Chapter IX: Part 9

The foundation of the dispute, which called forth at once these virtues and this vain exertion of intellect, still subsists between different sects of Christianity. The Christian religion is founded on the idea of the free will of man, and the belief that he can forsake sin; and that, according as he does forsake or cling to it, he deserves happiness or reprobation in the other world. But to this is added, with some, the belief that sanctification springs from the especial interference of God; that man cannot even seek salvation without a call; that faith and grace is an immediate and gratuitous gift of God to each individual whom the Holy Ghost inspires with a vocation. How far man was born with the innate power of belief and faith, or how far he needed a particular and immediate gift of grace to seek these from God, divided the Christian world into sects at various times, and was the foundation of the dispute between the molinists and jansenists. The first name was derived from Molina, a jesuit, who endeavoured to establish a sort of accord between the Almighty's prescience and man's free will, which gave the latter power to choose, and sufficing grace to choose well. The jesuits were zealous in supporting the doctrine of one of their order. They discussed the points in question with so much acrimony that they laid themselves open to as violent attacks; they were opposed in particular by the dominicans; the dispute was carried on in Rome, before assemblies instituted to decide upon it, but which took care to decide nothing; and the pope ended, by ordering the two parties to live in peace. Meanwhile Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, wrote a book on saint Augustin, which was not published till after his death: this book, which supported the notion of election by God, was taken up by the adversaries of the jesuits (hereafter called jansenists, the name of the bishop being latinised into Jansenius), and they called attention to it. The jesuits selected five propositions, which they said they found in it, on the subject of grace and election; and these were condemned as heretical. Antoine Arnaud rose as their advocate. The jesuits detested him for his father's sake, who had pleaded the cause of the university of Paris against them, and gained it. Arnaud declared that he had read the work of Jansenius, and could not find the five condemned propositions in it, but acknowledged that, if they were there, they deserved condemnation. The Sorbonne exclaimed against this declaration as "rash;" for, as the pope had condemned these propositions as being enounced by Jansenius, of course they were contained in his book.[55] It was considered necessary that Arnaud should reply to this attack; but, though a learned man, an eloquent writer, and a great theologian, his defence was addressed to the studious rather than the public, and it gained no partisans. [Sidenote: 1656. Ætat. 33.] It was far otherwise when Pascal took up his pen, and, under the name of Louis de Montalte, published his first letter _à un Provincial_; it was written in a popular, yet clear and conclusive manner, and in a style at once so elegant, perspicuous, and pure, that a child might read and understand, while a scholar would study the pages as a model for imitation. The success of this letter was prodigious: it did not however change the proceedings of the Sorbonne; it assembled--its sittings were crowded with monks and mendicant friars, ignorant men whose opinions were despicable, but whose votes counted. Arnaud's work was condemned, and he himself expelled the Sorbonne. This sentence roused Pascal to continue his labours. He wrote another letter, which met with equal approbation; but the success only served to irritate Arnaud's enemies; they obtained another censure of the five propositions from the pope, and insisted on all suspected persons signing a formula in which they were renounced. The nuns of Port Royal were called on to put their names, and, on their resistance, they were threatened with the destruction of their house, and dispersion.

At this moment, a singular circumstance occurred, which to this day is, by many, considered a miracle. A sacred relic, one of the thorns of our Saviour's crown of thorns, had been lately brought to Paris. To a protestant the pretence of the existence of such a relic is ridiculous, but the catholic church has always upheld a belief in the miraculous preservation of these instruments of our Saviour's passion and death. The holy thorn was carried to many convents, and among others to Port Royal, and all the inhabitants went in procession, and kissed it. Among them was a niece of Pascal, daughter of madame Périer. She had been long ill of a fistula in an eye: she touched the wound with the relic, and it healed at once.[56] The news of this miracle was spread abroad; it was believed, and all Paris flocked to the convent. A religious house, the scene of an actual miracle, was considered too highly favoured by God to be persecuted; the nuns and the jansenists triumphed; the jesuits were, for the time, silent and abashed. To add to their defeat, Pascal continued to write his Letters to a Provincial, attacking the society with the arms of wit and eloquence. The Jesuitical system of morality, full of mental reservation and ambiguity--its truckling to vice, and contradiction to the simple but sublime principles of the gospel, afforded him a wide field for censure. He wrote not a mere controversial work, interesting to theologians only, but a book addressed to all classes. It gained immediate attention; and its eloquence and beauty have secured its immortality.[57]

The success of this book, the activity of his mind, and his sedulous study of theology, naturally led Pascal to conceive the project of other works. The scope of that which principally engaged his attention was, a refutation of atheists. He meditated continually on this subject, and put down all the thoughts that occurred to his mind. Illness prevented him from giving them subsequently a more connected form, but they exist as his "Pensées," and many of them deserve attention and veneration; while others, founded on exaggerated and false views of human duties, are interesting as displaying the nature of his mind. The acuteness and severity of thought which in early life led him to mathematical discoveries, he now applied to the truths of Christianity; and he followed out all the consequences of the doctrine of the church of Rome with an uncompromising and severe spirit. Want of imagination, perhaps, caused his mistakes; for mistakes he certainly made. He is sublime in his charity, in his love and care for the poor, in his gentleness and humility; but when we learn that he, a suffering, dying man, wore a girdle armed with sharp points as a punishment for transient and involuntary emotions of vanity--when we find him reprehending his sister for caressing her children, and denouncing as sinful the most justifiable, and indeed virtuous departure from ascetic discipline, we feel that the mathematical precision with which he treated subjects of morals is totally at war with the system of the Creator, madame Périer relates, that she was often mortified and hurt by his cold manner, and the apparent distaste with which he repulsed her sisterly attentions. She complained to their sister, the nun; but she understood better his motives, and explained how he considered it a virtue to love without attaching himself, and also deemed it sin to excite attachment; and proved that notwithstanding his apparent coldness his heart was warm, by mentioning the earnestness with which he served her on any occasion when she needed his assistance. His most active feeling was charity to the poor; he never refused alms, and would borrow money on interest for the sake of bestowing them; and when cautioned that he might ruin himself, replied, that he never found that any one who had property ever died so poor but he had something to leave. It was a hard life to which he condemned himself; a careful avoidance of all attachment--a continual mortification of his senses, and the labour and sadness of perpetual association with the suffering; added to this, he aimed at such a state of abstraction as not to receive pleasure from food; and aware of an emotion of satisfied vanity when consulted by the learned men of the day, he, as has been said, wore a girdle armed with sharp points, which he struck into himself, so to recall his wandering thoughts. A sense of duty--love of God,--perhaps something of pride, kept him up long; but he sunk under it at last. He spent five years in a rigid adherence to all his rules and duties; then his fragile body gave way, and he fell into a series of sufferings so great, that, though existence was prolonged for four years, they were years of perpetual pain.

[Sidenote: 1658. Ætat. 35.]

His illness began by violent toothache; he was kept awake night after night: during these painful vigils, his thoughts recurred to the studies of his youth. He revolved in his head problems proposed by the scientific men of the day.

His attention was now chiefly engaged with the solution of various questions in the higher departments of geometry, especially those connected with the properties of cycloids. He succeeded in solving many problems of great difficulty relating to the quadrature and rectification of segments and arcs of cycloids, and the volumes of solids formed by their revolutions round their axes and ordinates. Except so far as they form part of the history of mathematical science, and illustrate the powers of great minds, such as that of the subject of this memoir, these problems have now lost all their interest. The powerful instruments of investigation supplied by the differential and integral calculus, have reduced their solution to the mere elements of transcendental mathematics. At the epoch when they engaged the attention of Pascal, before the invention of the modern methods, they were questions presenting the most formidable difficulties. To Pascal, however, they were mere matters of mental relaxation, resorted to with a view to divert his attention from his acute bodily sufferings. He entertained, himself, no intention of making them public. It was, however, the wish of several of his companions in religious retirement that they should be made public, were it only to afford a proof that the highest mathematical genius is not incompatible with the deepest and most sincere Christian faith. [Sidenote: 1658. Ætat. 35.] Pascal yielded, and, according to a custom which was then usual, however puerile it may now appear, he, in the first instance, proposed the several questions which he solved as subjects for a prize to the scientific world. Many competitors presented themselves; and others, who, though not competing for the prize, offered partial solutions. Among these were several who have since attained great celebrity, such as Wallis, Huygens, Fermat, and sir Christopher Wren.

The prize, however, was not gained, nor the problems solved. In the beginning of the year 1659, Pascal published his complete solutions of the problems of the cycloid, with some other mathematical tracts. These admirable investigations cannot fail to excite in every mind a deep regret, that a morbid state of moral and religious feeling should ever have diverted Pascal from mathematical and physical research.

Meanwhile his debility and sufferings increased; but he did not, on that account, yield, but held fast by his system of self-denial, practising himself in turning his thoughts resolutely to another subject when any agreeable sensation was produced, so that he might be true to his resolve to renounce pleasure, while he bore his pains with inconceivable fortitude and patience; yet they were sufficient to interrupt his studies. As the only duty he was capable of performing, he spent his time in visiting churches where any relics were exposed or some solemnity observed; and for this end he had a spiritual almanack, which informed him of the places where there were particular devotions. "And this he did," says his sister, "with so much devotion and simplicity, that those who saw him were surprised at it; which caused men of great virtue and ability to remark, that the grace of God shows itself in great minds by little things, and in common ones by large." Nor did his sufferings interrupt his works of charity, and the services he rendered to the poor. This last duty grew into the passion of his heart. He counselled his sister to consecrate all her time, and that of her children, to the assistance of those in want; he declared this to be the true vocation of Christians, and that without an adherence to it there was no salvation. Nor did he consider that the rich performed their duty by contributing only to public charities, but that each person was held to bestow particular and unremitted attention to individual cases. "I love poverty," he wrote down, "because Christ loved it. I love property, because it affords the means of aiding the needy. I keep faith with every one, and wish no ill to those who do ill to me. I endeavour to be true, sincere, and faithful to all men. I have a tenderness of heart for those with whom God has most bound me; and, whether I am alone or in the view of men, I have the thought of God as the aim of all my actions, who will judge them, and to whom they are consecrated." Such were the sentiments of Pascal; and no man ever carried them out with equal humility, patience, zeal, and fortitude. His simplicity and singleness of heart were admirable; all who conversed with him were astounded by his childlike innocence and purity; he used no tergiversation, no deceit with himself; all was open, submissive, and humble: if he felt himself guilty of a fault, he was eager to repair it: he attached himself to the very letter and inner spirit of the gospel, and obeyed it with all the powers of his nature. His memory was prodigious, yet he never appeared to recollect any offence done to himself; he declared, indeed, that he practised no virtue in this, since he really forgot injuries; yet he allowed that he had so perfect a memory that he never forgot any thing that he wished to remember.

[Sidenote: 1661. Ætat. 38.]

Meanwhile his peace of mind was disturbed by a fresh persecution of the jansenists, which caused the dispersion of the nuns of Port Royal, and proved fatal to his beloved sister. The jesuits rose from the overthrow, caused by the miracle, with redoubled force, and, if possible, redoubled malice; they got the parliament of Provence to condemn the "Lettres Provinciales" to be burned by the common hangman: they insisted that the nuns of Port Royal should sign the formula, and on their refusal they were taken violently from the abbey, and dispersed in various convents. Jaqueline Pascal was at this time sub-prioress; her piety was extreme, her conscience tender. She could not persuade herself of the propriety of signing the formula; but the anticipation of the misery that the unfortunate nuns would endure through their refusal broke her heart: she fell ill, and died, as she called herself, "the first victim of the formula," at the age of thirty-six. Before her profession as a nun, she had displayed great talents; and had even gained the prize for poetry at Rouen, when only fourteen: her sensibility was great; her piety extreme. Pascal loved her more than any other creature in the world; but he betrayed no grief when he heard of her death. "God grant us grace to die like her," he exclaimed; and reproved his sister for the affliction she displayed. It was this question of the signature of the formula that caused his temporary dissension with the recluses of Port Royal. They wished the nuns to temporise, and to sign the formula, with a reservation; but Pascal saw that the jesuits would not submit to be thus balked, and that they were bent on the destruction of their enemies. Instead therefore of approving the moderation of the jansenists, he said, "You wish to save Port Royal--you may betray the truth, but you cannot save it." He himself became more jansenist than the jansenists themselves; instead of arguing, as M. Arnaud had done, that the five propositions were not to be found in Jansenius's work, he declared that they were in accordance with St. Paul and the fathers; and inferred that the popes were deceived when they condemned them. He accused the recluses of Port Royal of weakness: they defended themselves; and, the dispute becoming known, it was reported that Pascal was converted; for no one could believe, as was the fact, that he was more tenacious of their doctrines than they were themselves. His confessor aided, at first, this mistake, by misconceiving the tendency of some of his expressions on his death bed; and it was not till three years after Pascal's death that the truth became known.

At the time we now mention, the period of his sister's death, his own end was near: decrepid and feeble, his life had become one course of pain, and each day increased his physical sufferings. He became at last so ill as to need the constant attentions of madame Périer. He had given shelter in his house to a poor family, and at this juncture one of the sons had fallen ill of the small-pox. Fearful that, if his sister visited him, she might carry this illness to her children, he consented to remove to her house. But her cares availed nothing; he was attacked by colics, which continued till his death, but which the physicians did not believe to be attended with danger. He bore his sufferings with patience; and, true to his principles, received no attendance with which he could at all dispense; and, unsoftened by pain, he continued to admit the sedulous attentions of his sister with such apparent repulsion and indifference, that she often feared that they were displeasing to him. Strange that he should see virtue in checking both his own and her sympathy--that diviner portion of our nature which takes us out of ourselves, and turns our most painful and arduous duties into pleasures.[58] In the same spirit, when his sister lamented his sufferings, he observed, that, on the contrary, he rejoiced in them: he bade her not pity him, for that sickness was the natural state of a Christian; as thus they are, as they always ought to be, suffering sorrow, and the privation of all the blessings of life--exempt from passion, from ambition, and avarice--ever in expectation of death. "Is it not thus," he said, "that a Christian should pass his life?--and is it not a happiness to find one's self in the state in which one ought to place one's self, so that all one need do is to submit humbly and serenely?" Self-denial thus became a passion with this wonderful man; and no doubt he derived pleasure from the excess to which he carried it.

There was one other passion in which he indulged, that was far more laudable. We compassionate his mistake when he looks on the uselessness and helplessness of sickness as a good, but we admire him when we contemplate his sublime charity. In his last hours he lamented that he had not done more for the poor; more wholly devoted time and means to their relief. He made his will, in which he bestowed all that he could, with any justice, leave away from his family; and as he was forced, through the excess of his sufferings, to accept more of comfort and attention than he thought consonant with virtue, he desired either to be removed to an hospital, where he might die among the poor, or that a sick mendicant should be brought to his house, and receive the same attention as himself. He was with difficulty diverted from these designs, and only gave in submission to the dictates of his confessor.

He felt himself dying--his pains a little decreased, when a weakness and giddiness of the head succeeded, precursors of death: his physicians did not perceive his imminent danger, and his last days were troubled by their opposition to his wish to take the sacrament. His sister, however, perceived that his illness was greater than was supposed, and prepared for the last hour, which came more suddenly even than she expected. [Sidenote: 1662. Ætat. 39.] He was one night seized with convulsions, which intermitted only while he roused himself to communicate, and, then recurring, they ended only with his life. He died on the 19th August, 1662, at the age of thirty-nine.

We contemplate the career of this extraordinary man with sentiments of mingled pity and admiration. He certainly wanted a lively imagination, or he would not have seen the necessity of so much mortification and suffering in following the dictates of the gospel. His charity, his fortitude, his resignation, demand our reverence; but the view he took of human duties was distorted and exaggerated: friendship he regarded as unlawful--love as the wages of damnation--marriage as a sin disguised; he saw impurity in maternal caresses, and impiety in every sensation of pleasure which God has scattered as flowers over our thorny path.

A modern writer[59] has said, that he pities any one who pronounces on the structure and complexion of a great mind, from the comparatively narrow and scanty materials which can, by possibility, have been placed before him; and observes, that modest understandings will rest convinced there remains a world of deeper mysteries, to which the dignity of genius refuses to give utterance. And thus, in all humility, we despair of penetrating the recesses of Pascal's mind, while solving mathematical problems that baffled all Europe; writing works replete with wit and wisdom, close reasoning and sublime eloquence; and the while believing that he pleased the Creator by renouncing all the blessings of life; by spending his time in the adoration of relics, and shortening his life by self-inflicted privation and torture. His works, replete with energy and eloquence as they are, present many of the same difficulties. We have already spoken at large of his "Lettres Provinciales." His "Pensées," or Thoughts, which he wrote on loose scraps of paper, meaning hereafter to collect them in the form of a work, for the conversion of atheists, contain much that is admirable and true, though we may be allowed to object to some of his reflections. He has been praised for the mode in which he enounces the idea, that an atheist plays a losing game[60]; he had far better believe, since thus he gains the chance of eternal happiness, while by disbelief he insures eternal damnation. This thought, however, is founded on misapprehension, and a want of knowledge of the human mind. Belief is not a voluntary act--it is the result of conviction; and we have it not in our choice to be convinced. Besides, love of truth is a passion of the human soul; and there are men who, perceiving truth in disbelief, cling to it as tenaciously as a religionist to his creed. The method of convincing infidels by commenting on the beauty of the morality of the gospel, and its necessity for the happiness of man, is far more conclusive. On the excellence of Christianity, and the benefits mankind has derived from its propagation, is founded the noblest argument for its truth; and he has urged these eloquently and forcibly in other portions of his work. Pascal, indeed, must always rank among the worthiest upholders of the Christian faith; one who taught its lessons in their purity, and only erred by being good overmuch. The same precision and clearness of mind that made him a good mathematician led him to excellence in the practice of Christian virtues; but it also led an adherence to the letter rather than the spirit, and to the taking up its asceticism in preference to the holier duties which are an integral part of the plan of the creation, and form the most important portion of human life.

[Footnote 53: La Vie de M. Pascal, écrite par Madame Périer, sa sœur.]

[Footnote 54: Life of Galileo, by Drinkwater, p. 90, 91.]

[Footnote 55: Innocent X., in condemning propositions, did not cite the passages in which they were to be found; and, in fact, they are not quoted with verbal correctness. Voltaire asserts that they are to be found there in spirit; and he cites passages which establish his assertion. _Siècle de Louis_ XIV., chap. XXXVII.]

[Footnote 56: Madame Périer, in the life she has written of her brother, mentions the miraculous cure of her daughter: "This fistula," she says, "was of so bad a sort, that the cleverest surgeons of Paris considered it incurable. Nevertheless she was cured in a moment by the touch of the holy thorn; and this miracle was so authentic, that it is acknowledged by every body." Racine, in his fragment of a History of the Abbey of Port Royal, details the whole circumstance with elaborate faith in the most miraculous version of it. He says, that such was the simplicity of the nuns, that though the cure took place on the instant, they did not mention the miracle for several days, and some time elapsed before it was spread abroad. Voltaire says, that persons who had known mademoiselle Périer told him that her cure was very long. Still some circumstance must have made it appear short, or so universal a belief in a miracle, sufficient at the time to confound the jesuits, could not have been spread abroad; nor would her uncle, Pascal, the most upright and single-minded of men, have given it the support of his testimony.]

[Footnote 57: Boileau's admiration for Pascal was unbounded. He declared the "Lettres Provinciales" to be the best work in the French language. Madame de Sévigné, in her letters, narrates a whimsical scene that took place between him and some jesuits. Their conversation turning on literary subjects, Boileau declared that there was only one modern book to be compared to the works of the ancients. Bourdaloue begged him to name it. Boileau evaded the request. "You have read it more than once, I am sure," he said, "but do not ask me its name." The jesuit insisted; and Boileau, at last, taking him by the arm, exclaimed, "You are determined to have it, father; well, it is Pascal." "Morbleu! Pascal!" cried Bourdaloue, astonished. "Yes, certainly Pascal is as well written as any thing false can be." "False!" exclaimed Boileau, "False! Know that he is as true as he is inimitable." On another occasion, a jesuit, father Boubours, consulted Boileau as to what books he ought to consult as models for style. "There is but one," said Boileau, "read the 'Lettres Provinciales,' and believe me that will suffice." Voltaire pronounces the same opinion: he calls Pascal the greatest satirist of France; and says that Molière's best comedies have not the wit of the first of these Letters, nor had Bossuet written any thing so sublime as the latter ones.]

[Footnote 58: He thus expresses his sentiments on individual attachments: "It is unjust to attach one's self, even though one should do it voluntarily and with pleasure: I should deceive those in whom I call forth affection--for I cannot be the end of any one, and possess not that by which they can be satisfied. As I should be culpable if I caused a falsehood to be believed, although I should persuade gently and was believed with pleasure, arid hence derive pleasure myself--so am I culpable if I caused myself to be loved, and attracted persons to attach themselves to me. I ought to undeceive those who are ready to give faith to a falsehood in which they ought not to believe, and in the same way teach them that they should not attach themselves to me; for their lives ought to be spent in pleasing God, and seeking him." As if the beneficent Creator would not be pleased in seeing his creatures linked by the bonds of those very affections which he himself has made the law of our lives. One wonders where and how Pascal lived, that he did not discover that the worst crimes and vices of mankind arose from want of attachment: and that hardness of heart, pride, and selfishness, would, in the common run of men, be the consequences of an adherence to his creed.]

[Footnote 59: Lockhart, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. VII.]

[Footnote 60: The following is Pascal's address to Atheists:--

"I will not certainly make use, to convince you, of the faith by which we ascertain the existence of God, nor of all the other proofs which we possess, since you will not receive them. I will act by your own principles, and I undertake to show you, by the manner in which you daily reason on matters of less consequence, the way in which you ought to reason on this, and the part you ought to take in deciding the important question of the existence of God. You say we are incapable of knowing whether there be a God. Yet either God is, or God is not--there is no medium: towards which side, then, shall we lean? Reason, you say, cannot decide. An infinite gulph separates us. Stake, toss up at this distance; heads or tails--on which will you bet? Your reason does not affirm, nor can your reason deny one or the other.

"Do not blame the falsehood of those who have chosen--you cannot tell whether they are mistaken: No, you say I do not blame the choice they have made, but that they choose at all; he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are both in the wrong--the right thing is not to make the wager.

"Yes; but the wager must be made. You have no choice--you are embarked; and not to bet that God does exist, is the same as betting that he does not. Which side will you be on? Weigh the gain and loss of taking that, that there is a God. If you win, you win all: if you lose, you lose nothing. Bet then that he doe's, without hesitation. Yes, you must wager. But perhaps I wager too much. Let us see. Since there is equal risk of gain or loss, even if it were only that you gain two lives for one, it were worth betting; and if you had ten to win, you would be imprudent not to risk your life to gain ten, at a game in which there is so much to be lost or won. But here there is an infinite number of lives to gain, with equal risk of losing or winning, and what you stake is so little and of so short duration that it is folly to fear hazarding it on this occasion."

Pascal reasons better in the following article:--

"We must not deceive ourselves, we are as much body as soul, and thus it is that persuasion does not use demonstration only as its instrument. How few things are proved? Proofs only convince the understanding. Habit renders our proofs strong; that persuades the senses, and gains the understanding without an exertion of its own. Who has demonstrated that there will be a to-morrow, or that we shall die? and yet what is more universally believed. Habit, then, persuades us. Habit makes so many Turks and Pagans: it makes trades, soldiers, &c. We ought not, indeed, to begin finding the truth through habit--but we ought to have recourse to it, when once the understanding has discerned the truth, so to imbibe it, and imbue ourselves with a belief which perpetually escapes from us--for to be for ever calling the proofs to mind would be too burdensome. We must acquire an easy belief--which is that of habit; which, without violence, art, or argument, causes us to believe, and inclines all our faculties to faith, so that our soul naturally falls into it. It is not sufficient to believe by force of conviction, if our senses incline us to believe the contrary. We must cause both parts to agree: the understanding through the reason that it has once acknowledged: and the senses, through habit, by not allowing them to incline the other way.

"Those to whom God has given religion as a feeling of the heart are happy and entirely convinced. We can only desire it for those, who have not this by reason, until God impresses it on the heart."]

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ

1626-1696

It appears ridiculous to include a woman's name in the list of "Literary and Scientific Men." This blunder must be excused; we could not omit a name so highly honourable to her country as that of madame de Sévigné, in a series of biography whose intent is to give an account of the persons whose genius has adorned the world.

The subject of this memoir herself would have been very much surprised to find her name included in the list of French writers. She had no pretensions to authorship; and the delightful letters which have immortalised her wit, her sense, and the warm affections of her heart, were written without the slightest idea intruding that they would ever be read, except by her to whom they were addressed.

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was born on the 5th February, 1626. The family of Rabutin was a distinguished one of Burgundy, and Chantal was its elder branch. Her paternal grandmother, Jeanne-Françoise Fremiot, now canonized, was a foundress of a religious institution, called the Sisters of Visitation; which was the cause of a sort of hereditary alliance between her grand-daughter and the sisters of St. Mary, whose houses she was in the habit of visiting in Paris, and during her various journeys. Mademoiselle de Rabutin lost her father in her early infancy. When she was only a year and a half old, the English made a descent upon the isle of Rhé, for the purpose of succouring Rochelle. M. de Chantal put himself at the head of a troop of gentlemen volunteers, and went out to oppose them. The artillery of the enemy's fleet was turned upon them. and M. de Chantal, together with the greater part of his followers, were left dead on the field. It has been 1597. said that he fell by the hand of Cromwell himself. [Sidenote: 1697. July 22.] The baron de Chantal was a French noble of the old feudal times; when a cavalier regarded his arms and military services as his greatest glory, and as the origin of his rank and privileges. His daughter has preserved a curious specimen of his independence in his mode of treating great men, and of the impressive concision of his letter writing. When Schomberg was made marshal of France, he wrote to him--

"Monseigneur,
"Rank--black beard--intimacy.

"Chantal."

By which few words he conveys his opinion that Schomberg owed his advancement, not to his valour nor military exploits, but to his rank, his having a black beard, like Louis XIII., and his intimacy with that monarch. The mother of mademoiselle de Rabutin was Marie de Coulanges, who was of the class of nobility distinguished in France as of the robe; that is, as being ennobled through their having filled high civil situations of chancellor, judge, &c. She died in 1636, when her daughter was only ten years of age, and the orphan fell under the care of her maternal grandfather, M. de Coulanges (her grandmother, the saint, being too much occupied by her religious duties to attend to her grandchild's welfare and education): he, also, dying the same year, her guardianship devolved on her uncle, Christophe de Coulanges, abbé de Livry. Henceforth he was a father to her.

We know nothing, except by conjecture, of Marie de Rabutin's education and early years. She says that she was educated with her cousin Coulanges, who was several years younger than herself. He is known to us as a gay, witty, convivial man, whose reputation arose from his talent for composing songs and madrigals on the events of the day, written with that airiness and point peculiar to French productions of this sort. He was quick and clever, and the young lady must have enjoyed in him a merry, agreeable companion. She tells us, also, that she was brought up at court; a court ruled over by cardinal de Richelieu, who, though a tyrant, studied and loved letters, was desirous of advancing civilization, and took pleasure in the society of persons of talent, even if they were women. She was always fond of reading. The endless romances of Scuderi were her earliest occupation; but she aspired to knowledge from more serious studies. Under the care of Ménage and Chapelle, who both admired her, she learnt Latin and Italian. She must always have possessed the delicacy and finesse of understanding that distinguish her letters: vivacity that was almost wit; common sense, that regulated and harmonized all, and never left her. She was not, perhaps, what is called beautiful, even on her first entrance into the world, but she was exceedingly pretty; a quantity of light hair, a fair blooming complexion, eyes full of fire, and a person elegant, light, and airy, rendered her very attractive. [Sidenote: 1644. Ætat. 18.] She married, at the age of eighteen, Henry, marquis de Sévigné, of an ancient family in Britany.

The Bretons even now scarcely consider themselves French. They are a race remarkable for dauntless courage and inviolable fidelity; for rectitude and independence of feeling, joined to a romantic loyalty, which, in latter years, has caused them to have a distinguished place in the internal history of France. M. de Sévigné was not quite a man fitted to secure the felicity of a young girl, full of ability, warmth of heart, and excellent sense. He was fond of pleasure, extravagant in his expenses, heedless, and gay. In the first instance, however, the marriage was a happy one. The _bon temps de la régence_ were, probably, the _bon temps_ of madame de Sévigné's life. [Sidenote: 1647. Ætat. 21.] She bore two children, a son and a daughter. Her letters at this period are full of gaiety: there is no trace of any misfortune, nor any sorrow.

M. de Sévigné was related to the celebrated cardinal de Retz, in those days coadjutor to the archbishop of Paris. When France became distracted by civil broils, this connection caused him to adhere to the party of the Fronde. His wife partook in his politics, and was a zealous Frondeuse. We have traces in all her after life of the intimacies formed during the vicissitudes of these troubles. She continued warmly attached to the ambitious turbulent coadjutor, whose last years were spent so differently from his early ones, and on whom she lavishes many encomiums: she was intimate with mademoiselle de Montpensier, daughter of Gaston, duke of Orleans; but her chief friend was the duchess de Chatillon, whom she called her sister. [Sidenote: 1649. Ætat. 23.] Several letters that passed between her and her cousin Bussy-Rabutin, during the blockade of Paris by the prince de Condé, are preserved. He sided with the court, and wrote to ask his cousin to interfere to obtain for him his carriage and horses, left behind in Paris when the court escaped to St. Germain:--"Pray exert yourself," he writes: "it is as much your affair as mine; as we shall judge, by your success in this enterprise, in what consideration you are held by your party; that is to say, we shall have a good opinion of your generals, if they pay the attention they ought to your recommendation." She failed; and Bussy-Rabutin writes, "So much the worse for those who refused you, my fair cousin. I do not know if it will profit them anything, but I am sure it does them no honour."

We have mentioned, in the memoir of the duke de la Rochefoucauld, the depraved state of French society during the wars of the Fronde. Madame de Sévigné kept herself far aloof from even the suspicion of misconduct, but her husband imbibed the contagion. The name of his mistress, Ninon de l'Enclos, gave a celebrity 1650. to his infidelity infinitely painful to his wife. [Sidenote: 1650. Ætat. 24.] Madame de Sévigné felt her misfortune, but bore it with dignity and patience. Not long after she had cause to congratulate herself on her forbearance, when her husband was killed in a duel by the chevalier d'Albret. The occasion of the combat is not known, but such were too frequent in the days of the Fronde. The inconstancy of her husband did not diminish the widow's grief: she had lived six happy years of a brilliant youth with him; his gay, social disposition was exactly such as to win affection; and, when he was lost to her for ever, she probably looked on her jealousy in another light, and felt how trivial such is when compared with the irreparable stroke of death. Her sorrow was profound. Her uncle, the abbé de Coulanges, was her best friend and consoler. He drew her attention to her duties, and assisted her in the arduous task of managing her affairs, embarrassed by her husband's extravagance. She had two young children, and their education was her chief and dearest care, and she was thus speedily recalled to active life.

Her widowhood was exemplary. Left at four-and-twenty without her husband's protection, in the midst of a society loosened from all moral restrictions, in which the highest were the most libertine, no evil breath ever tainted her fair fame. Her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin[61], who has distilled, from a venomous pen, poison over the reputation of almost every Frenchwoman of that period, says not a word against her, except that she encouraged sometimes the friendship of those who loved her. No blame can arise from this. It was necessary for the advancement of her children that she should secure the support and friendship of people in power. She lived in a court surrounded by a throng of society: she felt safe, since she could rely on herself; and prudery would only have made her enemies, without any good accruing. The only friend she had who did not deserve the distinction was Bussy-Rabutin; but he being a near relation, and she the head of their house, she showed her kindness and her prudence by continuing to admit him to the honour of her intimacy. In his letters he alludes to the admiration that Fouquet felt for her; and we find that her friendship for him continued unalterable to the last. Bussy rallies her, also, on the admiration of the prince de Conti: "Take care of yourself, my fair cousin," he writes: "a disinterested lady may, nevertheless, be ambitious; and she who refused the financier of the king may not always resist his majesty's cousin. You are a little ingrate, and will have to pay one day or another. You pursue virtue as if it were a reality, and you despise wealth as if you could never feel the want of it: we shall see you some day regret all this." Again he writes, "One must regulate oneself by you; one is too happy in being allowed to be your friend. There is hardly a woman in the kingdom, except yourself, who can induce your lovers to be satisfied with friendship: we scarcely see any who, rejecting love, are not in a state of enmity. I am certain that it requires a woman of extraordinary merit to turn a lover into a friend." And again, "I do not know any one so generally esteemed as yourself: you are the delight of the human race; antiquity would have raised altars to you; and you would assuredly have been the goddess of something. In our own times, not being so prodigal of incense, we content ourselves with saying that there does not exist a woman of your age more virtuous and more charming. I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, nobles of high rank, great captains, ministers of state, magistrates, and philosophers, all ready to be in love with you. What can you desire more?" This language deserves quoting only as evidence of the sort of ordeal Madame de Sévigné passed through. While receiving all this flattery, she was never turned aside from her course. To educate her children, take care of their property, secure such a place in society as would be advantageous to them, and to render her uncle's life happy, were the objects of her life. She was very fortunate in her uncle, whose kindness and care were the supports of her life. Her obligations to him are apparent from the letter she wrote many years after, on his death:--"I am plunged in sorrow: ten days ago I saw my dear uncle die, and you know what he was to his dear niece. He has conferred on me every benefit in the world, either by giving me property of his own, or preserving and augmenting that of my children. He drew me from the abyss into which M. de Sévigné's death plunged me: he gained lawsuits; he put my affairs into good order; he paid our debts; he has made the estate on which my son lives the prettiest and most agreeable in the world." She was fortunate, also, in her children, whom she passionately loved. But it must be remembered that children do not entirely occupy a parent's time. She afterwards regretted that her daughter had been brought up in a convent; but, in sending her there, she acted in accordance with the manners of the times.[62] While her children were away, and when she came up to Paris from her country house, she diversified her life by innocent pleasures. She enjoyed good society, and adorned it. She was one of the favourites of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where met a knot of people, who, however they might err in affectation and over refinement, were celebrated for talent and virtue. She was a friend of Julie d'Angennes, afterwards madame de Montauzier; and the _Alcovistes_ of the set were her principal friends. Ménage mentions her with admiration, and was accustomed to relate several anecdotes concerning her. He went to visit her in Britany, a great undertaking for a Parisian. The chevalier de Méré, one of the most affected and exaggerated of the _Précieuses_, and also the count de Lude, whom Ménage mentions as one of the four distinguished sayers of _bon mots_ of the time, were chief among her friends and admirers.

Her cousin Bussy-Rabutin quarrelled with her. The occasion is not known; but it is suspected that she refused to exert herself to re-establish him in the favour of Fouquet, who was displeased with him. The infamy of his proceeding is almost unexampled. He included mention of her in the portion of his scandalous publication of the "Amours des Gaules" published 1659. In this he does not accuse her of misconduct, but he represents her economy as avarice, her friendship as coquetry; and added to this the outrage of raking up and publishing the misfortunes of her married life, which, though they redounded to her credit, must have deeply hurt a woman of feeling and delicacy. She never forgave her cousin; and, though afterwards reconciled to him, it is evident that she never regarded him with esteem. In addition to this annoyance, her career was not entirely sunny. Her warm heart felt bitterly the misfortunes that befel her friends. Her first sorrow of this kind was the imprisonment, banishment, and adversity of cardinal de Retz. He deserved his downfall,--but not in her eyes. She only saw his talents and amiable qualities; and viewed in him a powerful friend, now overthrown. His imprisonment embittered two years of her life. Her husband's uncle, the chevalier de Sévigné, took an active part in his escape from the citadel of Nantes; but this did not restore him to his friends. He was obliged to take refuge in Spain; and did not return to France for many years, when he came back an altered man.

Her next misfortune was the fall and banishment of Fouquet. It speaks highly for madame de Sévigné's good sense and superior qualities that, while refusing a man who, in other instances, showed himself presuming from success with other women, she should secure him as a friend. The secret lay in her own feelings of friendship, which being sincere, and yet strictly limited, she acquired his esteem as well as affection. Fouquet was a munificent and generous man, of a superior understanding and unbounded ambition. He dissipated the finances of the state as he spent his own; but he could bestow as well as take, as he proved when, on getting his place of procureur-general to the parliament, he sent in the price (14,000 francs) to the public treasury. The entertainment he gave Louis XIV. at Vaux, which cost 18,000,000 of francs, was the seal of his ruin, already suggested to the king by Colbert. He had made the monarch, already all powerful, fear his victim. Louis fancied that Fouquet had fortified Belle Isle, and that he had a strong party within and without the kingdom. This was a mere mistake, inspired by the superintendent's enemies, to ensure his fall. Madame de Sévigné, Pelisson, Gourville, and mademoiselle Scuderi were his chief friends: joined to these was Pelisson, his confidential clerk. He shared the fall of his master, and was imprisoned in the Bastille; but, undeterred by fear from this, defended him with great eloquence. The simple-minded, true-hearted La Fontaine was another of his firm friends in adversity. The suit against him was carried on for three years. He was pursued with the utmost acrimony and violence by Colbert, Le Tellier, secretary of state, and his rival in credit, and Séguier, the chancellor. During his trial, madame de Sévigné wrote daily to M. de Pomponne, afterwards minister, relating its progress. These letters are very interesting, both from the anecdotes they contain, and the warmth of feeling the writer displays. Fouquet was treated with the utmost harshness by the chancellor Séguier, whom he answered with spirit, preserving through all a presence of mind, a composure, a dignity, and resolution, which is the more admirable, since, in those days, there was no humiliation of language to which the subjects of Louis XIV. did not descend, and think becoming, as addressed to the absolute arbiter of their destiny.

The sort of interest and terror excited about him is manifest, by the fact, that madame de Sévigné masked herself when she went to see him return from the court, where he was tried, to the Bastille, his prison.[63] His trial lasted for more than a month. The proceedings against him were carried on with the utmost irregularity; and this and other circumstances--the length of time that had elapsed, which turned the excitement against him into compassion; the earnestness of the solicitations in his favour, together with the virulence with which he was persecuted,--all these things saved his life. Madame de Sévigné announces this news with delight:--"Praise God, and thank him! Our poor friend is saved! Thirteen sided with M. d'Ormesson (_who voted for banishment_), nine with Sainte Helene, (_whose voice was for death_). I am beside myself with joy. How delightful and consolatory must this news be to you; and what inconceivable pleasure do those moments impart which deliver the heart and the thoughts from such terrible anxiety. It will belong before I recover from the joy I felt yesterday: it is really too complete; I could scarcely bear it. The poor man learnt the news by air (_by means of signals_) a few moments after; and I have no doubt he felt it in all its extent." The king, however, abated this joy. He had been taught to believe that Fouquet was dangerous: fancying this, he of course felt, that, as an exile, he would enjoy every facility for carrying on his schemes. He changed the sentence of banishment into perpetual imprisonment in Pignerol. Fouquet was separated from his wife and family, and from his most faithful servants. At first his friends hoped that his hard fate would be softened. "We hope," writes madame de Sévigné, "for some mitigation: hope has used me too well for me to abandon it. We must follow the example of the poor prisoner: he is gay and tranquil; let us be the same." The king, however, continued inexorable. He remained long in prison: a doubt hangs over the conclusion of his life; and it is not known whether he remained a prisoner to the end. He died in 1680.[64]

When Fouquet's papers were seized, there were among them a multitude of letters which compromised the reputations of several women of quality. Madame de Sévigné had been in the habit of corresponding with him. The secretary of state, Tellier, declared that her letters were _les plus honnêtes du monde_; but they were written unguardedly, in all the thoughtlessness of youth. She apprehended some annoyance from their having fallen into the hands of the enemy, and thought it right to retire into the country. Bussy-Rabutin put himself forward at this moment to support her: a reconciliation ensued between them,--not very cordial, but which, for some time, continued uninterrupted.