Madame de Sévigné's Grandmother. SOUND of streams in the hot air; a faint delicious smell of flowers and of fried potatoes; a hillside of terraces and winding paths; a clump of tall pine-trees, under which an authoress sits reading a book, and two old French ladies play at cards together, very gently, politely, and both dressed in deep mourning. A butterfly goes by, so does a drift of cloud from the misty lilac heads of the lovely hills that rise above the trellis of the vines, of which the tendrils and branches hang along the terraces in rough fanciful garlands. A church clock strikes eleven; a battered figure carrying a load passes along the trellis path; some children are gathering flowers from the dahlia bushes at the farther end of the walk; you can hear the voices in the establishment close by; the peaceful waters rush on. The sultry air sighs among the pines and seems to grow more bearable. The blue, map-like lake of Bourget lies at the foot of the lilac hills; the melons and grapes and tomatoes are ripening on its banks. How sweet everything is out here among the house-tops, hill-tops, and gardens of the old Roman bathing-station! Indoors the sun had streamed from the earliest morning, the bells had rung, the flies had fussed, the chairs and tables had seemed like hot baked biscuits, the very jugs and basins were full of smoking water on the washstands; but here all is peace, and Louise the head chambermaid has just brought the authoress word that madame can have a shady room upon the front, if she likes, and that her place in the omnibus is retained, and that she (Louise) will see that all the things are safely moved in the course of the morning. So madame sits, lazily enjoying the happy moment, and speculating upon her book and her journey what the morning will bring forth. Α time with the story of that saintly grandmother whose The station was crowded. It was amusing enough to look about at the people. There were the soldiers, the usual three nuns travelling with a basket between them and one cotton umbrella, the peasant-women standing by with bundles; one of them, instead of a bundle, carried a little new-born baby in swaddling-clothes, winking itself to sleep. There was the French family, looking like a group out of a fashion-book; dandified old grandparents, the married daughters and sons-in-law taking leave of But each other, with assortments of children, attendants, and parcels and parasols, all ably marshalled by the parents, whose presence of mind and agreeable spirits never flagged to the last moment. The Paris express set off with a great clatter and excitement, just as the Annecy local train came up, and I followed a jolly-looking man, like a movable bookstall, with his pockets stuffed with magazines and papers, into my carriage. There in the corner sat an old French lady, reading the Figaro. "Here you are, maman," says he, "you have kept my place," and he began packing books and wraps away in the network overhead. We are most of us used to translating our daily impressions and fancies into pen-and-ink and pencil jottings, and to find an incontestable pleasure in so doing. there is another entertainment still more fascinating, in which the result far outstrips the imagination-it is the process of translating the printed paragraphs back again into real life. Dean Stanley says somewhere that to see the place where a remarkable event has happened is in a measure to live the event itself over again; and in a like manner, to see the places of which one has been reading is a real revelation; the whole book seems to pour out of the printed page, the sentences start into sound, into colour and motion; the reality is before one. Some years ago, when the writer of this present divagation was engaged upon a translation of some of Madame de Sévigné's letters for Mrs. Oliphant's edition of "Foreign Classics," she became acquainted for the first It was a pleasure to watch the comfortable pair, to hear the son describing his various arrangements for their mutual benefit, and the mother gravely as senting. They seemed to be systematically exploring the neighbouring restaurants and other interesting aspects of the country. "We did well to dine at Annecy yesterday," he exclaims, rubbing his hands, 66 we saw the lake; we had an excellent dinner." Being in some doubt about my own plans, I venture to consult my fellow-traveller, and tell him that I am on my way to visit the shrines of Ste. Chantal and St. Francis, and, if possible, to catch the steamer and go round the lake afterwards. He does not know much about the saints; he advises me not to miss the tour du lac, to take a carriage by the hour, and, above all, to dine at the Hôtel d'Angleterre on my return. He goodnaturedly lends me. his "Guide Joanne " to compare with my Murray. I read of Annecy, where both my saints are buried, "an industrious city on the N. extremity of the lake; pop. 11,600; H. Verdun, H. d'Angleterre ;" of a fine cheese made in the mountains, &c. There are also pertinent details about St. Francis de Sales and the Archbishop's palace, and Ste. Chantal's "Maison de la Galerie." While we compare our guides, the train stops at a little roadside station, where stands a sportsman with huge boots, such as I have seen the railway-carriages which whirl the tourists along the heights. The tourists, with their heads at the railwaycarriage windows, are peering down from their altitudes into the celebrated Gorges du Fier below. A number of people get out at a roadside station, in order to visit the waters, and we who remain in our places presently leave rocks and ravines behind us, and come to Annecy in the blazing plain of sunshine. I followed my traveller's advice, and took a little carriage at the station. There was the old town before me, basking under the blue sky, with many spires and gables and weathercocks round about the stately castle. II. The streets of old Annecy are not unlike the Gorges du Fier itself in their narrow gloom and defiles of stone, and of rock-like solidity, with a torrent of life passing on. Everything at Annecy belongs still to the past; the women sit beneath the arches and galleries which line the streets, or lean from their stonecarved windows. There is the stone front of the old Palace of the Sales, with its balconies and tracings; the old convent of the Sisters of the Visitation, standing in full view of the lake; and hard by the window of the seminary, where Jean Jacques first began to spin his web and to glare out upon the world-one could almost see the wild flash of his crazy eye, as one looked up at his window; and how all these streets and places still seem to echo to the step and the voice of the woman who travelled among them for so long and to such purpose! In the oldest part of the town the house is still shown where Ste. Chantal dwelt before the "Maison de la Galerie" was taken, that one in which she first began her conventual life; and it was thither I told the coachman to drive me, before visiting the convent itself. MADAME DE CHANTAL. at the Lyceum Theatre. He has a broad hat, a gun, a splendid warlike appearance; he has shot a rabbit. He looks terrible enough; but just as the train is starting, a little child comes running up and leaps straight into the arms of this bellicose-looking personage. Then we start off again, travelling past vineyards and villages, past rural country scenes, all bounded and enclosed by swelling hills. As the train proceeds, the scene changes; a torrent is rushing down far below in a shadowy defile, between rocks heaped pile upon pile; the green and golden veils of autumn are falling from every ridge; and creepers, and straggling ivy, and unaccustomed flowers, with wild, sweet heads, are starting from the rocks; and mountain ash trees here and there, with their red berries lighting up the shade. A sound of dashing waters from A sound of dashing waters from the stream is singing an accompaniment to the wheels of The man pointed with his whip, and I got out of the carriage and looked up the old perpendicular street, at the tall houses, piled each upon each, with broad eaves casting their shadows, and broken wooden galleries running along the weather-stained fronts, where rags that seemed almost as old as the houses themselves were fluttering. Here, indeed, was a chapter come to life out of my printed book, with sounds in the air and a burning sky, with the women knitting at their doors, and the children starting from every flight of steps. It was not quite Italy, but almost Italy. Every one stared at me as I went along. Once I stopped, breathless, half-way up the hill, opposite a house with a carving over the door, and "1602" cut deep into the stone. Somehow, as I looked, this ancient date seemed to turn into the present. It was like Hans Andersen's story of "The Shoes of Fortune." 1886 was not; the hour was twelve o'clock, the month was September, the year was 1602. Who was this coming striding down the street, with heavy footfalls, and long, flapping robes? Was it St. Francis in his wellknown square cap, with earnest looks and gestures, and dark, burning eyes, not to be forgotten? No! it was only a dull priest from the seminary up above, with a vacant, indifferent face, who shrugged his worn and greasy shoulders, pointed vaguely, and trudged on without answering when I asked him which was the house where Ste. Chantal had lived. As he disappeared down the hill, an aged woman, with a long, shabby garment hanging from her bent back, came slowly up, looking curiously at me with a bright inquisitive face. "Ma dame, madame, you are door, I looked up the heavy stone staircase, and round and about the filthy old house, and tried to imagine it in its once order and good trim, and inhabited by the saint and her faithful companions; and then I somehow find myself descending by a black and gloomy staircase into a cellar below the level of the street. "This is where the corpse was found," says Marianne, pointing with her skinny finger to a hole in the masonry; and I then learn that it had been a promiscuous discovery not in any way connected with the saint or her times. As I look from the black hole to the gloomy exit and remember my purse and my gold watch, I give one thought to my distant home and family, and cannot help wondering. whether Jean and Marianne would have much difficulty in adding to the attractions of this interesting burying - place; but one glance at their honest faces makes me ashamed of my terrors. "Have you seen enough?" says old Marianne. "Dark, isn't it? and what a hole, eh?" And so we all file up again after the candle, which Jean blows out when we get to the top once more. Absurd as this hunt after associations had been, I seemed to come away from the old street with a clearer impression in my mind of the life which I was trying to realise than that which any relics or printed words could conjure up. I could imagine the determined woman, with her strong, unbending will, toiling up the steep, passing under the stone doorway, coming hither, the first stage of her long life's journey over, bent upon the sacrifice of all that remained of her past, with a selfish, irrepressible passion to serve God and to find herself: that motive self, in pursuit of which we are unconsciously struggling and striving all our lives long. MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ. looking for the house of la mère Chantal? This is it, this is it; look at the date over the door! Oh! many come, and we show it to them all. Here is Marianne; she will tell you the same; we live in the street nowthe nuns are all gone." Poor souls! I wondered to what denomination of Suffering Necessity they themselves belonged, to what Order of that wide community in which no dignities of renunciation and self-infliction are needed to add to the austerity of its daily rule. They hobble into the house, and beckon for me to follow. "Not upstairs," says Marianne; "we cannot take madame upstairs, Antoinette; there are too many locataires for that; but Jean shall show the place where the dead body was found." And Jean, a young locksmith in a big leather apron, appears with a spluttering candle from out of a low, arched, ground-floor room, in which he had been at work. While he was unlocking a heavy III. It is not often that one can get into the confidence of saints; they rarely belong to a world which one can in the least realise, but here is an exception, for before being a saint, Ste. Chantal was a great lady, belonging to that seventeenth century of which we have all read and heard so much, the grandmother of the incomparable Marquise, whose affairs, whose moods, whose many troubles and infinite pleasures seem almost our own at times. You can trace a certain likeness of mind as well as of feature between Sévigné, the brilliant Court lady, and the clearheaded and impressionable saint of blessed memory. Jeanne Fremyot, Baronne de Rabutin Chantal, better known as Ste. Chantal, was the daughter of a wellknown President Fremyot, the upright defender of the King's rights in Burgundy in the wars of the Ligue. She was the wife of Cristopher, Baron de RabutinChantal. It was in 1601 that this brilliant and fiery gentleman left the Court of Henri IV. to retire to his castle at Bourbilly, where his wife, his son, and his daughters were living and anxiously desiring his pre sence. He was a man of great cultivation, as well as of great valour. He was tenderly attached to his wife; no wonder that he soon wearied of the routine of Court life and its wearisome and unresting parade. Perhaps some presentiment warned him that his time at home was not to be very long. Little Marie-Aymée, the eldest girl, was about three, the boy was five, little Françoise de Rabutin was but two years old when the father returned, to leave his home no more. The third little girl, who died in childhood, was born only a fortnight before the cruel accident which carried off Baron Cristopher in his prime. He was shooting bêtes fauves, "wild animals," in a wood behind the castle with a friend, when this latter, deceived by the colour of the Baron's dress, fired at him through the trees and gave him his deathwound His wife, rising from her bed, hurried to his side. "Madame," he said to her, "the decrees of Heaven are just; we must love and die." "No, no! you must live," said she passionately, and she urged the physicians to cure him. "If it does not please the Heavenly Physician, these doctors can do nothing," says the Baron; and after nine days he died, forgiving and resigned. It was after his death that the widow determined to devote the remainder of her life to the service of God. She dismissed her numerous servants, gave away her jewels and precious stones, redoubled her prayers. "If I had not been withheld by the bond of my four little ones," she once wrote, "I should have hidden myself away in the Holy Land to end my days." But as it was, she determined to fulfil to the utmost her duty by her children. Little Marie-Aymée was the only one among them who was able by her tender caresses to bring any comfort to the anguish of the mother. Sad as Jeanne's condition then seemed, it became still more cruel when the old Baron de Chantal, her father-in-law, desired her to come with her children and dwell with him in his Château de Monthelon, threatening to marry again and to disinherit them if they failed to obey. For seven years Madame de Rabutin-Chantal remained patiently in the house of this very violent and ill-conducted old gentleman, devoting herself to the care of the neighbouring poor; to that of her own children, whom she carefully kept from all evil communication; and also trying, by gentleness and good example, to mitigate the evils of the old Baron's way of life, and to improve the condition of some illegitimate children, whose presence, and that of the upstart servant their mother, was not the least of her daily trials. Her chief consolation lay in the charity with which she met the troubles of her life, and in her prayers. Occasionally she went home to her own family for rest and refreshment. She was once visiting her father at Dijon when she had a vision which influenced the whole of her future life; she was walking along one day, sadly meditating upon her difficulties, and praying for help and guidance, when she suddenly saw the form of a priest sitting at the foot of a mound in front of her. He wore a cassock and rochet, and a square cap, unlike anything she had ever seen, and a voice within her told her that this was one beloved of God and man, into whose hands she was to place her conscience. The vision disappeared, but when Jeanne afterwards met the Bishop of Geneva, St. François de Sales, at her brother's house in Dijon, she immediately knew him to be the person she had seen in her vision. The Bishop had also, so the story runs, already made the acquaintance of Madame de Chantal in a dream. Acting by his advice, she returned to Monthelon, and patiently submitted herself for some years more to her father-in-law, though her heart already burned within her in her desire to be about her life's work. But Jeanne now had a friend and an adviser whom she could trust, who assisted her in all her difficulties and cares. The Bishop's remarkable insight into other people's hearts and experiences still impresses us, as well as his unremitting and unstinting efforts to help to direct and stimulate all those depending upon him. Ste. Chantal has herself described him in distinct and vivid terms. "No one," says Ste. Beuve-" no one ever better painted a man's spirit, nor expressed so clearly things which might have seemed almost inexpressible." St. Francis seems to have been a sort of Dr. Arnold among saints, with a practical genius for saving other souls as well as his own, and an especial sympathy for the young life around him. Little Marie-Aymée, Jeanne de Chantal's daughter, had a strong feeling for him; she used to hide behind a curtain so as to gaze at this great Bishop, who use to call the children his petit peuple, his petit ménage, and who loved to be surrounded by them. It was by his advice that Madame de Chantal, who had been admirable but somewhat stern as a mother, now relaxed her rule, and allowed something of "that gaiety necessary for their tender spirits." "Vivez toute joyeuse," the Bishop used to say to her "be happy in God, who is your joy and your consolation." Little Marie-Aymée was a remarkable, beautiful, and well-grown child. Her mother had once destined her for the Life Religious; but when MarieAymée had reached the age of eight years, it was determined, in a consultation with the two grandfathers and with the child herself, that she was more fitted for the world than for the cloister. St. Francis was certainly in advance of his time when he urged upon parents the duty of respecting their children's will. Little Aymée grew up the delight of her aged grandfather De Chantal, and of President Fremyot. She is described as beautiful as an angel, daily kneeling in the chapel by her mother, and praying in silent orison. Very early in life her fate was decided. On one occasion, when Madame de Chantal had followed the procession of the Holy Sacrament through the streets of Annecy, she returned, breathless with fatigue, to the Bishop's palace, and Bernard de Sales, the youngest brother of St. Francis, among other gentlemen, advanced to help her up the steps. Madame de Chantal accepted young Bernard's arm. "I shall take him," she said, smiling, to one of the company; and these words, being repeated, had seemed prophetic to Madame de Boisy, the mother of the De Sales brothers. When Marie-Aymée had reached the mature age of twelve years, Madame de Boisy sent St. Francis to ask the little girl's mother for her hand in marriage for Bernard, her youngest and most cherished son. Never was Madame de Chantal more troubled, more perplexed, says the history; by degrees she came to share all Madame de Boisy's ardent desires; but it required all her prayers, all her determination to persuade the two grandfathers to agree to her wishes. The President Fremyot most reluctantly consented; writing to the Bishop, he says, "Only the strength of the desire of the Baroness could have withdrawn the little one from his arms, from between his knees, from before his eyes." but the place cannot be much changed since the saint first came thither. There are the cross-lights in her bedroom, and the tall chimney-piece where the seven hearts are carved in stone, and over which hangs the portrait of St. Francis. "He was, for all his gentleness, a man of strong and passionate temper," said the good nun, very reverently, as she showed me the old panel, and she added, "At his death they found out what restraint he had ever put upon himself: his liver was all broken into little pieces." It was here, to the Gallery House, that little MarieAymée must have come after her husband's de ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. marvel, beautiful as a lovely day, with modesty in her countenance, with noble ways, yet affable and gracious to all who came to her respecting the conduct of the house." After Aymée's marriage her mother felt that the time had at last come for herself to retire from the world, in company with certain pious ladies, taking with her the two younger girls to educate. The story of her parting with her son is well known; the young Baron passionately flung himself across the threshold of the door; the mother, bursting into tears, stepped across his body; but, immediately turning round, she faced her desolate family with a radiant face, and burst into a triumphant Psalm. They show Ste. Chantal's room in the old convent at Annecy, the Maison de la Galerie, in which she finally settled. It is an old, sunny house, with massive walls; and still, bare lights; and a tranquil, vine-wreathed garden. The galerie fell into decay long ago, and was removed; parture for the army, and where St. Francis brought her the cruel news of poor Bernard's untimely death. "Hélas!" said the poor Bishop, as he hurried to the convent with his heavy tidings, "my own affliction is charged with that of our poor little one, and of our mère de Chantal." When he came to Marie-Aymée, he heard her confession and blessed her, speaking with encouraging cheerfulness. "And now, my daughter," he said, "are we not anxious to receive from the hand of God that which it is His will to inflict upon us?" "Ah, yes," little Aymée answered with a deep sigh; "but, O my father, you have come to tell me that my husband is dead." Before many weeks the young wife herself and her infant child had rejoined the husband. The wonder is that any one survived in those days, for we read that immediately after the birth of the baby, while the young mother lay in great suffering, all the ladies of the town came up to visit her, and to condole with her; the nuns stood round about the poor child's bedside, and listened to her dying exhortations; she made her will; she was received, as she lay dying, into the Order of the Visitation, after communicating and partaking of the last unction; and so the pure spirit passed away. Poor St. Francis, saint as he was, would not meet the bereaved mother. "I know the strength of her soul," he said, "the weakness of my own ;" and he fled away across to the fields. He spoke of la mère Chantal as a saint, but of Marie-Aymée as though she had been an angel from heaven. As time passed, other troubles came to try the courage |