Are you ill?
Nay.

I am in this state for three days and three nights.

At present I am getting some sleep again, but I still eat merely mechanically, horse-wise, rubbing my mouth with vinegar otherwise I am very well, and I haven't even so much pain in the head." Fault was found with Madame de La Fayette for not going out.

"She had a mortal melancholy.

What absurdity again! Is she not the most fortunate woman in the world?
That is what people said," writes Madame de Sevigne; "it needed that she should be dead to prove that she had good reason for not going out, and for being melancholy.
Her reins and her heart were all gone was not that enough to cause those fits of despondency of which she complained?
And so, during her life, she showed reason, and after death she showed reason, and never was she without that divine reason which was her principal gift." Madame de La Fayette had in her life one great sorrow, which had completed the ruin of her health.