t imagination were swift
to catch the spirit of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and to apply it in an
original fashion. Though many subjects were interdicted in her salon,
and many people were excluded, it gives us interesting glimpses into
the life of the literary noblesse, and furnishes a complete gallery
of pen-portraits of more or less noted men and women. With all the
brilliant possibilities of her life, it was through the diversion of her
idle hours that this princess, author, amazon, prospective queen, and
disappointed woman has left the most permanent trace upon the world.

CHAPTER V. A LITERARY SALON AT PORT ROYAL

_Mme. de Sable--Her Worldly Life--Her Retreat--Her Friends--Pascal--The
Maxims of La Rochefoucauld--Last Days of the Marquise_

The transition from the restless character and stormy experiences of the
Grande Mademoiselle, to the gentler nature and the convent salon of
her friend and literary confidante, Mme. de Sable, is a pleasant one.
Perhaps no one better represents the true precieuse of the seventeenth
century, the happy blending of social savoir-faire with an amiable
temper and a cultivated intellect. Without the genius of Mme. de Sevigne
or Mme. de La Fayette, without the force or the rare attractions of
Mme. de Longueville, without the well-poised character and catholic
sympathies of Mme. de Rambouillet, she played an important part in the
life of her time, through her fine insight and her consummate tact in
bringing together the choicest spirits, and turning their thoughts into
channels that were fresh and unworn. Born in 1599, Madeleine de Souvre
passed her childhood in Touraine, of which province her father was
governor. In the brilliancy of her youth, we find her in Paris among the
early favorites of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and on terms of lifelong
intimacy with its hostess and her daughter Julie. Beautiful, versatile,
generous, but fastidious and exacting in her friendships, with a dash
of coquetry--inevitable when a woman is fascinating and French--she
repeated the oft-played role of a mariage de convenance at sixteen, a
few brilliant years of social triumphs marred by domestic neglect
and suffering, a period of enforced seclusion after the death of her
unworthy husband, a brief return to the world, and an old age of mild
and comfortable devotion.

"The Marquise de Sable," writes Mme. de Motteville, "was one of those
whose beauty made the most sensation when the Queen (Anne of Austr