is evident from her letter from _Chaulnes_: "This is a very
handsome house, which carries with it an air of grandeur, though it is
partly unfurnished, and the gardens neglected. There is scarcely any
verdure to be seen, and not a nightingale to be heard; in short, it is
still winter, on the seventeenth of April. But it is easy to imagine the
beauties of these walks; every thing is regular and magnificent; a
spacious parterre in front, bowling-greens opposite the wings, a large
playing fountain in the parterre, two in the bowling-greens, and another
at a distance in the middle of a field, which is well named _the
solitary_; a fine country, beautiful apartments, and a pleasant
prospect, though flat." She in another letter from _Chaulnes_ says; "I
was walking alone the other day, in these beautiful alleys." And in a
subsequent one she says: "It is a pity to be obliged to quit so
beautiful and so charming a place." Her frequent mention in her letters
of _my pretty walks_ at the _Rocks_, sufficiently paints her delight in
her own garden. In compliment to this lady, I cannot help applying to
her the exact words which Petrarch applies to Laura: _une haute
intelligence, un coeur pure, qui a la sagesse de l'age avance, ait le
brilliant de la belle jeunesse_.

Few passed more happy hours in their garden at _Baville_, than the
illustrious Lamoignon, of whom it was said, that "Son ame egaloit son
genie; simple dans ses moeurs, austere dans sa conduite, il etoit le
plus doux des hommes, quand la veuve et l'orphein etoient a ses pieds,
_Boileau_, _Racine_, _Bourdaloue_, _Rapin_, composoit sa petite
cour,"--and whom Rapin invokes, not only in his poem on gardens,

_My flowers aspiring round your brows shall twine,
And in immortal wreaths, shall all their beauties join;_

but in his letters, preserved with those of Rabutin de Bussy, he paints
in high terms the name of Lamoignon, and frequently dwells on his
retreat at _Baville_. Mons. Rab. de Bussy, in a letter to Rapin, says:
"Que Je vous trouve heureux d'avoir deux mois a passer a _Baville_, avec
Mons. le presidant! Il est admirable a Paris; mais il est aimable a sa
maison de campagne, et vous savez qu'on a plus de plaisir a aimer qu'a
admirer." On his death, Rapin thus speaks of him: "Il n'y eut jamais une
plus belle ame jointe a un plus bel esprit. Le plus grand de tous les
eloges est, que le peuple l'a pleure; et chacun s'est plaint de sa mort
comme de la perte d'un ami, o