Maréchal de Marillac (who was beheaded in 1632) killed his adversary before the latter had time to draw his sword. We should have called it an assassination, but our forefathers saw no harm in such duelling. They reserved their criticisms for the timidly peaceable who objected to a fight.
The salon, with its ultra-refinement and its delicacy, followed close upon the heels of these remnants of barbarity. The salon gave form to the civility which forbade a man to pierce the fleshy part of the back of an adversary with a pitchfork. Polite courtesy also restrained gentlemen from forcing ladies to swallow all uncleanness under the pretence of indulging in a merry jest. As good manners make for morality, let us thank the Précieuses for the reform they accomplished when they moulded men for courteous intercourse with their fellow-men; and to Madame de Rambouillet, among others, let thanks be given, for she made the achievement possible by opening the way and beginning at the beginning. Womanly tact, a decorous keeping of her house, love of order and of beauty inspired her with the thought that the arrangements made in the old hotels of Paris for the people of ancient days were not fitted for the use of the enlightened age of the Précieuses. There were no salons in the old hotels; the salon was unknown; therefore there was no room in which to frame the society then in formation. Tallemant tells us that the only houses known at that time were built with a hall upon one side, a room upon the other side, and a staircase in the middle. The salle was a parade-room, a place to pass through, a corridor where no one lingered. People received visitors in the room in which they happened to be when the visitors arrived; at different times they happened to be in different rooms. Very naturally at eating-time they were in rooms where they could sit at meat. There were no rooms devoted to the daily meals. The table on which viands were served was placed in any room large enough to contain the number of persons who were to be entertained. If there were few guests, the table was placed in a small room; when the guests were numerous, they were seated in a large room, or the table, ready served, was carried into any room large enough to hold the company. It was all a matter of chance. Banquets were given in the corridor, in the salle, in the ante-room, or in the sleeping-room,[46] because literary intuition was undeveloped. Madame de Rambouillet was the first to realise that the spirit of conversation is too rare and too delicate a plant to thrive under unfavourable conditions, and that in order to establish conversational groups, a place must be provided in which they who favour conversation may talk at ease. Every one recognises that fact now, and every one ought to recognise it. No one—man or woman—is justified in ignoring the influences of the localities that he or she frequents. It should be generally known that sympathies will not group, that the current of thought will not flow freely when a table is unfavourably placed for the seating of society expected to converse.
Three hundred years ago the creator of the first French salon discovered this fact, and her discovery marked a date in the history of our social life.
Mme. de Rambouillet owned a dilapidated mansion standing between the Tuileries and the courtyard of the Louvre, near the site of the now existing Pavillon de Rohan.[47] She had determined to rebuild the house, and no one could draw a plan suited to her ideas. Her mind was incessantly busy with her architectural scheme, and one evening when she had been sitting alone deep in meditation she cried out! "Quick! A pencil! paper! I have found a way to build my house."[48] She drew her plan at once, and the arrangement was so superior to all known architectural designs that houses were built according to "the plans of Mme. de Rambouillet all over France." Tallemant says:
They learned from Mme. de Rambouillet how to place stairways at the sides of houses so that they might form great suites of rooms[49] and they also learned from her how to raise floors and to make high and broad windows, placed one opposite another so that the air might circulate with freedom; this is all so true that when the Queen-mother ordered the rebuilding of the Luxembourg she sent the architects to glean ideas from the Hôtel de Rambouillet.
Until that time the interiors of houses had been painted red or tan colour. Mme. de Rambouillet was the first to adopt another colour and her innovation gave the "Blue Room" its name. The famous Blue Room in which the seventeenth century acquired the even and correct tone of conversation was disposed with a skilful and scientific tact which has survived the rack of three hundred years of changes, and to-day it stands as the perfect type of a temple fully adequate to the exigencies of intellectual intercourse.
In it all spaces were measured and the seats were systematically counted and distributed to the best advantage; there were eighteen seats; neither more nor less. Screens shut off certain portions of the room and facilitated the formation of intimately confidential groups; flowers perfumed the air; objects of art caressed the vision, and, taken all together, so perceptible a spirit of the sanctuary enshrining thought was present that the habitués of the Salon de Rambouillet always spoke of it as "the Temple." Even La Grande Mademoiselle, the irrepressible, felt the subtle influences of that calm retreat of the mind, and when she entered the Blue Room she repressed her Cossack gestures and choked back her imprecations. She knew that she could not evade the restraining influence of the hushed tranquillity which pervaded "the Temple," and she drooped her sparkling eyes, and accepted her discipline with the universally prevalent docility. In her own words, Mme. de Rambouillet was "adorable."
I think [wrote Mademoiselle in 1659], that I can see her now in that shadowy recess,—which the sun never entered, though the place was never left in darkness,—surrounded by great crystal vases full of beautiful spring flowers which were made to bloom at all seasons in the gardens near her temple, so that she might look upon the things that she loved. Around her were the pictures of her friends, and the looks that she gave them called down blessings on the absent. There were many books on the tables in her grotto and, as one may imagine, they treated of nothing common. Only two, or at most three persons were permitted to enter that place at the same time, because confusion displeased her and noise was adverse to the goddess whose voice was loud only in wrath. Our goddess was never angry. She was gentleness itself.
According to the inscription on a stone preserved in the Musée Cluny the Hôtel de Rambouillet was rebuilt in 1618. The mistress of the house consumed ten industriously filled years constituting, installing, and habituating the intellectual groups of her salon; but when she had perfected her arrangements she maintained them in their splendour until the Fronde put an end to all intellectual effort.