Page:Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and her court.djvu/23

 us repose awhile with Madame de Motteville, the writer of these judicious Memoirs, —with that wise and reasonable mind which saw very closely the things of her day, and estimated and described them in such perfect proportion and with an accuracy so agreeable. When the Memoirs of Madame de Motteville appeared for the first time, in 1723, the journalists and critics of that day, while praising their tone of sincerity, deemed that they gave too many minute details, too many little facts. This was the opinion of not only the "Journal de Trévoux " and the "Journal des Savants," but it was that of Voltaire himself. We no longer think so. These little facts, belonging to an old and vanished society which they represent to us with absolute truth, please us and fasten our attention: at a short distance they might seem superabundant and superfluous; at a greater distance they become both new and interesting. And besides, while Madame de Motteville, keeping to her woman's r6le and telling nothing that she does not know of her own knowledge, never attempts to penetrate cabinet secrets (though she divines some of them very well indeed), she pictures to the life the general spirit of all situations and the moral character of the personages. It is this lasting side that time has more clearly brought forth, placing her henceforth in a rank both distinguished and well-established.

Madame de Motteville, born about 1621, her maiden name being Franchise Bertaut, was the niece of a bishop-poet,