Chapter CXLIII: Letter I: PARIS, August 5, 1684

While I am expecting your letters, I must relate to you a very amusing little history. You remember how much you regretted Mademoiselle de ***, and how unfortunate you thought yourself in having missed her for a wife: “Your best friends had all conspired against your happiness; Madame de Lavardin and Madame de la Fayette had done you irreparable injury! A young lady of noble birth, great beauty, and ample fortune, was lost to you; surely a man must be doomed never to marry, and to die like a beggar, to let such an opportunity escape him, when it was in his own power! The Marquis de *** was not such a fool; he has made his fortune, and is settled. You must certainly have been born under an unlucky planet to miss such a match! Only observe her conduct; she is a saint; an example to all married women.” You remember all this, I suppose, my dear son, and that till you married Mademoiselle de Mauron, you were ready to hang yourself; you could not have done better than you have done: but now for the sequel.

All those amiable qualities of her youth, which made Madame de la Fayette say she would not have her for a daughter-in-law if she could bring millions to her son, were happily directed to the service of religion: God was her lover, the only object of her affection, all her desires centered in this single passion; but as every thing was in extremes with her, her poor head could not bear the excess of zeal and fervent devotion with which it was filled; and, to satisfy the overflowings of her Magdalen heart, she resolved to profit by good examples, by reading the Lives of the Holy Fathers of the Desert, and of Female Penitents. She wished to become herself the heroine of such admirable histories, and, full of this idea, left her house and family about a fortnight ago, and, taking with her only five or six pistoles, and a little foot-boy, set out at four o’clock in the morning, and, taking a post-chaise at the skirts of the town, drove to Rouen, fatigued and covered with mud. When she got there, she bargained for a passage in a ship bound for the Indies: it was there, it seems, God had called her; it was there she was to lead a life of penitence and humiliation; it was there the map had pointed out to her an abode, which invited her to pass the rest of her days in sackcloth and ashes; it was there the Abbé Zosimus[290] was to visit her, and administer to her the last holy rites before she expired. Satisfied with this resolution, and convinced that Heaven inspired her with it, she discharged her foot-boy, and sent him home to his own country, while she waited with great impatience the departure of the ship: her good angel consoled her for the delay; she piously forgot husband, daughter, father, and relations, exclaiming:

Çà! courage, mon cœur, point de faiblesse humaine.[291]

[290] A famous hermit of the sixth century, who came on the
eve of every Good Friday to give the sacrament to St. Mary the
Egyptian, in a desert cave on the banks of the river Jordan. See
the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert.

[291] Courage, my heart! disdain all human weakness.

And now the moment arrived in which her prayers are heard; the happy moment that was to separate her for ever from her native land; she follows the law of the Gospel; she leaves all to follow Christ.

In the mean time, however, her family missed her, and finding she did not return to dinner, sent to all the churches in the neighborhood; she was not there. They supposed she would return at night; no tidings were heard of her. They now begin to be uneasy, the servants are all questioned, they can give no account of her further than that she had taken her foot-boy with her. “She must certainly be at her country-house.” No. “Where can she possibly be?” A messenger is dispatched to the Curé of St. Jacques-du-Haut-Pas; the curé says he has not had the direction of her conscience for a considerable time; for, being a simple, honest man, and having observed her full of strange chimerical ideas of religion, he would have nothing to do with her. Every one was now at a loss what to think; two, three, four days, a week passed, still no news of her; at length her friends thought of sending to some of the sea-ports, and, by mere accident, found her at Rouen, on the point of setting out for Dieppe, and from thence to the other extremity of the globe. They secure her, and bring her back, a little disconcerted at being disappointed of her journey:

J’allais, j’étais, l’amour a sur moi tant d’empire.[292]

[292] I went, I came, impelled by mighty Love.

A lady to whom she had imparted her design, revealed the whole to her family, who, in despair at her folly, would fain have concealed it from her husband, who happened to be absent from Paris at that time, and who would have been better pleased at an exploit of gallantry in his amiable consort, than such a ridiculous expedition as this. The husband’s mother came to Madame de Lavardin, and, bathed in tears, related the whole story, while the latter could scarcely refrain from laughing in her face; and the next time she saw my daughter, asked her if she could forgive her for having been the instrument of preventing her brother from marrying this pretty creature. Madame de la Fayette was also, in her turn, informed of this tragical story, and repeated it to me with great glee. She desires me to ask you if you are still angry with her; she maintains that no one can ever repent he did not marry a mad woman.

We dare not mention a syllable of this to Mademoiselle de Grignan,[293] her friend, who for some time past, has been ruminating upon a pilgrimage, and, as a preparative, has lately observed a profound silence toward us all. What think you of this curious narration? Has it tired you? Are you satisfied now? Adieu, my son. Marshal de Schomberg is marching to Germany at the head of twenty-five thousand men, to hasten the emperor’s signing.[294] The gazette will inform you of the rest. Adieu.

[293] Sister of Count de Grignan.

[294] This relates to the truce which was on the point of being
concluded at Ratisbon, and was published at Paris on the 5th of
October following.