so many attractions, so much gaiety, so much coquetry, so much
light, so much innocence and virtue. No one ever understood
better the art of having grace without affectation, raillery
without malice, gaiety without folly, propriety without
constraint, and virtue without severity."

Her malicious cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, who was piqued by her
indifference, and basely wished to avenge himself, said that her
"warmth was in her intellect;" that for a woman of quality she
was too badine, too economical, too keenly alive to her own
interests; that she made too much account of a few trifling words
from the queen, and was too evidently flattered when the king
danced with her. This opinion of a vain and jealous man is not
entitled to great consideration, especially when we recall that
he had already spoken of her as "the delight of mankind,:" and
said that antiquity would have dressed altars for her and she
would "surely have been goddess of something." The most
incomprehensible page in her history is her complaisance towards
the persistent impertinences of this perfidious friend. The only
solution of it seems to lie in the strength of family ties, and
in her unwillingness to be on bad terms with one of her very few
near relatives. Bussy-Rabutin was handsome, witty, brilliant, a
bel esprit, a member of the Academie Francaise, and very much in
love with his charming cousin, who clearly appreciated his
talents, if not his character. "You are the fagot of my
intellect," she says to him; but she forbids him to talk of love.
Unfortunately for himself, his vanity got the better of his
discretion. He wrote the "Histoire Amoureuse des Gauls," and
raised such a storm about his head by his attack upon many fair
reputations, that, after a few months of lonely meditation in the