number and consideration of those who continued to associate
with her have caused to subsist in our day what the Spaniards call
_finezas_."

Here is the grand element of the original _femme precieuse_, and it
appears farther, in a detail also reported by Madame de Motteville, that
Madame de Sable had a passionate admirer in the accomplished Duc de
Montmorency, and apparently reciprocated his regard; but discovering (at
what period of their attachment is unknown) that he was raising a lover's
eyes toward the queen, she broke with him at once. "I have heard her
say," tells Madame de Motteville, "that her pride was such with regard to
the Duc de Montmorency, that at the first demonstrations which he gave of
his change, she refused to see him any more, being unable to receive with
satisfaction attentions which she had to share with the greatest princess
in the world." There is no evidence except the untrustworthy assertion
of Tallement de Reaux, that Madame de Sable had any other _liaison_ than
this; and the probability of the negative is increased by the ardor of
her friendships. The strongest of these was formed early in life with
Mademoiselle Dona d'Attichy, afterward Comtesse de Maure; it survived the
effervescence of youth, and the closest intimacy of middle age, and was
only terminated by the death of the latter in 1663. A little incident in
this friendship is so characteristic in the transcendentalism which was
then carried into all the affections, that it is worth relating at
length. Mademoiselle d'Attichy, in her grief and indignation at
Richelieu's treatment of her relative, quitted Paris, and was about to
join her friend at Sable, when she suddenly discovered that Madame de
Sable, in a letter to Madame de Rambouillet, had said that her greatest
happiness would be to pass her life with Julie de Rambouillet, afterward
Madame de Montausier. To Anne d'Attichy this appears nothing less than
the crime of _lese-amitie_. No explanations will appease her: she
refuses to accept the assurance that the offensive expression was used
simply out of unreflecting conformity to the style of the Hotel de
Rambouillet--that it was mere "_galimatias_." She gives up her journey,
and writes a letter, which is the only one Madame de Sable chose to
preserve, when, in her period of devotion, she sacrificed the records of
her youth. Here it is:

"I have seen this letter in which you tell me there is so much
_galim