ay, Aman indulges his "vanite" in an
opening monologue to the following effect:

"Whether fair Phoebus coming out of the hollow waters brings back colour
to the face of the world, whether with his warmer rays he sets day
ablaze or departs to take his rest in his watery bower, he cannot see in
all the inhabited world a single man to be compared with me for
successes of any sort. My glory is without peer, and if any of the gods
were to exchange heaven for earth and dwell under the lunar disc, he
would content himself with such a brilliant fortune as mine."[320]

Nearly all the dramas of Scudery are made up of such speeches, and they
were the rage in Paris before Corneille arose, Corneille in whom
something of this style yet lingers. Each of Scudery's heroes, be it in
his dramas, in his epics, in his romances, is like his Alaric, nothing
less than "le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre"; and having
conquered all the world is in his turn conquered by Love. To write thus
was supposed to be following the noble impulse given by the Renaissance,
to be Roman, to outdo Seneca.[321]

In the novel especially this style shone in all its lustre and beauty.
All the heroes of the interminable romances of the time, by Gomberville,
George and Madeleine de Scudery, La Calprenede and many others, be they
Greek, Roman, Turk or French, are all of them the conquerors of the
world and the captives of Love. "I can scarcely believe," wrote wise
censors, "that the Cyrus and the Alexanders have suddenly become, as I
hear it reported, so many Thyrsis and Celadons."[322] But their protests
were of no avail, for a time, and romance heroes continued to reign in
France, having had from the first for their palace and chief place of
resort the famous Hotel de Rambouillet.

This hotel had been building from 1610 to 1617 in the Rue St.
Thomas-du-Louvre. Polite society began to gather there soon after its
completion, and began to desert it only thirty years later. The heroic
romances of the period were among the chief topics of conversation; and
this is easily understood: they were meant as copies of this same polite
society, and of its chiefs; under feigned names people recognized in
Cyrus the Grand Conde; in Mandane, Madame de Longueville; in Sapho, the
authoress herself, Mdlle. de Scudery; in Aristhee, the poet Jean
Chapelain. Persons thus designated often continued in real life to be
called by their romance appellations; thus Madame de Sevigne is w