to be higher than themselves.  Well, a pyramid wants to come in, one of those pyramids which make everybody exclaim from one end of the table to the other; but so far from that boding damage, people are often, on the contrary, very glad not to see any more of what they contain.  This pyramid, then, with twenty or thirty porcelain dishes, was so completely upset at the door, that the noise it made put to silence the violins, hautbois, and trumpets.  After dinner, M. de Locmaria and M. de Coetlogon danced with two fair Bretons some marvellous jigs (passe pipds) and some minuets in a style that the court-people cannot approach; wherein they do the Bohemian and Breton step with a neatness and correctness which are charming.  I was thinking all the while of you, and I had such tender recollections of your dancing and of what I had seen you dance, that this pleasure became a pain to me.  The States are sure not to be long; there is nothing to do but to ask for what the king wants; nobody says a word, and it is all done.  As for the governor, he finds, somehow or other, more than forty thousand crowns coming in to him.  An infinity of presents, pensions, repairs of roads and towns, fifteen or twenty grand dinner-parties, incessant play, eternal balls, comedies three times a week, a great show of dress, that is the States.  I am forgetting three or four hundred pipes of wine which are drunk; but, if I did not reckon this little item, the others do not forget it, and put it first.  This is what is called the sort of twaddle to make one go to sleep on one’s feet; but it is what comes to the tip of your pen when you are in Brittany and have nothing else to say.”

Even in Brittany and at the Rochers, Madame de Sevigne always has something to say.  The weather is frightful; she is occupied a good deal in reading the romances of La Calprenede and the Grand Cyrus, as well as the Ethics of Nicole.  “For four days it has been one continuous tempest; all our walks are drowned; there is no getting out any more.  Our masons, our carpenters keep their rooms; in short, I hate this country, and I yearn every moment for your sun; perhaps you yearn for my rain; we do well, both of us.  I am going on with the Ethics of Nicole, which I find delightful; it has not yet given me any lesson against the rain, but I am expecting it, for I find everything there, and conformity to the will of God might answer my purpose, if I did not want a specific remedy.  In fact, I consider this an admirable book; nobody has written as these gentlemen have, for I put down to Pascal half of all that is beautiful.  It is so nice to have one’s self and one’s feelings talked about, that, though it be in bad part, one is charmed by it.  What is called searching the depths of the heart with a lantern is exactly what he does; he discloses to us that which we feel every day, but have not the wit to discern or the sincerity to avow.  I have even forgiven the swelling in the heart (l’enflure du coeur) for the sake of the rest, and I maintain that there is no other word to express vanity and pride, which are really wind:  try and find another word.  I shall complete the reading of this with pleasure.”