Rabelais made her "die of laughter," she found Plutarch
admirable, enjoyed Tacitus as keenly as did Mme. Roland a century
later, read Josephus and Lucian, dipped into the history of the
crusades and of the iconoclasts, of the holy fathers and of the
saints. She preferred the history of France to that of Rome
because she had "neither relatives nor friends in the latter
place." She finds the music of Lulli celestial and the preaching
of Bourdaloue divine. Racine she did not quite appreciate. In
his youth, she said he wrote tragedies for Champmesle and not for
posterity. Later she modified her opinion, but Corneille held
always the first place in her affection. She had a great love
for books on morals, read and reread the essays of Nicole, which
she found a perpetual resource against the ills of life -- even
rain and bad weather. St. Augustine she reads with pleasure, and
she is charmed with Bossuet and Pascal; but she is not very
devout, though she often tries to be. There is a serious naivete
in all her efforts in this direction. She seems to have always
one eye upon the world while she prays, and she mourns over her
own lack of devotion. "I wish my heart were for God as it is for
you," she writes to her daughter. "I am neither of God nor of
the devil," she says again; "that state troubles me though,
between ourselves, I find it the most natural in the world." Her
reason quickly pierces to the heart of superstition; sometimes
she cannot help a touch of sarcasm. "I fear that this trappe,
which wishes to pass humanity, may become a lunatic asylum," she
says. She believes little in saints and processions. Over the
high altar of her chapel she writes SOLI DEO HONOR ET GLORIA.
"It is the way to make no one jealous," she remarks.

She was rather inclined toward Jansenism, but she could not