An infinity of presents, pensions, repairs of roads and towns, fifteen or twenty grand dinner-parties, incessant play, eternal balls, comedies three times a week, a great show of dress, that is the States.

I am forgetting three or four hundred pipes of wine which are drunk; but, if I did not reckon this little item, the others do not forget it, and put it first.

This is what is called the sort of twaddle to make one go to sleep on one's feet; but it is what comes to the tip of your pen when you are in Brittany and have nothing else to say." Even in Brittany and at the Rochers, Madame de Sevigne always has something to say.

The weather is frightful; she is occupied a good deal in reading the romances of La Calprenede and the _Grand Cyrus,_ as well as the _Ethics_ of Nicole.

"For four days it has been one continuous tempest; all our walks are drowned; there is no getting out any more.
Our masons, our carpenters keep their rooms; in short, I hate this country, and I yearn every moment for your sun; perhaps you yearn for my rain; we do well, both of us.