La Princesse De Clèves | Page 2

jamais nous n'avions eu le moindre nuage dans notre amitié. La longue
habitude ne m'avoit point accoutumée à son mérite: ce goût étoit
toujours vif et nouveau; je lui rendois beaucoup de soins, par le
mouvement de mon coeur, 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