing death--of which she had no doubt
from the first days of her illness--with astounding firmness and
submission. This person, so tender and so weak towards all whom she
loved, showed nothing but courage and piety when she believed that her
hour had come; and, impressed by the use she managed to make of that
good store in the last moments of her life, we could not but remark
of what utility and of what importance it is to have the mind stocked
with the good matter and holy reading for which Mme. de Sevigne had a
liking--not to say a wonderful hunger."

In order to give an idea of the place that Mme. de Sevigne holds in
the opinion of the average Frenchman, we quote the final words of M.
Vallery-Radot:

"To take a place among the greatest writers, without ever having
written a book or even having thought of writing one--this is what
seems impossible, and yet this is what happened to Mme. de Sevigne.
Her contemporaries knew her as a woman distinguished for her _esprit_,
frank, playful and sprightly humor, irreproachable conduct, loyalty to
her friends, and as an idolizer of her daughter; no one suspected that
she would partake of the glory