This person, so tender and so weak towards all that she loved, showed nothing but courage and piety when she believed that her hour was come; and we could not but remark of what utility and of what importance it is to have the mind stocked with good matter and holy reading, for the which Madame de Sevigne had a liking, not to say a wonderful hungering, from the use she managed to make of that good store in the last moments of her life." She had often taken her daughter to task for not being fond of books.

"There is a certain person who undoubtedly has plenty of wits, but of so nice and so fastidious a sort, that she cannot read anything but five or six sublime works, which is a sign of distinguished taste.

She cannot bear historical books; a great deprivation this, and of that which is a subsistence to everybody else.
She has another misfortune, which is, that she cannot read twice over those choice books which she esteems exclusively.

This person says that she is insulted when she is told that she is not fond of reading: another bone to pick." Madame de Sevigne's liking for good books accompanied her to the last, and helped her to make a good end.
All the women who had been writers in her time died before Madame de Sevigne.

Madame de Motteville, a judicious and sensible woman, more independent at the bottom of her heart than in externals, had died in 1689, exclusively occupied, from the time that she lost Queen Anne of Austria, in works of piety and in drawing up her _Memoires_.