Yet again. The gay writer has been sobered, perhaps hurt, by a friend’s frankly writing to her, “You are old.” To her daughter:
So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la Fayette, blended with so much friendship. ’Twas a truth, I own, which I ought to have borne in mind; and yet I must confess it astonished me, for I do not yet perceive in myself any such decay. Nevertheless, I cannot help making many reflections and calculations, and I find the conditions of life hard enough. It seems to me that I have been dragged, against my will, to the fatal period when old age must be endured; I see it; I have come to it; and I would fain, if I could help it, not go any farther; not advance a step more in the road of infirmities, of pains, of losses of memory, of disfigurements ready to do me outrage; and I hear a voice which says, “You must go on in spite of yourself; or, if you will not go on, you must die;” and this is another extremity from which nature revolts. Such is the lot, however, of all who advance beyond middle life. What is their resource? To think of the will of God and of universal law, and so restore reason to its place, and be patient. Be you, then, patient accordingly, my dear child, and let not your affection soften into such tears as reason must condemn.
She dates a letter, and recalls that the day was the anniversary of an event in her life:
Paris, Friday, Feb. 5, 1672.
This day thousand years I was married.
Here is a passage with power in it. The great war minister of Louis has died. Madame de Sévigné was now sixty-five years old. The letter is to her cousin Coulanges:
I am so astonished at the news of the sudden death of M. de Louvois, that I am at a loss how to speak of it. Dead, however, he is, this great minister, this potent being, who occupied so great a place; whose personality [le moi], as M. Nicole says, had so wide a sway; who was the center of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage! what designs, what projects! what secrets! what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct! Ah! my God, grant me a little time; I want to give check to the Duke of Savoy—checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall not have a moment, not a single moment. Are events like these to be talked of? Not they. We must reflect upon them in our closets.
A glimpse of Bourdaloue:
Ah, that Bourdaloue! his sermon on the Passion was, they say, the most perfect thing of the kind that can be imagined; it was the same he preached last year, but revised and altered with the assistance of some of his friends, that it might be wholly inimitable. How can one love God if one never hears him properly spoken of? You must really possess a greater portion of grace than others.