Madame de Sevigné's delight in gardens pervades many of her letters: that of July 1677, paints the charms which one in Paris gave her: "I was invited in the kindest manner possible to sup at Gourville's with Mad. de Scomberg, Mad. de Frontenac, Mad. de Coulanges, the Duke, M. de la Rochefoucault, Barillon, Briole, Coulanges, Sevigné, in a garden of the hotel de Condé; there were water-works, bowers, terraces, six hautboys, six violins, and the most melodious flutes; a supper which seemed to be prepared by enchantment, an admirable bass-viol, and a resplendent moon, which witnessed all our pleasures." Of her own garden, formed by her own pure taste, M. de Coulanges thus speaks: "I have spent a most delightful fortnight here. It is impossible sufficiently to praise the gardens of the _Rocks_; they would have their beauties even at Versailles, which is saying every thing." And that she delighted in what she well knew how to describe, is evident from her letter from _Chaulnes_: "This is a very handsome house, which carries with it an air of grandeur, though it is partly unfurnished, and the gardens neglected. There is scarcely any verdure to be seen, and not a nightingale to be heard; in short, it is still winter, on the seventeenth of April. But it is easy to imagine the beauties of these walks; every thing is regular and magnificent; a spacious parterre in front, bowling-greens opposite the wings, a large playing fountain in the parterre, two in the bowling-greens, and another at a distance in the middle of a field, which is well named _the solitary_; a fine country, beautiful apartments, and a pleasant prospect, though flat." She in another letter from _Chaulnes_ says; "I was walking alone the other day, in these beautiful alleys." And in a subsequent one she says: "It is a pity to be obliged to quit so beautiful and so charming a place." Her frequent mention in her letters of _my pretty walks_ at the _Rocks_, sufficiently paints her delight in her own garden. In compliment to this lady, I cannot help applying to her the exact words which Petrarch applies to Laura: _une haute intelligence, un coeur pure, qui a la sagesse de l'âge avancé, ait le brilliant de la belle jeunesse_. Few passed more happy hours in their garden at _Baville_, than the illustrious Lamoignon, of whom it was said, that "Son ame égaloit son génie; simple dans ses moeurs, austere dans sa conduite, il étoit le plus doux des hommes, quand la veuve et l'orphein étoient à ses pieds, _Boileau_, _Racine_, _Bourdaloue_, _Rapin_, composoit sa petite cour,"--and whom Rapin invokes, not only in his poem on gardens, _My flowers aspiring round your brows shall twine, And in immortal wreaths, shall all their beauties join;_