rom Louise de la Querouaille, the dukes of
Richmond; from Lucy Walters, the dukes of Buccleuch. These ladies, as Nell
called them, were early miniatures of the Chateauroux and the Pompadour.
Like them they made the rain and the fine weather, but, though dukes also,
not princes of the blood. Charles cared for them, cared for others, cared
for more but always cavalierly, indifferent whether they were constant or
not, yet most perhaps for Nell, succumbing ultimately in the full
consciousness of a life splendidly misspent, apologizing to those that
stood about for the ridiculous length of time that it took him to die,
asking them not to let poor Nelly starve and bequeathing to the Georges
the excellence of an example which those persons were too low to grasp.

Anteriorly, before Charles had come, at the period of London's extremest
piety, Paris was languishingly sentimental. Geography, in expanding
surprises, had successively disclosed the marvels of the Incas, the elder
splendors of Cathay and the enchantments of fairyland. Then a paradise
virgin as a new planet swam into the general ken. In Perrault's tales,
which had recently appeared, were vistas of the land of dreams. Directly
adjoining was the land of love. Its confines extended from the Hotel de
Rambouillet.

In that house, to-day a department store, conversation was first
cultivated as an art. From the conversation a new theory of the affections
developed. For the first time people young and old learned the precious
charm of sentiment. The originator, Mme. de Rambouillet, was a woman of
much beauty who, in days very lax, added to the allurement of her
appearance the charm of exclusiveness. It was so novel that people went to
look at it. Educated in Italy, imbued with its pretentious elegancies,
saturated with platonic strains, physically too fragile and
temperamentally too sensitive for the ribald air of a reckless court, she
drew society to her house, where, without perhaps intending it she
succeeded in the chimerical. Among a set of people to whom laxity was an
article of faith she made the observance of the Seventh Commandment an
object of fashionable meditation. She did more. In gallantry there is a
little of everything except love. To put it there is not humanly
possible. Mme. de Rambouillet did not try. She did better. She inserted
respect.

In her drawing-room--historically the first salon that the world
beheld--this lady, in conjunction with her collaborat