In considering the great centers in which the fashionable,
artistic, literary, and scientific Paris of the seventeenth
century found its meeting ground, one is struck with the
practical training given to its versatile, flexible feminine
minds. Women entered intelligently and sympathetically into the
interests of men, who, in turn, did not reserve their best
thoughts for the club or an after-dinner talk among themselves.
There was stimulus as well as diversity in the two modes of
thinking and being. Men became more courteous and refined, women
more comprehensive and clear. But conversation is the
spontaneous overflow of full minds, and the light play of the
intellect is only possible on a high level, when the current
thought has become a part of the daily life, so that a word
suggests infinite perspectives to the swift intelligence. It is
not what we know, but the flavor of what we know, that
adds"sweetness and light" to social intercourse. With their
rapid intuition and instinctive love of pleasing, these French
women were quick to see the value of a ready comprehension of the
subjects in which clever men are most interested. It was this
keen understanding, added to the habit of utilizing what they
thought and read, their ready facility in grasping the salient
points presented to them, a natural gift of graceful expression,
with a delicacy of taste and an exquisite politeness which
prevented them from being aggressive, that gave them their
unquestioned supremacy in the salons which made Paris for so long
a period the social capital of Europe. It was impossible that
intellects so plastic should not expand in such an atmosphere,
and the result is not difficult to divine. From Mme. de
Rambouillet to Mme. de La Fayette and Mme. de Sevigne, from these
to Mme. de Stael and George Sand, there is a logical sequence.