The other day La Biglesse played Tartuffe to the life. Being at table, she happened to tell a fib about some trifle or other, which I noticed, and told her of it; she cast her eyes to the ground, and with a very demure air, "Yes, indeed, madam," said she, "I am the greatest liar in the world; I am very much obliged to you for telling me of it. "We all burst out a-laughing, for it was exactly the tone of Tartuffe,--"Yes, brother, I am a wretch, a vessel of iniquity." M. de La Rochefoucauld appears often by name in the letters. Here he appears anonymously by his effect:-- "Warm affections are never tranquil"; a _maxim_. Not a very sapid bit of gnomic wisdom, certainly. We must immediately make up to our readers, on Madame de Sévigné's behalf, for the insipidity of the foregoing "maxim" of hers, by giving here two or three far more sententious excerpts from the letters, excerpts collected by another:-- There may be so great a weight of obligation that there is no way of being delivered from it but by ingratitude. Long sicknesses wear out grief, and long hopes wear out joy. Shadow is never long taken for substance; you must be, if you would appear to be. The world is not unjust long. Madame de Sévigné makes a confession, which will comfort readers who may have experienced the same difficulty as that of which she speaks:-- I send you M. de Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," revised and corrected, with additions; it is a present to you from himself. Some of them I can make shift to guess the meaning of; but there are others that, to my shame be it spoken, I cannot understand at all. God knows how it will be with you. What was it changed this woman's mood to serious? She could not have been hearing Massillon's celebrated sermon on the "fewness of the elect," for Massillon was yet only a boy of nine years; she may have been reading Pascal's "Thoughts,"--Pascal had been dead ten years, and the "Thoughts" had been published; or she may have been listening to one of those sifting, heart-searching discourses of Bourdaloue,--the date of her letter is March 16, 1672, and during the Lent of that year Bourdaloue preached at Versailles,--when she wrote sombrely as follows:--