I have just read a pleasing, sweet, simple, and even touching narrative, which rests and elevates the mind,--a narrative which all should read as I have done. It concerns, once more, Mme. de Maintenon; but Mme. de Maintenon taken this time on her practical side, which is least open to discussion, namely, her work and foundation of Saint-Cyr. M. le duc de Noailles had already given a brief but interesting account of it in his prelude to the "History of Madame de Maintenon," but M. Théophile Lavallée has now published a complete and connected "History of Saint-Cyr," which may be called definitive. [Illustration: _Mme. de Maintenon_] In studying the history of Mme. de Maintenon there has happened to M. Lavallée what will happen to all sound but prejudiced minds (and I sometimes meet with such) who will approach this distinguished personage and take pains to know her in her habit of life. I will not say that he is converted to her; that would be an ill-rendering of a simply equitable impression received by an upright mind; but he has brought justice to bear on that mass of fantastic and odiously vague imputations which have long been in circulation as to the assumed historical rôle of this celebrated woman. He sees her as she was, wholly concerned for the salvation of the king, for his reform, his decent amusement, for the interior life of the royal family, for the relief of the people, and doing all this, it is true, with more rectitude than enthusiasm, more precision than grandeur. On the threshold of Saint-Cyr M. Lavallée has placed a portrait of its illustrious founder in which lives again that grace of hers, so real, so sober, so indefinable, which, liable as it is to disappear in the distance, should not be overlooked when at times her image seems to us too hard and cold. He borrows this portrait from a Dame de Saint-Cyr whose pen, in its vivacity and colour, is worthy of a Sévigné: "She had, at fifty years of age, a most agreeable tone of voice, an affectionate air, an open, smiling forehead, natural gesture with her beautiful hands, eyes of fire, and motions of an easy figure so cordial, so harmonious, that she put into the shade the greatest beauties of the Court.... At a first glance she seemed imposing, as if veiled in severity; the smile and the voice dispersed the cloud."