SEVIGNE 



SEVILLE 



337 



could have been lavished without forcing a return. 

 Her love was accompanied by all the doubts and 

 fears that are the characteristic marks of another 

 form of human emotion ; and its exceptional in- 

 tensity cannot be understood unless we remember 

 how it came to fill her heart at a moment when 

 the dear illusion of a husband's love had been 

 rudely shattered for ever. ' Vous ne comprenez 

 point encore trop bien 1'amour maternel : tant 

 inieux, ma fille, il est violent," she writes. Its 

 iteration has deterred many a reader at the outset, 

 as it long did so fine and sympathetic a spirit as 

 Edward FitzGerald. Yet he lived to take her 

 altogether to his heart, and he thus ends a letter 

 with a personal touch of pathos worthy of herself : 

 ' I sometimes lament I did not know her before ; 

 but perhaps such an Acquaintance comes in best to 

 heer one toward the End. ' 



At fifty her splendid health was first shaken at 

 the Rochers by a violent (it of rheumatism ; there- 

 after till the close her only troubles were her son- 

 in-law's vast expenditure and ever-increasing debts, 

 and one by one the deaths of her dearest friends. 

 Her life wore itself away in a round of duties at 

 Paris, at the Rochers, ami in visits to the country- 

 houses of her friends and to her daughter in 

 Provence. Nothing in her was more wonderful 

 than her adaptability of disposition ; she U happy 

 alike by the bedside of a sick friend, in her drives 

 with Madame Scarron, soon to be virtual queen of 

 France, in the society of the court, and alone 

 under the dense leafage of her park at the Rochers. 

 One thin;; only we would have had otherwise than 

 it is, but it would be a complete anachronism to 

 ask for more sympathy than she has to show for 

 the miserable Breton peasants under the cruel cam- 

 paign of 1675. Her son Charles had some follies 

 which cost money, before his marriage ( 1683) ; but 

 he stands out an attractive figure enough, generous 

 and warm-hearted, content with an unequal half of 

 his mother's heart. Bienlion died in 1683 ; Bussy 

 and Madame de la Fayette in 1693. Her letters 

 grow sadder as she begins to find herself alone, yet 

 some of the latest stand among the first in literary 

 value. She never grew old, for her heart retained 

 its warmth ; yet she lived to see son and grandson 

 married, and after nulling tier daughter through a 

 tedious illness was herself attacked by smallpox, 

 and died calmly and without fear, 18th April 1696. 



Madame de Sevigne's twenty-live years of letters 

 to her daughter reveal the inner history of the time 

 in wonderful detail, but the most interesting thing 

 in the whole 1600 (one-third letters to her from 

 others) remains herself. She was genuinely re- 

 ligious without superstition, a strong sympathy 

 with Port-Royal manifest throughout; she had 

 read widely and gained much from conversation, 

 and she had lived in the time of Pascal, Moliere, 

 Racine, Bossiiet, and La Rochefoucauld. Still 

 more, she possessed the great natural gifts of a 

 solid understanding and strong good sense. But 

 it needed the warm touch of atl'ection to make all 

 these qualities live, and to give her letters the 

 freedom, the rapidity, the life of spoken words. 

 Hence her sparkling wit, her swiftly changing 

 emotions, her unstudied yet admirable phrase, 

 clear, firm, and natural, the tenderest sentiments 

 and gayest Mights of fancy ever expressed with 

 unfailing grace and the indefinable charm of style. 

 Her imagination, warmed by sympathy and love, 

 realises the conditions of those to whom she writes, 

 and enables her to enter into the thoughts of 

 others, as well as to reflect as in a mirror the 

 world around herself. Yet over all there is a 

 gravity and reserve characteristic of that stately 

 ami ceremonious age. She never once thous-and- 

 tlieen anybody ; a certain dignity remains even in 

 the most intimate relations. The perfection of her 



letters was from the first moment recognised, and 

 the question has often been asked did that piquant 

 grace of detail, that charming variety in the repe- 

 tition of the same thoughts, cost her pains. No 

 doubt she knew she wrote well, however little she 

 thought of fame, yet this knowledge did not 

 exclude sincerity, and she must have written fast 

 to have written so much ' Je fais de la prose avec 

 une facilite qui vous tue,' she says. And she does 

 not write alike to all people ; to Bussy and the 

 sprightly Mme. de Coulanges there is a little 

 restraint : to her daughter it is heart to heart, 

 now private affairs and prattle about her neigh- 

 bom's, now matters of state and the graver 

 questions of life and death, written with swift- 

 nowing pen for her eye alone. We may love 

 Madame de Grignan only for her dear mother's 

 sake, yet we owe to her an inestimable debt of 

 gratitude, for it was her care that preserved the 

 precious letters of Madame de Sevigne, and be- 

 queathed them to the endless affection of posterity. 

 The earliest of her letters that were published were 

 those to Bussy, printed in his Mfmoira (1696-97). 

 The first edition of the Lettm was printed in 1726 by 

 Bussy's son, the Abb4 de Bussy, to whom her grand- 

 daughter Pauline ( Madame de Simiane ) had given tran- 

 scripts of the originals. A more complete edition, 

 authorised by the family, was the final one of those 

 edited by the Chevalier Marius de Perrin (8 vola. 1754). 

 Further editions were innumerable three only need be 

 mentioned, those of the Abbe de Vauxcelles (1801), 

 Gouvelle (1806), and M. de Monmerqne an abiding 

 monument of patient industry ( 10 vols. 1818-19). The 

 final edition is, however, that in the ' Grands Ecrivains 

 de la France,' begun by M. de Monmerqne, and finished 

 by A. Regnier, Paul Mesnard, and E. Sommer ( 14 vols. 

 1865-67 ; vol. L, with Mesnard's life ; vols. xiii.-xiv. 

 a Lexique by Sommer), especially as supplemented by 

 Ch. Caprnas in Lettm infditei de Madame de * n : n>- ( 2 

 vols. 1876). Seo Walckenaer, Mtmoires taiichanti la 

 Vie et la Ecritt Je Madame de SMtjMt ( 5 vols. 1842-52 ; 

 vol. vi. by Aubenas, 1865); the Comtesse de Puliga, 

 Madame de Striyn?, her Correspondent* and Contem- 

 poraries (2 vols. 1873) ; the admirable studies by Miss 

 Thackeray in 'Foreign Classics' (1881) and Gaston 

 Boissier in ' Lea Grands Ecrivains Francais ' ( 1887 ), as 

 well as those by Combes (1885) and Vallery-Radot 

 ( 1888 ) ; Leon de la Briere'a Madame de Sf.riijnt en 

 Brtlatjnc (2d ed. 1882); and Saporta's La Famille de 

 Madame de Sevit/ne en Provence ( 1889 ). See also Sainte- 

 Beuve's Portrait! de Femmes, Cauieriet du Lundi 

 (voL L), and Nouveaux Lundis (vol. i.); E. Scherer's 

 Etudes sur la Lilt. Content/), (vols. ii. and hi.), and 

 chapter 6 of Amelia Gere Mason's Women of the French 

 Salont (1891). 



Seville, one of the most famous of Spanish cities, 

 stands nn the left bank of the Guadalquivir, 62 

 miles (95 by rail ) N. by E. of Cadiz, and is connected 

 with a large suburb (Triana) on the right bank by 

 an iron bndge (1848). It has had two periods of 

 great splendour in its history, first as the capital 

 of a Mohammedan emirate, and later in the 16th 

 and 17th centuries as the headquarters of Spanish 

 painting and the chief port of Spanish commerce ; 

 and it is now rapidly recovering a good deal of its 

 former commercial prosperity, the river Guadal- 

 quivir being navigable for large vessels (of 16 feet 

 draught) up to the city. Until quite recently 

 Seville had the appearance of a picturesque Moorish 

 town the streets narrow, tortuous, and shady, 

 the houses built round handsome court-yards and 

 gardens, the squares studded with fountains. But 

 during the last few years the city has been greatly 

 modernised by the clearing away of the narrower 

 quarters to make room for wide straight streets 

 and, modern houses and shops. Only a few frag- 

 ments now remain of the former circular city wan, 

 which was adorned with sixty-six towers. The 

 water-supply was formerly brought from Alcald de 

 los Panaderos by an old Roman aqueduct of 410 



