"You know Lower Brittany very well, do you not, dear friend?"
"Not so well as the coast. Les Rochers is in Upper Brittany, you know. I know the south better still. Ah, what a charming journey I once took along the Loire with my friend _Bien-Bon_, the Abbé de Coulanges. We found it the most enchanting country in the world--the country of feasts and of famine; feasts for us and famine for the people. I remember we had to cross the river; our coach was placed on the barge, and we were rowed along by stout peasants. Through the glass windows of the coach we looked out at a series of changing pictures--the views were charming. We sat, of course, entirely at our ease, on our soft cushions. The country people, crowded together below, were--ugh!--like pigs in straw."
"Was Bien-Bon with you when you made that little excursion to St. Germain?" queried the duchesse.
"Ah, that was a gay night," joyously responded Madame de Sévigné. "How well we amused ourselves on that little visit that we paid Madame de Maintenon--when she was only Madame Scarron."
"Was she so handsome then as they say she was--at that time?"
"Very handsome; she was good, too, and amiable, and easy to talk to; one talked well and readily with her. She was then only the governess of the king's bastards, you know--of the children he had had by Madame de Montespan. That was the first step toward governing the king. Well, one night--the night to which you refer--I remember we were all supping with Madame de La Fayette. We had been talking endlessly! Suddenly it occurred to us it would be a most amusing adventure to take Madame Scarron home, to the very last end of the Faubourg Saint Germain, far beyond where Madame de La Fayette lived--near Vaugirard, out into the Bois, in the country. The Abbé came too. It was midnight when we started. The house, when at last we reached it, we found large and beautiful, with large and fine rooms and a beautiful garden; for Madame Scarron, as governess of the king's children, had a coach and a lot of servants and horses. She herself dressed then modestly and yet magnificently, as a woman should, who spent her life among people of the highest rank. We had a merry outing, returning in high spirits, blessed in having no end of lanterns, and thus assured against robbers."
