La Princesse De Clèves par Mme de La Fayette. Madame de la Fayette

de mon cœur, sans que la bienséance, ou l'amitié nous engage, y eût aucune part; j'étois assurée aussi que je faisois sa plus tendre consolation, et depuis quarante ans c'étoit la même chose: cette date est violente mais elle fonde bien aussi la vérité de notre liaison." The whole story of friendship is told in these lines,—a friendship which during forty years had been undarkened by a cloud, and had remained unstaled by custom. The relation was equally sincere on the part of Mme. de La Fayette, though she was by nature more self-contained and reserved. But this reserve gives way to the strength of her feelings when in 1691, tormented by ill-health and knowing that her end is not far off, she writes to Mme. de Sévigné: "Croyez, ma très-chère, que vous êtes la personne du monde que j'ai le plus véritablement aimée."

      Mme. de La Fayette was in her time a mild précieuse, having been introduced at an early age into the society of the Hôtel de Rambouillet. No one could pass through such a society with impunity, says Boissier; but Mme. de La Fayette seems to have escaped very lightly. For, although in her earlier works the précieuse influence is everywhere felt, yet all traces of such influence disappear in La Princesse de Clèves.

      Auger tells us gravely that Mme. de La Fayette found the reading of the Latin poets a safeguard from the bad taste and extravagance of the Rambouillet coterie. But the same safeguard should have proved effectual in case of Ménage first of all, says Sainte-Beuve, who then gives the true relation of Mme de La Fayette to the Hôtel de Rambouillet: "Mme. de La Fayette, qui avait l'esprit solide et fin, s'en tira à la manière de Mme. de Sévigné, en n'en prenant que le meilleur."

      After the breaking-up of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, there were formed various smaller coteries, among which that of Mme. de La Fayette was by no means the least important. From her little circle of précieuses, Mme. de La Fayette was drawn to the Court of Louis XIV. chiefly through the friendship of "Madame," the Princess Henrietta of England. This unfortunate princess had passed her exiled youth in the convent of Chaillot; and Mme. de La Fayette, going thither on frequent visits to a kinswoman, was drawn into intimacy with the young girl, who must even then have given evidence of those charms which later made her brief reign at Court as brilliant as it was unhappy. When the young princess had become the sister-in-law of the King and the idol of the young Court, she remained steadfast in her love for the friend who had cheered her lonely convent life; and thus Mme. de La Fayette came at the age of thirty to be one of the company that gathered around Madame at Fontainebleau and Saint-Cloud,—"spectatrice plutôt qu'agissante," says Sainte-Beuve. For Mme. de La Fayette, though belonging wholly to the young Court, took no part in the intrigues and factions of the royal household. It is this Court life, which, under guise of that of Henry II., is described in La Princesse de Clèves: "There were so many interests and so many intrigues in which women took part that love was always mingled with politics and politics with love. No one was calm or indifferent; every one sought to rise, to please, to serve, or to injure; every one was taken up with pleasure or intrigue.... All the different cliques were separated by rivalry or envy. Then, too, the women who belonged to each one of them, were jealous of one another, either about their chances of advancement, or about their lovers; often, too, their interests were complicated by other pettier, but no less important, questions."

      It was in the arms of Mme. de La Fayette that Madame, her brief day of splendor over, fell into that strange slumber the wakening of which was to be so horrible; and it was Mme. de La Fayette who soothed the princess in those last hours, the torture of which drew tears even from the heart of Louis. M. Anatole France says that he suspects Mme. de La Fayette of having hated the King. Perhaps she did; for resentment at the fate of her friend and mistress was natural. True it is, however, that Louis showed more than once his deep respect for the woman who had seen him in his one moment of remorse at the bedside of the dying princess.

      After the death of Madame, her faithful friend withdrew more and more from the Court, into the seclusion and quiet of her little band of chosen friends, urged partly by her distaste for Court life and partly by her increasing ill-health. But her society was still much sought after; for a notice of her death in the Mercure galant, tells us that when she could no longer go to the Court, the Court might be said to have come to her.

      Mme. de La Fayette was some twenty-two years old,—long past the usual marriageable age of French maidens,—when, in 1655, she was married to the Count de La Fayette. Little is known of her married life. Boissier in his Vie de Mme. de Sévigné says: "When the correspondence of Mme. de Sévigné with her daughter begins (1671), Mme. de La Fayette has been long a widow." But of this early widowhood there is no positive evidence, the weight of testimony being rather to the contrary. Those who are curious in this matter are referred to d'Haussonville's Vie de Mme. de La Fayette, where the whole controversy is summed up in the following words: "Une chose est certaine: c'est qu'il faut renoncer désormais à considérer Mme. de La Fayette comme une jeune veuve."

      Of Monsieur de La Fayette's relations to his wife, we are almost wholly ignorant; and the sole evidence—beyond a line or two in Mme. de La Fayette's letters—that he existed at all, was the birth to the wife of two children. "We find now and then," says La Bruyère, "a woman who has so obliterated her husband that there is in the world no mention of him, and whether he is alive or whether he is dead is equally uncertain." Doubtless her husband discovered—as did many of her friends—that Mme. de La Fayette was a woman whose personality overshadowed everything around her.

      That there was little congeniality between husband and wife cannot be doubted, yet Mme. de La Fayette's own letters go to prove that for a time at least she was not unhappy. In a letter to Ménage, written from Auvergne soon after her marriage, she says: "La solitude que je trouve ici m'est plutôt agréable qu'ennuyeuse. Le soin que je prends de ma maison, m'occupe et me divertit fort et comme d'ailleurs je n'ai point de chagrins, que mon époux m'adore, que je l'aime fort, que je suis maîtresse absolue, je vous assure que la vie que je mène est fort heureuse.... Quand on croit être heureuse vous savez que cela suffit pour l'être."

      This frigid, make-believe happiness, even though supported by the satisfaction of being absolute mistress of the household, could not long suffice for a nature like Mme. de La Fayette's; and therein lies perhaps the secret of all the unwritten history that follows.

      Just at what time the friendship between Mme. de La Fayette and La Rochefoucauld began, is uncertain. Boissier in his Vie de Mme. de Sévigné says that when, in 1671, the correspondence between mother and daughter begins, "Mme. de La Fayette has but recently united herself with the Duc de La Rochefoucauld in that close intimacy which gave the world so much to talk about."

      However, Mme. de Sévigné's letters leave us wholly in the dark as to when this intimacy began. Sainte-Beuve holds that it was about 1665, and makes a strong argument for his view of the matter. D'Haussonville believes that this remarkable union was the result of long acquaintance and slowly ripening friendship, the acquaintance having begun in the years following Mme. de La Fayette's marriage,—that is, between 1655 and 1665. He sums up the matter as follows: "Une chose est certaine: c'est que La Rochefoucauld s'est emparé peu à peu de l'âme et de l'esprit de Mme. de La Fayette." And again: "C'est aux environs de l'année 1670 que La Rochefoucauld commença à faire ouvertement partie de l'existence de Mme. de La Fayette." And here we leave this much-vexed problem of chronology.

      Of the nature of this union and of the talk it gave rise to, we shall not speak. Mme. de Sévigné tells all that need be known. "Leur mauvaise santé," writes she, "les rendoit comme nécessaires l'un à l'autre.... je crois que nulle passion ne peut surpasser la force d'une telle liaison." The influence of this friendship upon each may best be set forth in the words of Mme. de La Fayette: "M. de La Rochefoucauld m'a donné de l'esprit, mais j'ai réformé son cœur." La Rochefoucauld had been embittered by disappointed ambition, ill health, and the loss of his favorite son; and his opinion of humanity in general and of woman in particular was none too lofty, to say the least. Perhaps Mme. de La Fayette's greatest service in this respect was in toning down the severity of the immortal Maxims.

      We know how deep and lasting was the grief of Mme. de La Fayette for the loss of the man with whose life her own had been so long and so closely united. On March 17th, 1680, Mme. de Sévigné writes: "M. de La Rochefoucauld died last