The Women of the French Salons [51]
of her bed as a useless extravagance, giving the characteristic reason that "the pleasure they afforded was not worth the ridicule they excited." The old friendship that had existed when Mme. Scarron was living in such elegant and mysterious seclusion, devoting herself to the king's children, and finding her main diversion in the little suppers enlivened by the wit of Mme. de Sevigne and Mme. de Coulanges, and the more serious, but not less agreeable, conversation of Mme. de La Fayette, had evidently grown cool. They had their trifling disagreements. "Mme. de La Fayette puts too high a price upon her friendship," wrote Mme. de Maintenon, who had once attached such value to a few approving words from her. In her turn Mme. de La Fayette indulged in a little light satire. Referring to the comedy of Esther, which Racine had written by command for the pupils at Saint Cyr, she said, "It represents the fall of Mme. de Montespan and the rise of Mme. de Maintenon; all the difference is that Esther was rather younger, and less of a precieuse in the matter of piety." There was certainly less of the ascetic in Mme. de La Fayette. She had more color and also more sincerity. In symmetry of character, in a certain feminine quality of taste and tenderness, she was superior, and she seems to me to have been of more intrinsic value as a woman. Whether under the same conditions she would have attained the same power may be a question. If not, I think it would have been because she was unwilling to pay the price, not because she lacked the grasp, the tact, or the diplomacy.
It is mainly as a woman of letters that Mme. de La Fayette is known today, and it was through her literary work that she made the strongest impression upon her time. Boileau said that she had a finer intellect and wrote better than any other woman in France. But she wrote only for the amusement of idle or lonely hours, and always avoided any display of learning, in order not to attract jealousy as well as from instinctive delicacy of taste. "He who puts himself above others," she said, "whatever talent he may possess, puts himself below his talent." But her natural atmosphere was an intellectual one, and the friend of La Rochefoucauld, who would have "liked Montaigne for a neighbor," had her own message for the world. Her mind was clear and vigorous, her taste critical and severe, and her style had a flexible quality that readily took the tone of her subject. In concise expression she doubtless profited much from the author of the MAXIMS, who rewrote many of his sentences at least thirty times. "A phrase cut out of a book is worth a louis d'or," she said, "and every word twenty sous." Unfortunately her "Memoires de la Cour de France" is fragmentary, as her son carelessly lent the manuscripts, and many of them were lost. But the part that remains gives ample evidence of the breadth of her intelligence, the penetrating, lucid quality of her mind, and her talent for seizing the salient traits of the life about her. In her romances, which were first published under the name of Segrais, one finds the touch of an artist, and the subtle intuitions of a woman. In the rapid evolution of modern taste and the hopeless piling up of books, these works have fallen somewhat into the shade, but they are written with a vivid naturalness of style, a truth of portraiture, and a delicacy of sentiment, that commend them still to all lovers of imaginative literature. Fontenelle read the "Princesse de Cleves" four times when it appeared. La Harpe said it was "the first romance that offered reasonable adventures written with interest and elegance." It marked an era in the history of the novel. "Before Mme. de La Fayette," said Voltaire, "people wrote in a stilted style of improbable things." We have the rare privilege of reading her own criticism in a letter to the secretary of the Duchesse de Savoie, in which she disowns the authorship, and adds a few lines of discreet eulogy.
"As for myself," she writes, :"I am flattered at being suspected of it. I believe I should
It is mainly as a woman of letters that Mme. de La Fayette is known today, and it was through her literary work that she made the strongest impression upon her time. Boileau said that she had a finer intellect and wrote better than any other woman in France. But she wrote only for the amusement of idle or lonely hours, and always avoided any display of learning, in order not to attract jealousy as well as from instinctive delicacy of taste. "He who puts himself above others," she said, "whatever talent he may possess, puts himself below his talent." But her natural atmosphere was an intellectual one, and the friend of La Rochefoucauld, who would have "liked Montaigne for a neighbor," had her own message for the world. Her mind was clear and vigorous, her taste critical and severe, and her style had a flexible quality that readily took the tone of her subject. In concise expression she doubtless profited much from the author of the MAXIMS, who rewrote many of his sentences at least thirty times. "A phrase cut out of a book is worth a louis d'or," she said, "and every word twenty sous." Unfortunately her "Memoires de la Cour de France" is fragmentary, as her son carelessly lent the manuscripts, and many of them were lost. But the part that remains gives ample evidence of the breadth of her intelligence, the penetrating, lucid quality of her mind, and her talent for seizing the salient traits of the life about her. In her romances, which were first published under the name of Segrais, one finds the touch of an artist, and the subtle intuitions of a woman. In the rapid evolution of modern taste and the hopeless piling up of books, these works have fallen somewhat into the shade, but they are written with a vivid naturalness of style, a truth of portraiture, and a delicacy of sentiment, that commend them still to all lovers of imaginative literature. Fontenelle read the "Princesse de Cleves" four times when it appeared. La Harpe said it was "the first romance that offered reasonable adventures written with interest and elegance." It marked an era in the history of the novel. "Before Mme. de La Fayette," said Voltaire, "people wrote in a stilted style of improbable things." We have the rare privilege of reading her own criticism in a letter to the secretary of the Duchesse de Savoie, in which she disowns the authorship, and adds a few lines of discreet eulogy.
"As for myself," she writes, :"I am flattered at being suspected of it. I believe I should