his grasp and holds
it more cautiously. Mazarin ruled. And the King was soon joking over the
fight at the Porte St. Antoine, with Conde and Mademoiselle; the Queen at
the same time affectionately assuring our heroine, that, if she could have
got at her on that day, she would certainly have strangled her, but that,
since it was past, she would love her as ever,--as ever; while
Mademoiselle, not to be outdone, lies like a Frenchwoman, and assures the
Queen that really she did not mean to be so naughty, but "she was with
those who induced her to act against her sense of duty!"

The day of civil war was over. The daring heroines and voluptuous blonde
beauties of the Frondeur party must seek excitement elsewhere. Some looked
for it in literature; for the female education of France in that age was
far higher than England could show. The intellectual glory of the reign of
the Grand Monarque began in its women. Marie de Medicis had imported the
Italian grace and wit,--Anne of Austria the Spanish courtesy and romance;
the Hotel de Rambouillet had united the two, and introduced the _genre
precieux_, or stately style, which was superb in its origin, and dwindled
to absurdity in the hands of Mlle. de Scudery and her valets, before
Moliere smiled it away forever. And now that the wars were done, literary
society came up again. Madame de Sable exhausted the wit and the cookery
of the age in her fascinating entertainments,--_pates_ and Pascal,
Rochefoucauld and _ragouts_,--Mme. de Bregy's Epictetus, Mme. de Choisy's
salads,--confectionery, marmalade, elixirs, Des Cartes, Arnould,
Calvinism, and the barometer. Mme. de Sable had a sentimental theory that
no woman should eat at the same table with a lover, but she liked to see
her lovers eat, and Mademoiselle, in her obsolete novel of the "Princesse
de Paphlagonie," gently satirizes this passion of her friend. And
Mademoiselle herself finally eclipsed the Sable by her own entertainments
at her palace of the Luxembourg, where she offered no dish but one of
gossip, serving up herself and friends in a course of "Portraits" so
appetizing that it became the fashion for ten years, and reached
perfection at last in the famous "Characters" of La Bruyere.

Other heroines went into convents, joined the Carmelites, or those nuns of
Port-Royal of whom the Archbishop of Paris said that they lived in the
purity of angels and the pride of devils. Thither went Madame de Sable
herself, finally,--"the la