ABSTRACT
Shortly after her forty-seventh birthday, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, the Marquise de Sévigné, was asked in a letter sent by her beloved daughter, Madame de Grignan, whether she was still fond of life. She replied on 16 March 1672 in the following terms: ‘I admit that I think it has some acute sorrows. But I am even more repelled by death and I feel that I am so unfortunate to have to finish all this by death, and that if I could go backwards I would ask for nothing better’. Madame de Sévigné’s reflections on her mortality were occasioned by the illness, and likely imminent demise, of an aunt to whom she was close. Her anxiety is communicated in the string of questions which follow the passage cited above:
And how shall I leave it? Which way? Through which door? When will it be? In what frame of mind? Shall I suffer thousands and thousands of pains and die in desperation? Shall I have a stroke? Shall I die in an accident? How shall I stand with God? 1
