Page:Sévigné - Letters to her Daughter and Friends, 1869.djvu/17



Rh, and she could not give the whole of her heart, thoughts, and time to her mother, as the latter did to her daughter.

The separation was a terrible privation to Madame de Sévigné, but it was the cause of her moral and literary improvement, as well as of the series of "Letters to Madame de Grignan," which, of their kind, are unequaled in any language. The mother's genius lives in this correspondence ; her pen gives importance to the most trifling occurrences, and makes hard facts as interesting as fairy stories. Among other advantages of life, Madame de Sévigné retained her good looks, as she did her cheerful disposition, to the last; hence the name of Mère Beauté (Mother Beauty) given her by M.de Coulanges. Her constitution was good, and she managed it with great judgment. In thirty years the only disorder she had known was rheumatism. Happy all her life by the exercise of natural affections, Madame de Sévigné thought less of the ravages of time ; and when death terminated her existence in 1696, her illness, the result of the fatigue and uneasiness she had endured for some months on her daughter's account, took her by surprise, and was announced by no symptom. It was short. In her last moments she was resigned, and perfectly calm. Thus died Madame de Sévigné, aged about seventy years, and was interred in the Collegiate Church of Grignan, leaving to posterity in the record of her blameless life, as in her exquisite writings, the brightest and purest model which her age affords. S. J. H.