s require my
presence, and my presence requires yours. Enough is yours of wit or of
good sense to understand that.

The Court is, no doubt, a fine country,--finer than ever under the
present reign. The more magnificent the Court is, the more uneasy do I
become. Wealth and opulence are needed there; and to your family I never
figured as a Croesus. By dint of order and thrift, we shall ere long
have satisfactorily settled our affairs; and I promise you that our stay
in the Provinces shall last no longer than is necessary to achieve that
desirable result. Three, four, five,--let us say, six years. Well, that
is not an eternity! By the time we come back we shall both of us still
be young. Come, then, my dearest Athenais, come, and make closer
acquaintance with these imposing Pyrenees, every ravine of which is a
landscape and every valley an Eden. To all these beauties, yours is
missing; you shall be here, like Dian, the goddess of these noble
forests. All our gentlefolk await you, admiring your picture on the
sweetmeat-box. They are minded to hold many pleasant festivals in your
honour; you may count upon having a veritable Court. Here it is that you
will meet the old Warnais nobility that followed Henri IV. and placed the
sceptre in his hand. Messieurs de Grammont and de Biron are our
neighbours; their grim castles dominate the whole district, so that they
seem like kings.

Our Chateau de Montespan will offer you something less severe; the
additions made for my mother twenty years ago are infinitely better than
anything that you will leave behind you in Paris. We have here the
finest fruits that ever grew in any earthly paradise. Our huge, luscious
peaches are composed of sugar, violets, carnations, amber, and jessamine;
strawberries and raspberries grow everywhere; and naught may vie with the
excellence of the water, the vegetables, and the milk.

You are fond of scenery and of sketching from nature; there are half a
dozen landscapes here for you that leave Claude Lorrain far behind. I
mean to take you to see a waterfall, twelve hundred and seventy feet in
height, neither more nor less. What are your fountains at Saint Germain
and Chambord compared with such marvellous things as these?

Now, madame, I am really tired of coaxing and flattering you, as I have
done in this letter and in preceding ones. Do you want me, or do you
not? Your position as Court lady, so you say, keeps you near the
monarch; ask