so the world is just too small / To find in it anyone at all / Who could be deemed worthy of her. / And the belle, knowing it well, / Disdains all, finds none acceptable." When Françoise-Marguerite reached the relatively advanced age of 23 without a husband, her mother began to despair of ever marrying off her daughter. However, on 4 December 1668, Madame de Sévigné wrote to her cousin Bussy, "At long last, the prettiest girl in France is marrying – not the prettiest boy – but one of the most honest men in the kingdom: he is Monsieur de Grignan". François Adhémar de Monteil, comte de Grignan, 36 years old and twice a widower, hailed from an ancient and distinguished Provençal family. He was remarkably ugly (his ugliness being a frequent family joke), yet tall, graceful, athletic, and charming. By all indications, he and Mademoiselle de Sévigné had fallen in love. They married in Paris on 27 January 1669. That same year, Louis XIV named Monsieur de Grignan the lieutenant general of the King in Provence. Grignan was thus obliged to leave Paris and return to his family castle in the south of France. Madame de Grignan, having become pregnant shortly after the wedding, was convinced by her mother to remain in Paris for the birth of her child. A daughter, Marie-Blanche was born in 1670. On 4 February 1671, Madame de Grignan left Paris to join her husband in Provence (the baby girl being shipped off to a convent for life.) The separation from Françoise-Marguerite left Madame de Sévigné bereft. "I look in vain for my daughter; I no longer see her, and every step she takes increases the distance between us. (I am) still weeping, still swooning with grief," she wrote to Françoise-Marguerite only hours after her departure. Thus began their correspondence. Over the span of nearly 30 years, Madame de Sévigné sent well over 1,000 letters to her daughter in the far-away Chateau de Grignan, often composing them at the rate of 20 pages a day. Bibliography Madame de Sévigné. . Texte établi, présenté et annoté par Roger Duchêne. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. 1973–78. 3 vol.. Frances Mossiker. Madame de Sevigne: a life and letters. New York: Knopf. 1983. . Roger de Bussy-Rabutin. References External links Mme de Sévigné sur le site de Roger Duchêne Nobility from Paris Counts of Grignan 1646 births