Success surpassed her hopes; she conceived a passion for reading. In the winter of 1652-1653, during which there were few distractions, and the chateau was given over to workmen; when the bad weather and the rough roads rendered Saint-Fargeau unapproachable, and left the castle solitary, she read, or listened to reading while plying her needle, without being bored. I laboured from morning till night at my work and descended from my chamber only to dine or to be present at mass. The winter weather was so bad that walking was impossible. If there ever was a moment of fine weather I rode, or if the ground was too frozen I walked a little to watch my workmen. While I sewed some one read to me, and it was at this period that I began to love reading as I have done ever since. At the end of some years of banishment her "erudition" struck Dr. Huet, who met her at the baths of Forges. "She loves history passionately," says he in his _Memoires_, "but above all, romances, so-called. While her women were dressing her hair, she desired me to read aloud, and no matter what the subject, it provoked a thousand questions on her part. In this I well recognised the acuteness of her mind." The fashionable romances easily pleased a Princess who had a grandeur of soul and loved to meet it in others. They were the works of Gomberville,[8] of La Calprenede, and of Mlle. de Scudery, in which the sheepfolds and dove-cotes of l'Astree had yielded to the heroic adventures and grand sentiments of princes warlike and proud, who, notwithstanding their exotic names, were the same who resisted under Richelieu, and lead the Fronde under Mazarin. The generations born in the first third of the century were charmed with the resemblance to their own heroes which these tales offered them. They went wild with delight over Scythe, Oroondate, or the Grand Cyrus, as they were fascinated with Saint-Preux and Lelia, and many readers remained faithful till death to these writers who had so well expressed the ideals of their youth. At sixty, La Rochefoucauld re-read La Calprenede. Mme. de Sevigne was a grandmother when she found herself "glued" to _Cleopatre_. "The beauty of the sentiments," writes she, "and the violence of the passions, the grandeur of the events, and the marvellous successes of the redoubtable swords, all enchain me as if I were still a little child. The sentiments are of a perfection which satisfy my conception of beautiful souls."[9]