Les Grands Ecrivains Francais : Madame de la Fayette. Par
in Comte d'Haussonville, de l'Academie Francaise. (Hachette et Cie., Paris.)It is difficult to understand the title of the authoress of the " Princesse. de Cleves " to be considered one of the " great " French writers. But the worship of the age of Louis Quatorze is still strong among Frenchmen, most of all in that class to which M. d'Haussonville belongs. Yet one should not look a gift-horse in the mouth, nor quarrel with the occasion which sets in motion a pen like that of M. d'Haussonville, one of the few in France which have retained the secret of a style " classical" in the best sense of the term, bright, flowing, easy, limpid,—one of those styles which do not picturesquely reflect a subject as if it were outside of them, but simply show it through them, as if they flowed over it in absolute transparency. It is strange how insatiable, even under a Republic, French curiosity remains about the second-rate female personages of the grand siècle. Among these, indeed, Madame de la Fayette remains in some respects an enigma, and a recent discovery renders her no less so. We must accept the fact that for many years she lived with one of the bitterest cynics of the age, La Rochefoucauld, and was, in a thoroughly corrupt age, reputed to have done so without loss of honour. But till lately she was believed to have been a widow during this liais n; it has now been found out that her husband, who in one letter, she says, " adored " her, actually survived La Rochefoucauld. She was the authoress of three novels, the most important of which, the "Princesse de Cleves," has for subject the old one of the conflict in a wife between duty and love, duty in this case having the upper hand, and the wife having the courage to confess to her husband the struggle of her affec- tions. Perhaps the most curious part of the volume consists in an account M. d'Haussonville gives of a copy of La Rochefoucauld's " Maximes," annotated evidently by some woman, whom he believes, and not improbably, to have been Madame de la Fayette herself,—a very clever woman, at any rate. Thus La Roche- foucauld (Maxim 474) : " There are few women whose merit lasts longer than their beauty." "That depends on the use you wish to make of their merit," is the note.
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