Chapter XXVIII: Letter XVII: THE ROCKS, Wednesday, August 19, 1671

You describe very humorously the disorder my perfumed paper occasioned you. Those who saw you read my letters must have thought I was dead, and could never imagine that they contained nothing but chit-chat. I am very far from correcting myself in the way you imagined. I shall always run into extremes in what is for your good, if it depends on me. I already began to think that my paper might do you harm, but I did not intend to change it till about November. However, I begin from this day, and for the future you will have nothing to guard against but the smell.

You have a tolerable number of the Grignans with you; the Lord deliver you from the aunt,[48] I feel her troublesome even here. The chevalier’s sleeves must have had a curious effect at table; but though they draw every thing along with them, I much question whether they would draw me; fond as I am of fashion, I have a great aversion to slovenliness. Vitré would be a famous place for him. I think I never saw such profusion before. There is not a table at court that can come up to the meanest of the twelve or fifteen that are constantly kept up here; and, indeed, there is occasion for all this, for there are no less than three hundred people to be provided for, who have nowhere else to eat. I left this good town last Monday, after having made your compliments to Mme. de Chaulnes and Mme. de Murinais. Nothing could be more cordially received, or more warmly returned. All Brittany was drunk on that day. We dined apart. Forty gentlemen dined in a lower room, each of whom drank forty toasts; the king’s was the first, and then the glasses were broken. All this was done under pretense of extreme joy and gratitude for a hundred thousand crowns which his majesty had remitted out of the free gift the province had made him, as a recompense for their having so cheerfully complied with his request. So now there is only two millions two hundred thousand livres, instead of five hundred thousand. The king, too, has written a letter with his own hand, full of the kindest expressions to his good province of Brittany. This letter the governor read to the States assembled, and a copy of it was registered. Upon this they shouted _Vive le roi!_ and immediately fell to drinking; and drink they did, God knows! M. de Chaulnes did not forget the gouvernante of Provence; and a Breton gentleman going to toast you by your name, and not well remembering it, got up, and, in a loud voice, exclaimed, “Here is to Madame de _Carignan_.” This ridiculous mistake made M. de Chaulnes laugh till the tears came into his eyes. The Bretons drank it, thinking it was right; and, for a week to come, you will be nothing but Madame de Carignan; some called you the Countess of Carignan. This was the state of things when I left them.

[48] Ann d’Ornano, Countess of Harcourt, aunt to M. de Grignan.

I have shown Pomenars what you say of him. He is highly delighted with it; but I assure you he is so hardened and impudent, that once or twice in a day he makes the first president leave the room, to whom he is a mortal enemy, as well as to the procurator-general. Madame de Coëtquen had just received the news of the death of her little girl, and fainted away. She is in great affliction, and says she shall never have so pretty a one. Her husband is quite inconsolable; he is just returned from Paris, after having made matters up with Le Bordage. This was a most extraordinary affair; he has transferred all his resentments to M. de Turenne.[49] I suppose you know nothing of this, but it fell unintentionally from my pen. There was a pretty ball on Sunday. We saw a girl of Lower Brittany who, they said, bore away the palm. She was the most ridiculous creature I ever saw, and threw herself into such attitudes as made us die with laughing. But there were other dancers, both men and women, that were really admirable.

[49] Glory, which is the last passion of the sage, was not the
only passion of Turenne; for, at the age of sixty, he was in love
with Madame de Coëtquen.

If you ask me how I like my Rocks after all this hurry, I shall tell you that I am delighted to be here again. I shall stay for a week or ten days at least, in spite of their endeavors to get me back. I want rest more than I can describe to you. I want to sleep; I want to eat, for I am starved at these fêtes. I want the fresh air; I want silence, for I was attacked on all sides, and my lungs were almost worn out with talking. In short, my dear, I found our abbé, La Mousse, my dog, my mall, Philois, and my masons, all as I left them, and they are the only things that can do me any good in my present condition.