(Here Voiture, who was under obligations to his correspondent, Cardinal de La Valette, represents himself as having wept because the Cardinal was not there. According to Voiture's account he communicated his grief to all the company.)
... And I should have wept, and, in fact, we all should have mourned too long, had not the violins quickly played a saraband so gay that every one sprang up and danced as joyously as if there had been no mourning; and thus, jumping, dancing, whirling, pirouetting, and capering, we arrived at the house, where we found a table dressed as delicately as if the faëries had served it. And now, Monseigneur, I come to a part of the adventure which cannot be described! Truly, there are no colours nor any figures of rhetoric to represent the six kinds of luscious soups, all different, which were first placed before us before anything else was served. And among other things were twelve different kinds of meats, under the most unimaginable disguises, such as no one had ever heard of, and of which not one of us has learned the name to this day! As we were leaving the table the music of the violins called us quickly up the stairs, and when we reached the upper floor we found an audience-room turned into a ball-room, so well lighted that it seemed to us that the sun, which had entirely disappeared from earth, had gone around in some unknown way and climbed up there to shine upon us and to make it as bright as any daylight ever seen. There the dance began anew, and even more perfectly than when we had danced around the fountain; and more magnificent than all else, Monseigneur, is this, that I danced there! Mlle. de Bourbon said that, truth to tell, I danced badly, but that doubtless I should make an excellent swordsman, because, at the end of every cadence, I straightened as if to fall back on guard.
The fête ended in a display of fireworks, after which the company "took the road" for Paris by the light of twenty flambeaux, singing with all the strength of their lungs. When they reached the village of La Villette they caught up with the violinists, who had started for the city as soon as the dance was ended and before the party left the château. One of the gayest of the company insisted that the violinists should play, and that they should dance right there in the street of the village. It was between two and three o'clock in the morning and Voiture was tired out; he "blessed Heaven" when it was discovered that the violins had been left at La Barre.
At last [Voiture wrote to the Cardinal] we reached Paris.... Impenetrable darkness wrapped the city, silence and solitude lay on every hand, the streets were deserted, and we saw no people, but now and then small animals, frightened by the glaring flames of our torches, fled before us, and we saw them hiding on the shadowy corners.
We learn from this letter how the companions of the Hôtel de Rambouillet passed their evenings.
In Paris and in the distant provinces there were many imitations of the Salon; the germs of the enterprise had taken root all over France with literary results, which became the subject of serious study. The political consequences of the literary and social innovations claimed less attention. The domestication of the nobility originated in the Salon. When delicacy of manner was introduced as obligatory, the nobleman was in full possession of the rights of power; he could hunt and torture animals and inferior men, he could make war upon his neighbours, he could live in egotistical isolation, enjoying the luxuries bestowed by his seigniory, while the lower orders died of hunger at his door, because his rank was manifested by his freedom from rules which bound classes below his quality. The diversions introduced at the Salon de Rambouillet exacted sacrifice of self to the convenience of others. In the abstract this was an excellent thing, but its reaction was felt by the aristocracy; from restraining their selfishness the gallant courtiers passed on to the self-renunciation of the ancient Crusaders, and when Louis XIV. saw fit (for his own reasons) to turn his nobles into peaceful courtiers and grand barons of the ante-chamber, he found that his work had all been done; it was not possible to convert his warriors into courtiers, for he had no warriors; all the warriors had turned to knights of the carpet; their swords were wreathed with roses, and the ringing notes which had called men to arms had changed to the sighing murmurs of Durandarte; every man sat in a perfumed bower busily employed in making "sonnets to his mistress's eyebrows." Louis XIV. fumed because his Court resembled a salon; the incomparable Arthénice had given the restless cavaliers a taste for fine conversation and innocent pleasures, and by doing so she had minced the King's spoonmeat too fine; the absolute monarch could only modify a transformation accomplished independent of his will.
LOUIS XIII., KING OF FRANCE AND OF NAVARRE
FROM AN OLD PRINT
We have now to determine how much of their false exalted sentiment and their false ambition the princes, the chevaliers of the Fronde, and all the gallants of the quality owed to the dramatic theatre of their day; that estimated, we shall have gained a fair idea of the chief elements of the social body idealised by Corneille,—of all the elements save one, the element of Religion; that was a thing apart, to be considered especially and in its own time.