A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Jardins, (Mary Catharine des)
At the age of nineteen or twenty, reflecting on the smallness of her fortune, she went to Paris, where, though she had little beauty, she soon became sought for the charms of her understanding. M. Ville-Dieu, an amiable man, possessed of a good fortune, paid his addresses to her, and married her; but it was not long before his death plunged her in grief, and she retired to a nunnery; but, being a woman of spirit and vivacity, did not continue long there, but came again into the world, and married, secondly, M. de la Chate, whom she also buried. Being greatly afflicted with this new misfortune, she absolutely renounced marriage, yet her ear was always open to love addresses, which she answered in little poems and letters.
By one of her letters, wherein she gives a very agreeable description of the Hague, it appears she had been in Holland. She is said to be the inventor of novels or romances taken from familiar life and incident, which she wrote with such a pleasant vivacity, that the long romances of eight or ten volumes, as those of Cyrus, Cleopatra, Cassandra, &c. were seldom read afterwards. Mr. Bayle tells us, that at first she set out in this long way, and laid a plan to contain one of several volumes, designing to represent under fictitious names, and with some alterations, the adventures of a great lady, who married beneath her dignity; but, being threatened with the resentment of the persons concerned, dropped her design, and devised the new way of novels. Her works were soon after printed in ten volumes, and reprinted at Paris in 1702.