until she told him to do so, and then at the end of the table. This form
was observed every day of their lives. She was equally severe in such
matters of etiquette with all the rest of the world. She would keep her
diocesan, the Bishop of Seez, standing for entire hours, while she was
seated in her arm-chair and never once offered him a seat even in the
corner. She was in other things an entirely good and sensible woman.
Not until after her death was it discovered that she had been afflicted
for a long time with a cancer, which appeared as though about to burst.
God spared her this pain.

We lost, in the month of March, Madame de Miramion, aged sixty-six. She
was a bourgeoise, married, and in the same year became a widow very rich,
young, and beautiful. Bussy Rabutin, so known by his 'Histoire Amoureuse
des Gaules', and by the profound disgrace it drew upon him, and still
more by the vanity of his mind and the baseness of his heart, wished
absolutely to marry her, and actually carried her off to a chateau. Upon
arriving at the place, she pronounced before everybody assembled there a
vow of chastity, and then dared Bussy to do his worst. He, strangely
discomfited by this action, at once set her at liberty, and tried to
accommodate the affair. From that moment she devoted herself entirely,
to works of piety, and was much esteemed by the King. She was the first
woman of her condition who wrote above her door, "Hotel de Nesmond."
Everybody cried out, and was scandalised, but the writing remained, and
became the example and the father of those of all kinds which little by
little have inundated Paris.

Madame de Sevigne, so amiable and of such excellent company, died some
time after at Grignan, at the house of her daughter, her idol, but who
merited little to be so. I was very intimate with the young Marquis de
Grignan, her grandson. This woman, by her natural graces, the sweetness