the young girl was confined to a convent until she reached
marriageable age; when that came and with it an undesired husband, she
was ready for almost any prank that would relieve the monotony of her
uncongenial marital relations. The convents themselves were so corrupt
or so easily corruptible, that, very frequently, young girls did not
leave them with unstained purity. To certain of these institutions,
women and men of standing often bought the privilege of access at any
time, to drink, dine, sleep, or attend sacred exercises with other
persons; thus, libertinage was not uncommon within the walls of those
so-called religious establishments.

Mme. de Rambouillet felt most keenly the degradation of woman and
resolved to act against it by combating everything that could offend
taste or delicacy. As in the beginning of every great age, all things
tended to greatness. A period of discipline and cooerdination set
in, and elegance, grace, and refinement became the most pronounced
characteristics of the time; rough, crude, robust, vigorous, and
energetic characteristics, combined with coarseness and brutality,
were eliminated during the seventeenth century. The women who caused
this general purification of morals and language were given the name
of _precieuses_ and the movement that of _preciosite_.

The extent to which the _precieuses_ went in inventing locutions by
which they were to be recognized as elegant, is generally exaggerated;
Livet says that out of six hundred women hardly thirty could be
accused of such fatuity. The wiser and more conservative women
did adopt a large number of expressions which were necessary for
refinement of language and these classicisms were exaggerated by some
of the provincial classes who received their expressions from books
and the theatre; such authors as Corneille, etc., were studied and
their poetic licenses introduced into spoken language. These follies,
pictured by Moliere, naturally afforded much amusement in cultured
circles where every event of the day was discussed, from the vital
affairs of the government to the aesthetic interests of art and
literature.

The tremendous vogue of the seventeenth century salons or drawing
rooms naturally gave a stimulus to literature; but, as they were so
numerous and as each one claimed its large coterie of literary men,
they proved to be disastrous to some while helpful to others. Two
distinct classes of writers arose: the one, serious, elevat