Page:Poet Lore, volume 34, 1923.djvu/81

 then and there a friendship was born which lasted as long as he lived. He called her his daughter by adoption (fille d'alliance) and gave her of his heart as years before he had bestowed his best affection upon La Boétie.

Montaigne and Marie saw each other often while in Paris, and even afterward, for during the eight months that Montaigne passed in that city, he went to visit her and her mother at Gournay, two or three times, in all spending about three months with them. Of their promenades in the park around the old chateau, Marie de Gournay has left us a reminder in the title of the first romance that she ever wrote, Le Promenoir de Michel de Montaigne. This tale of adventure has nothing to do with Montaigne but she gave it this title, so she says, because she had told him the story as they walked to and fro under the old trees around her home. Is she sincere in this? Always, Marie had a "drumming up trade" instinct. Young as she was then, did she guess what an open sesame was the name of Montaigne, so illustrious even then? Perhaps both feelings entered into this title, for she did love him, the great Montaigne.

The young girl became the joy of the old age of Michel de Montaigne. He loved her and had faith in her future. "I take pleasure," he said in a note at the end of the 17th chapter of the Second book of the Essays, "in telling what I hope of Marie de Gournay, my adopted daughter and certainly loved by me more than paternally. If youth can presage, this soul will some day be capable of the most beautiful things." There is no doubt that they wrote to each other often, but, unfortunately for us, their letters have been lost.

The death of Montaigne, September 13, 1592, was a great shock to Marie de Gournay. "He was vouchsafed to me but for four years, no longer than to him his dear friend La Boétie," she cried out in her sorrow. She was inconsolable, and was not comforted until fifteen months later, when she visited the chateau of Montaigne, in Gascony, where she was received and loved by the widow and daughter of the great philosopher. What a joy it must have been for Marie de Gournay to live in the chateau which had been the home of Montaigne; to sit in his now famous library, to handle the books he had loved and annotated; to talk of him with Madame de Montaigne and her daughter.

Before her visit to the home of Montaigne, an opportunity to do something for her friend had lightened her grief. Montaigne had left a new edition of his Essays (now called the edition of