She wrote to Mme de
Sable, who had lent her the manuscript--
"Ah, Madame, how corrupt he must be in mind and heart to be capable of
imagining such things! I am so frightened by it that I should say, if
this were not a matter too serious for jest, that such maxims are
likely to do more to upset him than all the plates of soup he
swallowed at your house the other day."
As the "Maximes" pass from hand to hand, we see the spiritual Maenads
of Port Royal clustering "with a lovely frightened mien" about the
sinister author, while he turns "his beauteous face haughtily another
way," like young Apollo in the Phrygian highlands. The word
"pessimism" was, I believe, unknown until the year 1835, but this is
what Mme de La Fayette and the rest of the Jansenist ladies meant by
"corruption." Perhaps the most celebrated of all the sayings of her
terrible friend is that which declares that "In the misfortunes of our
friends there is always something which gives us no displeasure." She
was about to learn that no one had a nobler practice in friendship
than the cynic who wrote this: "There are good marriages, but no
delicious ones"; Mme de La Fayette's own marriage had been not at all
delicious and not even good.
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