altogether from the scenes of pleasure which had begun to pall.
The convent offered a haven of repose to the bruised heart, a
fresh aim for drooping energies, a needed outlet for devouring
emotions, and a comfortable sense of security, not only for this
world, but for the next. It was the next world which was
beginning to trouble Mme. de Sable. She had great fear of death,
and after many penitential retreats to Port Royal, she finally
obtained permission to build a suite of apartments within its
precincts, and retired there about 1655 to prepare for that
unpleasant event which she put off as long as possible by the
most assiduous care of her health. "If she was not devoted, she
had the idea of becoming so," said Mademoiselle. But her
devotion was in quite a mundane fashion. Her pleasant rooms were
separate and independent, thus enabling her to give herself not
only to the care of her health and her soul, but to a select
society, to literature, and to conversation. She never practiced
the severe asceticism of her friend, Mme. de Longueville. With a
great deal of abstract piety, the iron girdle and the hair shirt
were not included. She did not even forego her delicate and
fastidious tastes. Her elegant dinners and her dainty comfitures
were as famous as ever. "Will the anger of the Marquise go so
far, in your opinion, as to refuse me her recipe for salad?"
writes Mme. de Choisy at the close of a letter to the Comtesse de
Maure, in which she has ridiculed her friend's Jansenist
tendencies; "If so, it will be a great inhumanity, for which she
will be punished in this world and the other." She had great
skill in delicate cooking, and was in the habit of sending cakes,
jellies, and other dainties, prepared by herself, to her intimate
friends. La Rochefoucauld says, "If I could hope for two dishes
of those preserves, which I did not deserve to eat before, I