lived quietly in the convent of St. Joseph, but she gathered
around her an elegant and famous circle, until she was eighty and blind.
The Saturday assemblies of Mademoiselle de Scudery, frequented by the
most distinguished people of Paris, were given in a modest apartment,
for she was only a novelist. The same may be said of the receptions of
Madame de la Sabliere, who was a childless widow, of moderate means. The
Duchesse de Longueville--another of those famous queens--saw her best
days in the abbey of Port Royal. Madame Recamier reigned in a small
apartment in the Abbaye-au-Bois. All these carried out in their _salons_
the rules and customs which had been established by Madame de
Rambouillet, It was in her _salon_ that the French Academy originated,
and its first members were regular visitants at her hotel. Her
conversation was the chief amusement. We hear of neither cards nor
music; but there were frequent parties to the country, walks in the
woods,--a perpetual animation, where ceremony was banished. The
brilliancy of her parties excited the jealousy of Richelieu. Hither
resorted those who did not wish to be bound by the stiffness of the
court. At that period this famous hotel had its pedantries, but it was
severely intellectual. Hither came Mademoiselle de Scuderi; Mademoiselle
de Montpensier, granddaughter of Henry IV.; Vaugelas, and others of the
poets; also Balzac, Voiture, Racan, the Duc de Montausier, Madame de
Sevigne, Madame de la Fayette, and others. The most marked thing about
this hotel was the patronage extended to men of letters. Those great
French ladies welcomed poets and scholars, and encouraged them, and did
not allow them to starve, like the literary men of Grub Street. Had the
English aristocracy extended the same helping hand to authors, the
condition of English men of letters in the eighteenth century would have
been far less unfortunate. Authors in France have never been excluded
from high society; and this was owing in part to the influence of the
Hotel de Rambouillet, which sought an alliance between genius and rank.
It is this blending of genius with rank which gave to society in France
its chief attraction, and made it so brilliant.

Mademoiselle de Scudery, Madame de la Sabliere, and Madame de
Longueville followed the precedents established by Madame de Rambouillet
and Madame de Maintenon, and successively reigned as queens of
society,--that is, of chosen circles of those who were most cel