of the Grande Mademoiselle, to the gentler nature and the convent
salon of her friend and literary confidante, Mme. de Sable, is a
pleasant one. Perhaps no one better represents the true
precieuse of the seventeenth century, the happy blending of
social savoir-faire with an amiable temper and a cultivated
intellect. Without the genius of Mme. de Sevigne or Mme. de La
Fayette, without the force or the rare attractions of Mme. de
Longueville, without the well-poised character and catholic
sympathies of Mme. de Rambouillet, she played an important part
in the life of her time, through her fine insight and her
consummate tact in bringing together the choicest spirits, and
turning their thoughts into channels that were fresh and unworn.
Born in 1599, Madeleine de Souvre passed her childhood in
Touraine, of which province her father was governor. In the
brilliancy of her youth, we find her in Paris among the early
favorites of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and on terms of lifelong
intimacy with its hostess and her daughter Julie. Beautiful,
versatile, generous, but fastidious and exacting in her
friendships, with a dash of coquetry--inevitable when a woman is
fascinating and French--she repeated the oft-played role of a
mariage de convenance at sixteen, a few brilliant years of
social triumphs marred by domestic neglect and suffering, a
period of enforced seclusion after the death of her unworthy
husband, a brief return to the world, and an old age of mild and
comfortable devotion.

"The Marquise de Sable," writes Mme. de Motteville, "was one of
those whose beauty made the most sensation when the Queen (Anne
of Austria) came into France. But if she was amiable, she
desired still more to appear so. Her self-love rendered her a