It was soon after this scene and during the very short time that the renewed friendship lasted that Madame wrote to Mme. de Maintenon the following letter:-- Wednesday, June 15, 11 in the morning. If I had not had fever and great agitation, Madame, from the sad employment of yesterday, in opening the caskets containing Monsieur's papers, scented with the most violent perfumes, you would have heard from me earlier; but I can no longer delay expressing to you how touched I am by the favours that the king did yesterday to my son, and the manner in which he has treated both him and myself; and as all this is the result of your good counsels, Madame, be pleased to allow me to express my sense of it, and to assure you that I shall keep, very inviolably, the promise of friendship which I made to you; I beg you to continue to me your counsels and advice, and not to doubt a gratitude that can end only with my life. ÉLISABETH CHARLOTTE. Proud as Madame was, there was nothing for her, after such a step and such a reconciliation so painful to the core, but to become henceforth the intimate and cordial friend of Mme. de Maintenon, or her implacable enemy. The latter sentiment prevailed. In spite of efforts which may have been for a time sincere, the conditions and the repugnances were too strong; antipathies rose up once more and carried all before them. Madame deserves consideration by more than one claim, and especially because, having written much, her testimony stands and is invoked in many cases. When the present edition of letters and fragments of letters by M. Brunet is exhausted, why should he not undertake to form a complete collection, leaving nothing out that could enrich and enlighten it on the German side, and adding only such notes and French erudition as may be strictly necessary? We should then have, not exactly an historical document added to so many others, but a great chronicle of manners and morals, a fiery social gossip, by one whom we may call the Gui Patin or the Tallemant des Reaux of the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. We should thus gain a vivid, witty, and ruthless book, which would make a pendant to Saint-Simon on more than one ground.