The subject of this memoir, as celebrated in her own particular department of literature as Shakspere or Moliere were in theirs, would have been very much surprised to find herself occupying a conspicuous place in the "Lives of Celebrated Women." She made no pretensions to authorship, and her "Letters," which have been esteemed models of epistolary composition, are the unpremeditated and unrevised outpourings of a mind rich in wit and good sense, and a heart filled with the warmest affections, and were written without the slightest idea that they would ever be read by any other persons than those to whom they were addressed. Maria de Robertin-Chantal, Baroness de Chantal and Bombilly, was born on the 5th of February, 1626. Her father was the head of a distinguished and noble family of Burgundy. Of his rough wit and independence his daughter has preserved a specimen. When Schomberg was transformed, by Louis XIII., from a minister of finance to a field-marshal, Chantal wrote to him the following letter:-- "My Lord, "Rank--black beard--intimacy. "CHANTAL."-- meaning that he owed his advancement, not to his military exploits, but to his rank, his having a black beard, like his master, and to his intimacy with that master. When Maria was about a year and a half old, the English made a descent upon the Island of Rhe; and her father placed himself at the head of a party of gentlemen who volunteered to assist in repelling them, in which honorable service he lost his life. His widow survived him five years. She was the daughter of a secretary of state, and her family, that of De Coulanges, belonged to the class of nobility who owed that distinction to civil services, and who were known as "nobles of the robe," to distinguish them from those who could trace their descent from the heroes of the crusades and the days of chivalry. It seems to have been expected that the paternal grandmother would have taken charge of the education of the little orphan. But she was too much occupied with the affairs of the other world, and with founding religious houses,--of which eighty-seven owed their existence to her,--and Maria was left in the hands of her maternal relations. The pious labors of the "Blessed Mother of Chantal" were acknowledged by the head of the church, and her name now fills a place in the calendar, among the saints. The guardianship of the young baroness devolved on her uncle, Christophe de Coulanges, abbe de Livry.