Is this letter from Madame de Sévigné authentic?

Question

According to this webpage, Madame de Sévigné wrote the following letter to her daughter (Madame de Grignan).

Surtout, ma chère enfant, ne venez point à Paris !

Plus personne ne sort de peur de voir ce fléau s’abattre sur nous, il se propage comme un feu de bois sec. Le roi et Mazarin nous confinent tous dans nos appartements.
Monsieur Vatel, qui reçoit ses charges de marée, pourvoie à nos repas qu'il nous fait livrer,
Cela m’attriste, je me réjouissais d’aller assister aux prochaines représentations d’une comédie de Monsieur Corneille "Le Menteur", dont on dit le plus grand bien.
Nous nous ennuyons un peu et je ne peux plus vous narrer les dernières intrigues à la Cour, ni les dernières tenues à la mode.

Heureusement, je vois discrètement ma chère amie, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, nous nous régalons avec les Fables de Monsieur de La Fontaine, dont celle, très à propos, « Les animaux malades de la peste » ! « Ils ne mouraient pas tous, mais tous étaient frappés ».

Je vous envoie deux drôles de masques ; c’est la grand'mode. tout le monde en porte à Versailles. C’est un joli air de propreté, qui empêche de se contaminer,
Je vous embrasse, ma bonne, ainsi que Pauline.

which Google Translate translates as:

Above all, my dear child, do not come to Paris!

No one goes out for fear of seeing this plague fall on us, it spreads like a fire in dry wood. The king and Mazarin confine us all in our apartments.
Mr. Vatel, who receives his tide loads, provides our meals which he has delivered to us,
It saddens me, I was excited to attend the upcoming performances of a comedy by Monsieur Corneille "The Liar", of which they say the best things. We are bored a bit and I can no longer tell you about the latest court intrigues, or the latest fashionable outfits.

Fortunately, I discreetly see my dear friend, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, we are enjoying the Fables of Monsieur de La Fontaine, including very aptly "The animals sick of the plague"! "Not all of them died, but all were struck."

I send you two funny masks; this is the great fashion. Everyone wears them in Versailles. It’s a nice air of cleanliness, which prevents contamination.
I kiss you, my dear, as well as Pauline.

The punctuation is incorrect, which makes me feel like the original letter might be different. Also, the letter is strangely similar to the lockdown measures in response to Covid-19 today. Is the letter real? Is the entire letter as written originally?

Answer 1

It's hard to prove a negative, but here are some points against its authenticity:

• This 12-volume edition of Madame de Sévigné's letters doesn't have any letter dated 30 April 1687 (the date given in the link). My French isn't so good, but I didn't immediately see any mention of plague in the letters around that date.

• This shorter, searchable edition doesn't have any letter of that date either. The only hit for the word "fléau" is in a letter of 19 May 1676, and it appears to be in reference to a plague affecting the region where her daughter lives. The only hits for the name Vatel are from two letters of 24 and 26 April, 1671, telling of a butler named Vatel (without the honorific Monsieur) who had recently died.

• The only prominent person named Mazarin associated with French royalty seems to have been Cardinal Jules Mazarin, chief minister to two kings of France - but he died in 1661, and so could not have been keeping people in their apartments in 1687. I couldn't find any mention of any other notable person by that name.

• The date in the link is given as "Jeudi, le 30ème d'avril de 1687" (Thursday, 30th of April 1687). But 30 April 1687 was a Wednesday. (This is in the Gregorian calendar, which France had been using since 1582; and anyway, in the Julian calendar it would have been Saturday.)

The other "dropped names" seem to be consistent as to dates. Le Menteur was a real play by Corneille, first performed in 1644. "The Animals Sick of the Plague" was a real fable by La Fontaine; it seems to have been in Book VII of his Fables, which according to Wikipedia was published in 1678. Madame de La Fayette lived from 1634 to 1693 and was indeed a friend of Madame de Sévigné.

Answer 2

A similar text was published on Instagram on April 29, 2020 by Véronique de Bure, a French author and one of the directors for Flammarion, a well-known French publishing house.

Un texte similaire a été publié sur Instagram le 29 avril 2020 par Véronique de Bure, une auteure française et directrice littéraire chez Flammarion.

Translation of the accompanying text by the author:

“By all means, dear child, do not come to Paris!” Freely imagined in the style of Madame de Sévigné's letters to her daughter. #madamedesevigne #epidemic #imaginarycorrespondence

Answer 3

This is a hoax.

In 1687, there was no epidemic in France. The only one recorded at that date was that of measles in the "Thirteen Colonies" which were the colonies of the British Empire in North America that gave birth to the United States of America.

Translated from Belgium's Hoax-Net.