"Where is your daughter, and how is she?" sympathetically queried the duchesse.
"Oh, she is still at Grignan, as usual; she is well, thank God. But, dear duchesse, after all these years of separation I suffer still, cruelly." The tears sprang to Madame de Sévigné's eyes, as she added, with passion and a force one would scarcely have expected in one whose manners were so finished, "the truth is, dear friends, I cannot live without her. I do not find I have made the least progress in that career. But, even now, believe me, these tears are sweeter than all else in life—more enrapturing than the most transporting joy!"
Madame de Kerman smiled tenderly into the rapturous mother's face; but the duchesse moved, as if a little restless and uneasy under this shower of maternal feeling. For thirty years her friends had had to listen to Madame de Sévigné's rhapsodies over the perfections of her incomparable daughter. Although sensibility was not the emotional fashion of the day, maternity, in the person of Madame de Sévigné, had been apotheosized into the queen of the passions, if only because of its rarity; still, even this lady's most intimate friends sometimes wearied of banqueting off the feast of Madame de Grignan's virtues.
"Have you heard from Madame de La Fayette recently?" asked the duchesse, allowing just time enough to elapse, before putting the question, for Madame de Sévigné's emotion to subside into composure. The duchesse was too exquisitely bred to allow her impatience to take the form of even the appearance of haste.
"Oh, yes," was Madame de Sévigné's quiet reply; the turn in the conversation had been instantly understood, in spite of the delicacy of the duchesse's methods. "Oh, yes—I have had a line—only a line. You know how she detests writing, above all things. Her letters are all the same—two lines to say that she has no time in which to say it!"
"Did she not once write you a pretty little series of epigrams about not writing?"
"Oh, yes—some time ago, when I was with my daughter. I've quoted them so often, they have become famous. 'You are in Provence, my beauty; your hours are free, and your mind still more so. Your love for corresponding with everyone still endures within you, it appears; as for me, the desire to write to any human being has long since passed away-forever; and if I had a lover who insisted on a letter every morning, I should certainly break with him!'"
"What a curious compound she is! And how well her soubriquet becomes her!"
"Yes, it is perfect—'Le Brouillard'—the fog. It is indeed a fog that has always enveloped her, and what charming horizons are disclosed once it is lifted!"
"And her sensibilities—of what an exquisite quality; and what a rare, precious type, indeed, is the whole of her nature! Do you remember how alarmed she would become when listening to music?"