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