fever carried him off. I am grieved to the bottom of my heart." At length, in the month of September, madame de Grignan returned to Provence. Her mother writes. "Do not tell me that I have no cause to regret you: I have, indeed, every cause. I know not what you have taken into your head. For myself, I remember only your friendship, your care, your kindness, your caresses. I have lost all these: I regret them; and nothing in the world can efface the recollection, nor console me for my loss." M. de Sévigné was at this time in Britany, and was elected deputy, by the nobles, to attend on the governor. "The title of new comer," writes his mother, "renders him important, and causes him to be mixed up in every thing. I hope he will marry: he will never again be so considerable. He has spent ten years at court and in the camp. The first year of peace he gives to his country. He can never be looked on so favourably as this year." Unfortunately, he deranged all these schemes by falling in love inopportunely; and he lingered in Britany, grasping all the money he could, felling trees, and squandering the proceeds without use or pleasure, while his mother awaited his return anxiously, and bore the blame of his absence, as it was supposed that he was detained by business of hers. The time when he could settle was not come. He was of that disposition which is not unfrequent among men. Gifted with vivacity, wit, and good humour, agreeable and gay, it appeared, as madame de Sévigné said, that he was exactly fitted for the situation at court, which, as lieutenant of the dauphin's company of gendarmes, he naturally filled. But he was discontented: the restraint annoyed him; pleasure palled on him; he was eager to sell out, to bury himself in his province. One reason was that he was not regarded with an eye of favour by the king. Madame de Sévigné herself felt this disfavour, arising from her having been of the party of the fronde, a friend of Fouquet, and, lastly, a jansenist. [Sidenote: 1680. Ætat. 54.]