allowing Madame, as before, to say all that she had to say and to commit herself to a certain extent, she suddenly quoted to her certain secret words particularly offensive to herself, which she had known and kept on her heart for ten years,—words that were said by Madame to a princess, then dead, who had repeated them, word for word, to Mme. de Maintenon. At the fall of this second thunderbolt Madame was turned into a statue, and there was silence for some moments. Then followed tears, cries, pardon, promises, and a reconciliation, which, being founded on the cold triumph of Mme. de Maintenon and the inward humiliation of Madame, could not of course last long.

It was soon after this scene and during the very short time that the renewed friendship lasted that Madame wrote to Mme. de Maintenon the following letter:—

Wednesday, June 15, 11 in the morning.

If I had not had fever and great agitation, Madame, from the sad employment of yesterday, in opening the caskets containing Monsieur’s papers, scented with the most violent perfumes, you would have heard from me earlier; but I can no longer delay expressing to you how touched I am by the favours that the king did yesterday to my son, and the manner in which he has treated both him and myself; and as all this is the result of your good counsels, Madame, be pleased to allow me to express my sense of it, and to assure you that I shall keep, very inviolably, the promise of friendship which I made to you; I beg you to continue to me your counsels and advice, and not to doubt a gratitude that can end only with my life.

Élisabeth Charlotte.

Proud as Madame was, there was nothing for her, after such a step and such a reconciliation so painful to the core, but to become henceforth the intimate and cordial friend of Mme. de Maintenon, or her implacable enemy. The latter sentiment prevailed. In spite of efforts which may have been for a time sincere, the conditions and the repugnances were too strong; antipathies rose up once more and carried all before them.

Madame deserves consideration by more than one claim, and especially because, having written much, her testimony stands and is invoked in many cases. When the present edition of letters and fragments of letters by M. Brunet is exhausted, why should he not undertake to form a complete collection, leaving nothing out that could enrich and enlighten it on the German side, and adding only such notes and French erudition as may be strictly necessary? We should then have, not exactly an historical document added to so many others, but a great chronicle of manners and morals, a fiery social gossip, by one whom we may call the Gui Patin or the Tallemant des Reaux of the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. We should thus gain a vivid, witty, and ruthless book, which would make a pendant to Saint-Simon on more than one ground.

Madame and Saint-Simon have this in common—they were two honest souls at Court, honest souls whom indignation easily roused; often passionate, prejudiced, and at such times ferocious and pitiless for the adversary. Saint-Simon—need it be said?—has over Madame all the superiority of a genius expressly made to sound and fathom hearts, and to bring back living descriptions, which he gives us in strokes of flame. Madame, often credulous, looking elsewhere, mixing things up and little critical in her judgments, nevertheless sees well what she does see, and renders it forcibly, with a violence which, though little conformed to French taste, is none the less imprinted on the memory. They knew each other and esteemed each other. They had, without suspecting it, the same idiosyncrasies, which they observed, reciprocally, in each other; one was astride of her rank as princess and ever on the qui-vive lest it should not be sufficiently respected; the other, as we know, was intractable and even fanatical on the chapter of dukes and peers.

Saint-Simon has spoken of Madame with truth and justice, as of a manly nature somewhat in keeping with his own. All that we read in Madame’s letters, in which she declares herself to every eye, is only a sort of demonstration and commentary of Saint-Simon’s judgment upon her.

Madame was naturally just, humane, compassionate. She was very anxious about her debts and her creditors, which the great of the earth are not apt to be, and it was noticed that she was never easy unless she had secured their payment,—“forestalling demands, sometimes wishes, and always impatience or complaints.” The letters she writes during the terrible winter of 1709 breathe pity for the poor, who “are dying of cold like flies.” No princess ever had more consideration for those who surrounded her and served her; “she preferred sometimes to deprive herself of necessary attentions, rather than require them when inconvenient to others.” She was what is called a good mistress, and the nearer her people came to her, the more they regretted her. “Saint-Cloud,” she wrote in the autumn of 1717, “is only a house for summer; many of my people have to lodge in rooms without fireplaces; they cannot pass the winter here, or I should be the cause of their deaths, and I am not hard enough for that; the sufferings of others make me pitiful.”

Once only was she pitiless; but she was wounded then in her tenderest spot. Mme. de Maintenon had imported from Strasburg (expressly to annoy me, thought Madame) two girls of equivocal birth who called themselves Comtesses Palatine and whom she placed in the suite of her nieces. The first dauphine (Monseigneur’s wife, a Princess of Bavaria) spoke of this to Madame, weeping, but not daring to resent an affront which was aimed at both. “Let me settle that,” replied Madame. “I’ll manage it; for when I am right nothing frightens me.” The next day she arranged an accidental meeting in the park with one of the two self-styled Comtesses Palatine, and treated her in such a manner (the astounding terms have been preserved) that the poor girl was taken ill, and finally died of it. Louis XIV. contented himself with saying to Madame, “It is not safe to meddle with you in the matter of your family—life depends upon it.” To which Madame replied, “I don’t like impostors.” And she never felt the slightest regret for what she had done. The trait is characteristic in a nature that was otherwise essentially kind. All vehement passion easily becomes cruel when face to face with an object that irritates and braves it. In this case the execution performed by Madame appeared to her under the form of a rigorous duty of honour.

The life that Madame led at the Court of France varied, necessarily, during the fifty and one years that she spent there; she could not live at the age of sixty as she had done at twenty. But at all times, before and after the death of Monsieur, she had managed to make for herself a retreat and a sort of solitude. The exaggerated and incongruous sides of Madame’s nature being now sufficiently visible and well known, I desire to neglect nothing that will show the firm and elevated parts of her soul. From Saint-Cloud June 17, 1698, she writes thus:—

“I do not need much consolation in the matter of death; I do not desire death, neither do I dread it. There is no need of the Catechism of Heidelberg to teach us not to be attached to this world; above all in this country where all things are so full of falseness, envy, and malignity, where the most unheard-of vices are displayed without reserve. But to desire death is a thing entirely against nature. In the midst of this great Court I live retired, as if in solitude; there are very few persons with