The magic of the actress lured Madame de Sévigné’s son, the young Marquis, from the side of Ninon de l’Enclos. ‘He is nothing but a pumpkin fricasseed in snow,’ said the perennial beauty. After the young nobleman thought proper to inform his mother of the interest he took in La Champmeslé, Madame de Sévigné was so proud that she wrote and spoke of her son’s mistress as her daughter-in-law! To her own daughter she wrote as follows of the representation of Racine’s ‘Bajazet,’ in which La Champmeslé acted Roxane: The piece appeared to me fine. My daughter-in-law seemed to me the most miraculously good actress I had ever seen; a hundred thousand times better than Des Œillets; and I, who am allowed to be a very fair player, am not worthy of lighting the candles for her to act by. Seen near, she is plain, and I am not astonished that my son was ‘choked’ at his first interview with her; but when she breaks into verse she is adorable. I wish you could have come with us after dinner; you would not have been bored. You would probably have shed one little tear, since I let fall a score. You would have admired your sister-in-law. Two months later the mother sent to her daughter a copy of the piece, and wrote: ‘If I could send you La Champmeslé with it you would admire it, but without her it loses half its value.’ Racine, as Madame de Sévigné said, wrote pieces for his mistress, and not for posterity. ‘If ever,’ she remarked, ‘he should become less young, or cease to be in love, it will be no longer the same thing.’ The interpreter of the poet produced her wonderful effects dressed in exaggerated court costume, and delivering her _tirades_ in a cadenced, sing-song, rise-and-fall style, marking the rhymes rather than keeping to the punctuation. It was the glory of the well-educated _arlequin_ and _columbine_, ‘dans leur Hostel de Bourgogne,’ to act whole scenes of mock tragedy in the manner of La Champmeslé and her companions. It was such high-toned burlesque as the gifted Robson’s Medea was to the Medea of Ristori. Lovers consumed fortunes to win the smiles they sought from the plain but attractive actress. Dukes, courtiers, simple gentlemen, flung themselves and all they had at her feet. La Fontaine wrote verses in worship of her, when he was not helping her complaisant husband to write comedies. Boileau, in the most stinging of epigrams, has made the conjugal immorality immortal, and de Sévigné has made the nobly-endowed actress live for ever in her letters.