Mlle. de Scudéry, who was born in 1608 and lived through the whole century, saw society develop, and therefore knew it better than did any of her contemporaries. Having lost her parents early in life, her uncle reared her and she received advantages such as fell to the lot of few women of her condition; she was given an excellent education in literature, art, and the languages.
Until the marriage of her brother, she was his constant and devoted companion, exiling herself to Marseilles when he was appointed governor of Notre Dame de La Garde, and returning to Paris with him in 1647. She first collaborated with him in a literary production of about eighty volumes. In their works, the brother furnished the rough draft, the dramatic episodes, adventures, and the Romanesque part, while she added the literary finish through charming character sketches, conversation, sentimental analyses, and letters. With a strong inclination toward society, and constantly fulfilling its obligations, she would from day to day write up her conversations of the evening before.
An interesting anecdote is told in connection with the travels and coöperation of Mlle. de Scudéry and her brother; once, on the way to Paris, while stopping over night at Lyons, they were discussing the fate of one of their heroes, one proposing death and the other rescue, one poison and the other a more cruel death; a gentleman from Auvergne happened to overhear them and immediately notified the people of the inn, thinking it was a question of assassinating the king; the brother and sister were thrown into prison and only with great difficulty were they able to explain matters the next morning. From this incident Scribe drew the material for his drama, L'Auberge ou les Brigands sans le Savoir.
At the Hôtel de Rambouillet where Mlle. de Scudéry was received early, she won everyone by her modesty, simplicity, esprit, and lovable disposition, and, in spite of her homeliness and poor figure, she attracted many platonic lovers. She was one of the few brilliant and famous women of the seventeenth century whose popularity was due solely to admirable qualities of mind and soul. With her, friendship became a cult, and it was in time of trouble that her friends received the strongest proof of her affection. She preferred to incur disgrace and the disfavor of Mazarin rather than forsake Condé and Madame de Longueville; to them she dedicated the ten volumes, successively, of her novel, Cyrus; the last volume was published after Mme. de Longueville's retirement and partial disgrace.
After the brilliant society of the Hôtel de Rambouillet had been broken up by the marriage of Julie and the operations of the Fronde, and after her brother's marriage in 1654, Mlle. de Scudéry became independent and established the custom of receiving her friends on Saturday; these receptions became famous under the name of Samedi, and besides the regular rather bourgeois gathering, the most brilliant talent and highest nobility flocked to them, regardless of rank or station, wealth or influence. Pellisson, the great master, the prince, the Apollo of her Saturdays, was a man of wonderfully inventive genius, and possessed in a higher degree than any of his contemporaries the art of inventing surprises for the society that lived on novelty. When, on account of his devotion to Fouquet, he was imprisoned in the Bastille, Mlle. de Scudéry managed to persuade Colbert to brighten his confinement by permitting him to see friends and relatives. Part of every day she spent in his prison, conversing and reading; and this is but one instance of her fidelity and friendship.
Mlle. de Scudéry, considering all men as aspirants for authority who, when husbands, degenerate into tyrants, preferred to retain her independence. Her ideas on love were very peculiar and were innovations at the time: she wished to be loved, but her love must be friendship—a pure, platonic love, in which her lover must be her all, her confidant, the participator in her sorrows and her conversation; and his happiness must be in her alone; he must, without feeling passion, love her for herself, and she must have the same feeling toward him. These sentiments are expressed in her novels, from which the following extracts are taken:
"When friendship becomes love in the heart of a lover or when this love is mingled with friendship without destroying it, there is nothing so sweet as this kind of love; for as violent as it is, it is always held somewhat more in check than is ordinary love; it is more durable, more tender, more respectful, and even more ardent, although it is not subject to so many tumultuous caprices as is that love which arises without friendship. It can be said that love and friendship flow together like two streams, the more celebrated of which obscures the name of the other." ... "They agreed on even the conditions of their love; for Phaon solemnly promised Sapho (Mlle. de Scudéry)—who desired it thus—not to ask of her anything more than the possession of her heart, and she, also, promised him to receive only him in hers. They told each other all their thoughts, they understood them even without confessing them. Peace, however, was not so completely established that their affection could not become languishing or cool; for, although they loved each other as much as one can love, they at times complained of not being loved enough, and they had sufficient little difficulties to always leave something new to wish for; but they never had any troubles that were serious enough to essentially disturb their repose."
Mlle. de Scudéry was mistress of the art of conversation, speaking without affectation and equally well on all affairs, serious, light, or gallant; she objected, however, to being called a savante, and she was far from resembling the false précieuses to whom she was likened by her enemies. The occupations of her salon were somewhat different from those of the salon of Mme. de Rambouillet. M. du Bled describes them as follows:
"What they did in the salon of Mlle. de Scudéry you can guess readily: they amused themselves as at Mme. de Rambouillet's, they joked quite cheerfully, smiled and laughed, wrote farces in prose and poetry. There were readings, loteries d'esprit, sonnet-enigmas, bouts-rimés (rhymes given to be formed into verse), vers-échos, fine literary joustings, discussions between the casuists. This salon had its talkers and speakers, those who tyrannized over the audience and those who charmed it, those who shot off fireworks and those who prepared them, those who had made a symphony of conversation and those who made of it a monologue and had no flashes of silence. They did not follow fashion there—they rather made it; in art and literature as in toilets, smallness follows the fashion, pretension exaggerates it, taste makes a compact with it."
A specimen of the énigme-sonnets may be of interest, to show in what intellectual playfulness and trivialities these wits indulged: