ABSTRACT
Madame de Sévigné understood that life in the provinces was different from that at Court, and consoled her daughter, the comtesse de Grignan, wife of the lieutenantgénéral of Provence, that although life might be boring, and the company tedious (here and in further correspondence referring to her husband’s aunt, the comtesse d’Harcourt, who lived at Pont-Saint-Esprit in the Vivarais),2 she nevertheless enjoyed a more elevated stature and position of authority than she might have occupied had she stayed in Paris.
