and that the chagrins which my friendship for you might give me
are more agreeable than all the false peace of a wearisome
absence." In spite of these little clouds, the old love is never
dimmed; we are constantly bewildered with the inexhaustible
riches of a heart which gives so lavishly and really asks so
little for itself.

The Hotel de Carnavalet was one of the social centers of the
latter part of the century, but it was the source of no special
literature and of no new diversions. Mme. de Sevigne was herself
luminous, and her fame owes none of its luster to the reflection
from those about her. She was original and spontaneous. She
read because she liked to read, and not because she wished to be
learned. She wrote as she talked, from the impulse of the
moment, without method or aim excepting to follow where her rapid
thought led her. Her taste for society was of the same order.
Her variable and sparkling genius would have broken loose from
the formal conversations and rather studied brilliancy that had
charmed her youth at the Hotel de Rambouillet. The onerous
duties of a perpetual hostess would not have suited her
temperament, which demanded its hours of solitude and repose.
But she was devoted to her friends, and there was a delightful
freedom in all her intercourse with them. She has not chronicled
her salon, but she has chronicled her world, and we gather from
her letters the quality of her guests. She liked to pass an
evening in the literary coterie at the Luxembourg; to drop in
familiarly upon Mme. de La Fayette, where she found La
Rochefoucauld, Cardinal de Retz, sometimes Segrais, Huet, La
Fontaine, Moliere, and other wits of the time; to sup with Mme.
de Coulanges and Mme. Scarron. She is a constant visitor at the