et--The Salon Bleu--Its Habitues--Its
Diversions--Corneille--Balzac--Richelieu--Romance of the
Grand Conde--The Young Bossuet--Voiture--The Duchesse de
Longueville--Angelique Paulet--Julie d'Angennes--Les Precieuses
Ridicules--Decline of the Salon--Influence upon Literature and Manners_

The Hotel de Rambouillet has been called the "cradle of polished
society," but the personality of its hostess is less familiar than that
of many who followed in her train. This may be partly due to the fact
that she left no record of herself on paper. She aptly embodied the kind
advice of Le Brun. It was her special talent to inspire others and to
combine the various elements of a brilliant and complex social life.
The rare tact which enabled her to do this lay largely in a certain
self-effacement and the peculiar harmony of a nature which presented few
salient points. She is best represented by the salon of which she was
the architect and the animating spirit; but even this is better known
today through its faults than its virtues. It is a pleasant task to
clear off a little dust from its memorials, and to paint in fresh colors
one who played so important a role in the history of literature and
manners.

Catherine de Vivonne was born at Rome in 1588. Her father, the Marquis
de Pisani, was French ambassador, and she belonged through her mother to
the old Roman families of Strozzi and Savelli. Married at sixteen to the
Count d'Angennes, afterwards Marquis de Rambouillet, she was introduced
to the world at the gay court of Henry IV. But the coarse and depraved
manners which ruled there were altogether distasteful to her delicate
and fastidious nature. At twenty she retired from these brilliant scenes
of gilded vice, and began to gather round her the coterie of choice
spirits which later became so famous.

Filled with the poetic ideals and artistic tastes which had been
nourished in a thoughtful and elegant seclusion, it seems to have been
the aim of her life to give them outward expression. Her mind, which
inherited the subtle refinement of the land of her birth, had taken its
color from the best Italian and Spanish literature, but she was in no
sense a learned woman. She was once going to study Latin, in order to
read Virgil, but was prevented by ill health. It is clear, however, that
she had a great diversity of gifts, with a basis of rare good sense and
moral elevation. "She was revered, adored," writes Mme. de Motteville;
"a model