ue,--the date of
her letter is March 16, 1672, and during the Lent of that year
Bourdaloue preached at Versailles,--when she wrote sombrely as
follows:--

You ask me if I am as fond of life as ever. I must own to you that
I experience mortifications, and severe ones too; but I am still
unhappy at the thoughts of death; I consider it so great a
misfortune to see the termination of all my pursuits, that I should
desire nothing better, if it were practicable, than to begin life
again. I find myself engaged in a scene of confusion and trouble; I
was embarked in life without my own consent, and know I must leave
it again; this distracts me, for how shall I leave it? In what
manner? By what door? At what time? In what disposition? Am I to
suffer a thousand pains and torments that will make me die in a
state of despair? Shall I lose my senses? Am I to die by some
sudden accident? How shall I stand with God? What shall I have to
offer to him? Will fear and necessity make my peace with him? Shall
I have no other sentiment but that of fear? What have I to hope? Am
I worthy of heaven? Or have I deserved the torments of hell?
Dreadful alternative! Alarming uncertainty! Can there be greater
madness than to place our eternal salvation in uncertainty? Yet
what is more natural, or can be more easily accounted for, than the
foolish manner in which I have spent my life? I am frequently
buried in thoughts of this nature, and then death appears so
dreadful to me that I hate life more for leading me to it, than I
do for all the thorns that are strewed in its way. You will ask me,
then, if I would wish to live forever? Far from it; but, if I had
been consulted, I would very gladly have died in my nurse's arms;
it would have spared me many vexations, and would have insured
heaven to me at a very easy rate; but let us talk of something
else.

A memorable sarcasm saved for us by Madame de Sevigne, at the very close
of one of her letters:--

Guillenagues said yesterday that Pelisson abused the privilege men
have of being ugly.

Readers familiar with Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," will recognize in
the following narrative a state of society not unlike that described by
the novelist as immediately preceding the French Revolution:--

The Archbishop of Rheims, as he returned yesterday from St.