WEARY
The château in which this wonderful woman lived, whence started so many couriers to Provence, is an important building, gray, a little heavy with towers, with high turrets of slate and great windows. Resembling most houses built in the Louis XIV. style, it is rather sad in design. At the side is a chapel surmounted by a cross, a rotund hexagonal building constructed in 1671 by the Abbot of Coulanges. Inside it is gorgeous with old rose and gold. One can imagine the gentle Marquise kneeling here at her devotions.
Visitors are shown the bedroom of Mme. Sévigné, now transformed into a historical little sanctuary. The furniture consists of a large four-post bed, with a covering of gold and blue, embroidered, it is said, by the Countess of Grignan. Under a glass case have been treasured all the accessories of her toilet—an arsenal of feminine coquetry: brushes, powder-boxes, patch-boxes, autograph letters, account-books, her own ink-stand, books written in the clear, delicate, legible handwriting of the Marquise herself.
The walls are hung with pictures of the family and intimate friends, some of which are very remarkable. This room was called by Mme. Sévigné the 'green room.' It still has a dainty atmosphere. Here Mme. Sévigné passed a great part of her life. Under a large window is a marble table where she is supposed to have written those letters which one knows almost as well as the fables of Lafontaine. Mme. Sévigné coloured the somewhat cold though pure language of the seventeenth century, but not artificially. She animated it, conveyed warmth into it, by putting into her writings much that was feminine, never descending to the 'precious' or to be a blue-stocking. The books that she loved, and her correspondence, did not take up so much of her time that she had to overlook the details of her domain. Sometimes she had a little fracas with her cook; often she would be called away to listen to the complaints of Pilois, her gardener, a philosopher. She knew how to feel strongly among people who could feel only their own misfortunes and disgraces. She had a true and thoughtful soul. This one can tell by her letters from Les Rochers, which come to us in all their freshness, as if they had been written yesterday.
THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE