in the convent of St. Joseph, but she gathered around her an elegant and famous circle, until she was eighty and blind.  The Saturday assemblies of Mademoiselle de Scudery, frequented by the most distinguished people of Paris, were given in a modest apartment, for she was only a novelist.  The same may be said of the receptions of Madame de la Sabliere, who was a childless widow, of moderate means.  The Duchesse de Longueville—­another of those famous queens—­saw her best days in the abbey of Port Royal.  Madame Recamier reigned in a small apartment in the Abbaye-au-Bois.  All these carried out in their salons the rules and customs which had been established by Madame de Rambouillet, It was in her salon that the French Academy originated, and its first members were regular visitants at her hotel.  Her conversation was the chief amusement.  We hear of neither cards nor music; but there were frequent parties to the country, walks in the woods,—­a perpetual animation, where ceremony was banished.  The brilliancy of her parties excited the jealousy of Richelieu.  Hither resorted those who did not wish to be bound by the stiffness of the court.  At that period this famous hotel had its pedantries, but it was severely intellectual.  Hither came Mademoiselle de Scuderi; Mademoiselle de Montpensier, granddaughter of Henry IV.; Vaugelas, and others of the poets; also Balzac, Voiture, Racan, the Duc de Montausier, Madame de Sevigne, Madame de la Fayette, and others.  The most marked thing about this hotel was the patronage extended to men of letters.  Those great French ladies welcomed poets and scholars, and encouraged them, and did not allow them to starve, like the literary men of Grub Street.  Had the English aristocracy extended the same helping hand to authors, the condition of English men of letters in the eighteenth century would have been far less unfortunate.  Authors in France have never been excluded from high society; and this was owing in part to the influence of the Hotel de Rambouillet, which sought an alliance between genius and rank.  It is this blending of genius with rank which gave to society in France its chief attraction, and made it so brilliant.

Mademoiselle de Scudery, Madame de la Sabliere, and Madame de Longueville followed the precedents established by Madame de Rambouillet and Madame de Maintenon, and successively reigned as queens of society,—­that is, of chosen circles of those who were most celebrated in France,—­raising the intellectual tone of society, and inspiring increased veneration for woman herself.

But the most celebrated of all these queens of society was Madame Recamier, who was the friend and contemporary of Madame de Stael.  She was born at Lyons, in 1777, not of high rank, her father, M. Bernard, being only a prosperous notary.  Through the influence of Calonne, minister of Louis XVI., he obtained the lucrative place of Receiver of the Finances, and removed to Paris, while his only daughter Juliette was sent to a convent, near Lyons, to be educated, where she remained until she was ten years of age, when she rejoined her family.  Juliette’s education was continued at home, under her mother’s superintendence; but she excelled in nothing especially except music and dancing, and was only marked for grace, beauty, and good-nature.