The comparison between Livry and Grignan recurs incessantly in her letters, as we have seen. Without doubt she is thinking principally of the health of her daughter when she curses the north wind of Provence and "this sharp and frosty air which pierces the most robust." But, at the same time, how clearly we see that to the harsh and rocky sites of the Midi she prefers northern nature, more gentle, more smiling, and to "this devil of a Rhone, so proud, so haughty, so turbulent," the "beautiful Seine" whose gracious banks are "ornamented with houses, trees, little willows, little canals, which we cause to issue from this great river!" On another occasion she writes: "How excessive you are in Provence! All is extreme, your torridities, your calms, your north winds, your rains out of season, your thunders in autumn: there is nothing gentle nor temperate. Your rivers are out of their banks, your fields drowned and furrowed. Your Durance has almost always the devil in its bosom; your Isle of Brouteron very often submerged." (November 1, 1679.) In the last years of her life, she ended by pardoning Provence for its north wind and its sharp air; one winter, she will even decide that the mountains covered with snow are charming, and she will wish that a painter might reproduce these frightful beauties. And it will be not only the joy of living near her daughter which will cause her thus to abjure her tastes of aforetime, but also the softness of the sun and of the light. There are no old people who can resist this sorcery. In the last letters written to Grignan there is no longer a mention of Livry. We would like to, find today in the house and the garden of the old abbey some trace of the sojourn of Madame de Sévigné; but everything has been upset since the end of the eighteenth century. Here is the dwelling house constructed by the Abbé de Coulanges, in which Madame de Sévigné dwelt. Where was the apartment of the Marquise? In a letter of August 12, 1676, she says: "We have made a casement opening on the garden in the little cabinet, which takes away all the damp and unhealthy air which was there, and which gives us extreme pleasure; it does not make the room warm, for only the rising sun visits it for an hour or two...." The indication is precise. We are oriented, and we recognize very nearly the position of the little cabinet. But was this on the first or second floor? It is impossible to discover any indication. And we walk about soberly in the apartments, deserted since the departure of the Assumptionists: some abandoned books, collections of sermons, rest on a shelf of the library; old priests' hats lie on the floor; a béret lies on a corner of a table, a great map of Paris in the eighteenth century hangs askew upon a wall; the breeze blows through the windows whose panes are broken....