I am melancholic; I like reading good and solid books; trifles bore me, except verses, and them I like, of whatever sort they may be, and undoubtedly I am as good a judge of such things as if I were a scholar." A few days after Mademoiselle, died, likewise at Paris, Madelaine de la Vergne, Marchioness of La Fayette, the most intimate friend of Madame de Sevigne.

"Never did we have the smallest cloud upon our friendship," the latter would say; "long habit had not made her merit stale to me, the flavor of it was always fresh and new; I paid her many attentions from the mere prompting of my heart, without the propriety to which we are bound by friendship having anything to do with it.

I was assured, too, that I constituted her dearest consolation, and for forty years past it had always been the same thing." Sensible, clever, a sweet and safe acquaintance, Madame de La Fayette was as simple and as true in her relations with her confidantes as in her writings.

La Princesse de Olives alone has outlived the times and the friends of Madame de La Fayette.

Following upon the "great sword-thrusts" of La Calprenede or Mdlle.