Chapter LIX: Letter XLVIII: Tuesday, September 17, 1675

Here is an odd date for you:

Je suis dans un bateau,
Dans le courant de l’eau,
Fort loin de mon château.[123]

I think I might add,

Ah quelle folie![124]

for the water is so very low, and we are so often aground, that I heartily wish for my carriage again, but that is out of reach for some time. The water becomes dull when one is alone. A Count des Chapelles and a Mademoiselle de Sévigné are wanting to enliven the scene. In short, it is mere folly to take a boat at Orléans, or even at Paris; but it is the fashion, as it is at Chartres to buy chaplets. I told you I saw the Abbé d’Effiat at his noble mansion. I wrote to you from Tours; from thence we went to Saumur, where we saw Vineuil, and wept again over M. de Turenne. He seems greatly affected with his loss; you will pity him when I tell you he is in a place where no one ever saw this hero. Vineuil is grown very old, very phthisicky, very driveling, and very devout; but he is still witty. He sends you a thousand and a thousand compliments. It is thirty leagues from Saumur to Nantes; we determined to go there in two days, and to get into Nantes this day. With this view we were upon the water some part of the night, but fortunately we ran aground about two hundred yards from the place where we were to go ashore to sleep, and could not get out of the boat, so we put back and landed at another place, and, following the barking of a dog, we got, about midnight, to a little hut, but the most wretched place you can possibly conceive; there we found two or three old women spinning, and some fresh straw, upon which we all lay down without taking off our clothes. I should have laughed heartily at this scene, had it not been for thinking of our poor abbé, whom I was vexed to have exposed to such a fatiguing journey. At daybreak we re-embarked, but were again so completely stranded, that it was above an hour before we could get afloat again; however, we were resolved to get to Nantes, though against both wind and tide. We were forced to row all the way. When we got there, I received your letters, and as I find the post must pass through Ingrande, I shall leave this little note by the way. I am very well, and only want somebody to chat with. I shall write to you from Nantes, as you may suppose. I am very impatient to hear from you, and about M. de Luxembourg and his army, for my head has been in a sack these nine days. The History of the Crusades is very amusing, particularly to those who have read Tasso, and who see their old friends again in prose and in history, but with respect to the author’s style, I am his very humble servant. The Life of Origen is divine.[125]

[123] I am here in a boat,
On the water afloat,
From my castle far remote.

[124] Ah, what folly is this!

[125] This is the work of Dufosse, of Port Royal. It had just
been published, with the Life of Tertullian, by the same author.