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Letters
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General SummaryMARIE DE RABUTIN-CHANTAL was born in 1626, of a noble French family. She married at eighteen the marquis de Sévigné and at twenty-five became a widow, her worthless husband having been killed in a duel. Though rich and beautiful and the recipient of many offers, the marquise never married again. She devoted herself for the rest of her life — she lived to be seventy — to her two children, to the care of her estate in Brittany, to her social activities in Paris, and to her correspondence. Her Letters, in the complete French edition, extend to as many as fourteen volumes. They furnish a picture of seventeenth-century France unsurpassed for vividness and interest. Madame de Sévigné knew everybody worth knowing from Louis XIV downward; the most famous people of the time courted her for her charm, ready wit, and solid understanding. Condé and Turenne, great generals; Mazarin and Colbert, great statesmen; Corneille, Racine, Molière, great dramatists; Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue, great preachers; Descartes, the great philosopher; Pascal, the great moralist; La Fontaine; La Rochefoucauld — all these and many others scarcely less famous flourished during the lifetime of Madame de Sévigné. She mentions them all in her correspondence and numbered many of them among her intimate friends. The Letters here quoted, in whole or in part, were written from Paris between 1670–1676.
32. The Procession of St.-Geneviève4
Guess from whence I write to you, my dear, — from M. de
Pomponne’s, as you will perceive by the few lines which Madame
de Vins sends you with this. I have been with her, the abbé
Arnauld, and D’Hacqueville to see the procession of St.-Geneviève1
pass. We returned in very good time, — we were back
by two o’clock; there are many that will not return till night.
Do you know that this procession is considered a very fine sight?
It is attended by all the religious orders in their respective habits,
the curates of the several parishes, and all the canons of Notre
Dame, preceded by the archbishop of Paris in his pontificals and
on foot, giving his benediction to the right and left as he goes,
till he comes to the cathedral; I should have said to the left
only, for the abbé of St.-Geneviève marches on the right, barefoot,
and preceded by a hundred and fifty monks, barefoot, also;
the cross and miter are borne before him like the archbishop,
and he gives his benedictions in the same manner, but with great
apparent devotion, humility, and fasting, and an air of penitence
which show that he is to say mass at Notre Dame. The
parliament,2 in their red robes, and the principal companies,
follow the shrine of the saint, which glitters with precious stones,
and is carried by twenty men clad in white, and barefoot. The
provost of the merchants and four counselors are left as hostages
at the church of St.-Geneviève, for the return of this precious
treasure. You will ask me, perhaps, why the shrine was exposed.
It was to put a stop to the continual rains we have had, and to
obtain warm and dry weather, which happened at the very time
they were making preparations for the procession; to which,
as it was intended to obtain for us all kinds of blessings, I presume
we owe his Majesty’s return, who is expected here on
Sunday next. . . .
4 Madame de Sévigné, , pp. 147–148.
1 Patron saint of Paris.
2 The law court of Paris.
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Chicago: "The Procession of St.-Geneviève," Letters in Readings in Modern European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1926), 52. Original Sources, accessed April 26, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=51HWLTMG3TV6QNY.
MLA: . "The Procession of St.-Geneviève." Letters, in Readings in Modern European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, D.C. Heath, 1926, page 52. Original Sources. 26 Apr. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=51HWLTMG3TV6QNY.
Harvard: , 'The Procession of St.-Geneviève' in Letters. cited in 1926, Readings in Modern European History, ed. , D.C. Heath, Boston, pp.52. Original Sources, retrieved 26 April 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=51HWLTMG3TV6QNY.
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