themselves with more neatness, and give a more agreeable turn to
the things they talk about."

Mme. de Sable was herself, in less exclusive fashion, the
intimate friend and adviser of Esprit, d'Andilly, and La
Rochefoucauld. The letters of these men show clearly their warm
regard as well as the value they attached to her opinions.
"Indeed," wrote Voiture to her many years before, "those who
decry you on the side of tenderness must confess that if you are
not the most loving person in the world, you are at least the
most obliging. True friendship knows no more sweetness than
there is in your words." Her character, so delicately shaded and
so averse to all violent passions, seems to have been peculiarly
fitted for this calm and enduring sentiment which cast a soft
radiance, as of Indian summer, over her closing years.

At a later period, the sacred name of friendship was
unfortunately used to veil relations that had lost all the purity
and delicacy of their primitive character. This fact has
sometimes been rather illogically cited, as an argument not only
against the moral influence of the salons but against the
intellectual development of women. There is neither excuse nor
palliation to be offered for the Italian manners and the
recognized system of amis intimes, which disgraced the French
society the next century. But, while it is greatly to be
deplored that the moral sense has not always kept pace with the
cultivation of the intellect, there is no reason for believing
that license of manners is in any degree the result of it. There
is striking evidence to the contrary, in the incredible ignorance
and laxity that found its reaction in the early salons; also in