“The petite personne is still here, and always delightful.  She has a sharp little wit of her own, too, as new as a young chick’s.  We enjoy telling her things, for she knows nothing at all, and it makes a kind of game to enlighten her on all sides—­with a word or two about the Universe, or about Empires, or countries, or kings, or religions, or wars, or Fate, or the map.  There’s a pretty jumble of facts to put tidily away in a little head which has never seen a town, nor even a river, and has never really supposed that the world went any farther than the end of the park!  But she is delicious.  I was telling her to-day about the taking of Wismar; and she understands quite well that we are sorry about it because the King of Sweden is our ally.  See how wildly we amuse ourselves.”

The last sentence is for the chere bonne’s benefit, who was very capable herself of being jealous of the petite personne.  I fancy the touch about Fidele was put in with the same object.  She had to be infinitely careful with the chere bonne’s black dogs.

In another month the petite personne is so far advanced that she can be secretary to her patroness, whose poor hand is too swollen to write.  Elaborate perambulations introduce her to the chere bonne.  “My son has gone to Vitre on some business or other.  That is why I give his functions of secretary over to the little lady of whom I have often told you, and who begs you to be pleased to allow her, with great respect, to kiss your hands.”  That, I should think, was courtesy enough even for the pouting great lady of Provence.  In a later letter she kisses Madame de Grignan’s left hand; so it is written—­by herself, but to dictation.  Thus the proper distances were kept by one as humane as Madame de Sevigne when she was dealing with her daughter on the other side of idolatry.

But she herself and the child are on better terms than such discipline would imply.  In February:  “...  My letters are so full of myself that it bores me to have them read over.  You have too much taste not to be bored too.  So I shall stop:  even the child is laughing at me now.”  And then in March:  “...  My son has left us—­we are quite alone, the child and I—­reading, writing, and saying our prayers.”  A jolly little picture of still and gentle life.  No Greuze there.

The idyll ends in tears, but not just yet.  Two days before she leaves Brittany, having “neither rhyme nor reason in my hands,” she makes use of the petite personne for the last time:  “the most obliging child in the world.  I don’t know what I should have done without her.  She reads me what I like—­quite well; she writes as you see; she is fond of me; she is willing; she can talk about Madame de Grignan.  In fact, you may love her on my assurance.”  And then the poor little dear puts in her little word for herself to propitiate this formidable Countess in Provence: