Madame had "vapours," otherwise called a nervous malady. She was afraid of noise, of movement, and of being forced to speak, and Mademoiselle insisted upon making "scenes." "I teased her often," says the Princess in her Mémoires, "and very much despised her (in which I was wrong), and she always responded as one who feared me, and with much submission." The public did not consider it worth while to waste pity upon Madame, because she bored every one; a fault never pardoned. Anne of Austria, herself a very amiable woman, when not opposed, could never suffer her inoffensive sister-in-law. The Queen Mother said to Mademoiselle, who did not need this encouragement: "Her person, her temper, and her manners are odious to me." The public was fundamentally right in its antipathy. Madame was one of those people who render virtue hateful, and in thus doing are very injurious to humanity.
The Luxembourg was commodious and gay. Mademoiselle enjoyed it, and it pleased her to arrange for herself a grand existence as a Princess, rich and independent. Nothing could be more displeasing to the Court. As soon as Louis XIV. had assumed full power, he let it be seen that he wished no social centre in his kingdom other than his own palace. His cousin did not take this fact into account. This was not bravado. It was due to the impossibility of comprehending that "a person of her quality" could be reduced to the rôle of satellite.
It is certain that nature had not prepared her for this rôle. "I would rather pass my life in solitude," wrote she, "than restrain in any way my proud humour, even at the expense of my fortune. I have no complaisance, and I demand a great deal from others."[94] She also adds: "I do not willingly praise others and very rarely blame myself." With this avowed disposition, it would perhaps have been wiser not to go too often to the Louvre. It was a great imprudence to attract the crowd to herself as she had done at the time in which she was openly opposing the Tuileries.
The salon of Mademoiselle became the first in Paris, the most interesting and select. Since Paris had tasted the pleasures of clever conversation and discovered, under the direction of Mme. de Rambouillet, the genius of this delicate art, it could not do without it. The initiator was still living, but she was old and ill, and her circle had long been dispersed.[95]
Mlle. de Scudéry had collected together as many of the remnants of her first salon as she could, and had thus laid the foundation for the famous Saturdays, at which wit and knowledge were dispensed in abundance. Nevertheless, it was not the same. The Saturdays of "Sapho" brought back the literary people to the pedantry from which Mme. de Rambouillet had more or less delivered them. They were left too much to themselves, and, thus isolated, they had lost a certain intellectual grace acquired by the friction between the aristocrats and the blue-stockings.
The mind as well as the body has its own manners, and they may be bad or good. In 1661, the Court alone had breeding. There existed no other society in which the first comer understood how to speak a language easy and galant, well adapted to plumed hats and elegant bows. These belonged to the traditions of the place. Such courtesies were lacking with the learned friends of Mlle. de Scudéry, who no longer felt themselves spurred on by the fine gentlemen, so alert, capable of such light railleries, and detesting pedants.
The feminine society of the Saturdays had also too little intercourse with duchesses and marquises to replace the Hôtel Rambouillet. Mlle. Bocquet, who filled a large place in the chronicles of the Saturdays, was very amiable and played the lute "marvellously,"[96] but she belonged to the small bourgeoisie. Mlle. Dupré, another intimate, was an intelligent and educated girl, who had made a special study of philosophy. She quoted Descartes too often to have "the air galant" in conversation. As much could be said of others. Mlle. de Scudéry herself, who had been received in the best company and who had formally combated the "Blue-stockingism" with admirable good sense, had not written thirty-two octavo volumes with impunity. There still remained a little ink on the end of her fingers. It seemed as if all the pedants of France held their classes in her house. Plays upon words filled the papers scattered about, upon which "Prosecutions" were held. The "Illustrious Sapho" had truly inspired Molière when he wrote Les Précieuses Ridicules; in vain, M. Cousin refuses to believe it.[97] I do not myself think that she escaped.
Mademoiselle rendered to the wits of the day the service of sending them back to the Court for lessons in language and manners. We are well informed of this, thanks to the fantasy of a Princess which produced a little literature upon the model offered by the Luxembourg.
In 1657, Mademoiselle, being at Champigny for the Richelieu lawsuit, the Princess of Tarente[98] and Mlle. de la Trémouille[99] showed her their literary portraits written by themselves.[100] These were imitations of those which Mlle. de Scudéry, creator of the kind, gave in her romances,—the personalities to be divined with a key. "I had never before seen anything of the kind; I found them very galants, and wrote my own." After her own, she made others, and exacted them from those about her.