Treville went so far as to say that the figure of Mme. de Sevigne was beautiful enough to set the world afire.  M. du Bled divides her lovers into three classes:  the first was composed of her literary friends; the second, of those enamored, impassioned suitors, loving her from good motives or from the opposite, who strove to compensate her for the unfaithfulness of her husband while alive and for the ennui of her widowhood; the third class was composed of her Parisian friends, of whom she had hosts, court habitues who were leaders of society.

Representatives of the second class were the Prince de Conti, the great Turenne, various counts and marquises, and Bussy-Rabutin, who was a type of the sensual lover and the more dangerous on account of the privileges he enjoyed because of his close relationship to Mme. de Sevigne.  His portrait of her is interesting:  “I must tell you, madame, that I do not think there is a person in the world so generally esteemed as you are.  You are the delight of humankind; antiquity would have erected altars to you, and you would certainly have been a goddess of something.  In our century, when we are not so lavish with incense, and especially for living merit, we are contented to say that there is not a woman of your age more virtuous and more amiable than are you.  I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, great lords with princely manners, great captains, gentlemen, ministers of state, who would be off and away for you, if you would permit them.  Can you ask any more?”

Such eulogies came not only from men like the perfidious and cruel cousin, but from her friends everywhere.  The finest of these is the one by her friend Mme. de La Fayette, contained in one of the epistolary portraits so much in vogue at that time, and which were turned out, par excellence, in the salon of Mlle. de Luxembourg:  “Know, madame,—­if by chance you do not already know it,—­that your mind adorns and embellishes your person so well that there is not another one on earth so charming as you when you are animated in a conversation in which all constraint is banished.  Your soul is great, noble, ready to dispense with treasures, and incapable of lowering itself to the care of amassing them.  You are sensible to glory and ambition, and to pleasures you are less so; yet you appear to be born for the latter, and they made for you; your person augments pleasures, and pleasures increase your beauty when they surround you.  Joy is the veritable state of your soul, and chagrin is more unlike to you than to anyone.  You are the most civil and obliging person that ever lived, and by a free and calm air—­which is in all your actions—­the simplest compliments of seemliness appear, in your mouth, as protestations of friendship.”

The originality which gained Mme. de Sevigne so many friends lay principally in her force, wealth of resource, intensity, sincerity, and frankness.  M. Scherer said she possessed “surprises for us, infinite energy, inexhaustible variety—­everything that eternally revives interest.”