said Rabelais. But their reading was mainly limited to his
own unsavory satires, to Spanish pastorals, licentious poems, and their
books of devotion. It was on such a foundation that Mme. De Rambouillet
began to rear the social structure upon which her reputation rests.
She was eminently fitted for this role by her pure character and fine
intelligence; but she added to these the advantages of rank and
fortune, which gave her ample facilities for creating a social center
of sufficient attraction to focus the best intellectual life of the age,
and sufficient power to radiate its light. Still it was the tact and
discrimination to select from the wealth of material about her, and
quietly to reconcile old traditions with the freshness of new ideas,
that especially characterized Mme. De Rambouillet.

It was this richness of material, the remarkable variety and originality
of the women who clustered round and succeeded their graceful leader,
that gave so commanding an influence to the salons of the seventeenth
century. No social life has been so carefully studied, no women have
been so minutely portrayed. The annals of the time are full of them.
They painted one another, and they painted themselves, with realistic
fidelity. The lights and shadows are alike defined. We know their joys
and their sorrows, their passions and their follies, their tastes and
their antipathies. Their inmost life has been revealed. They animate,
as living figures, a whole class of literature which they were largely
instrumental in creating, and upon which they have left the stamp of
their own vivid personality. They appear later in the pages of Cousin
and Sainte-Beuve, with their radiant features softened and spiritualized
by the touch of time. We rise from a perusal of these chronicles of a
society long passed away, with the feeling that we have left a company
of old friends. We like to recall their pleasant talk of themselves, of
their companions, of the lighter happenings, as well as the more serious
side of the age which they have illuminated. We seem to see their faces,
not their manner, watch the play of intellect and feeling, while they
speak. The variety is infinite and full of charm.

Mme. de Sevigne talks upon paper, of the trifling affairs of every-day
life, adding here and there a sparkling anecdote, a bit of gossip, a
delicate characterization, a trenchant criticism, a dash of wit, a
touch of feeling, or a profound thought. All this is li