Chapter CLI: Letter IX: THE ROCKS, November 6, 1675

Count, I am delighted to hear that my daughter is satisfied with you. Allow me to thank you by reason of the great interest I take in your affairs, and which I entreat you to preserve. You can not fail of this without ingratitude, and without doing injustice to the blood of the Adhémars. I have read, in the Crusades, of one of these who was an illustrious personage six hundred years ago. He was beloved as you are, and would never have given a moment’s uneasiness to such a wife as yours. His death was lamented by an army of three hundred thousand men, and mourned by all the princes in Christendom. Not many pages after I find a castellane, not altogether so ancient; he is, indeed, a mere modern; it was but five hundred and twenty years since he made a great figure. I conjure you, therefore, by these two noble ancestors, who are my particular friends, to be guided by Madame de Grignan, and consider how much you will consult your own interest in doing so.

LETTERS TO THE PRESIDENT DE MOULCEAU.[301]

FROM 1681 TO 1682.

[301] M. de Moulceau was President of the Chamber of Accounts
of Montpellier. It appears that Madame de Sévigné, at the time
of her journey into Provence, had found him on terms of strict
friendship with M. and Madame de Grignan, and M. de Vardes and
Corbinelli, and that she was so sensible of his worth and the
charms of his mind as to enter into a correspondence with him.
But we remark with astonishment that no mention is made of this
interesting man in any of the preceding letters.