“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 Scudery)—­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 Scudery 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 precieuses 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 Scudery 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-rimes (rhymes given to be formed into verse), vers-echos, 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 enigme-sonnets may be of interest, to show in what intellectual playfulness and trivialities these wits indulged: 

  “Souvent, quoique leger, je lasse qui me porte. 
  Un mot de ma facon vaut un ample discours. 
  J’ai sous Louis le Grand commence d’avoir cours,
  Mince, long, plat, etroit, d’une etoffe peu forte.