La Grande Mademoiselle devoted her talents and her life to the perfection of her particular art. Keeping well within the limits that she herself had set, she made a special study of the hearts of princesses and of everything concerning them; and she professed that she had established, definitely, the only proper methods by which persons of her quality should, bound in duty to themselves, look upon love, and upon glory. The wells from which she drew her spiritual draughts were not exclusively her own; she shared their benefits with all honest people, of either sex, engaged in completing the sentimental education by the essential principle of life. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _Mémoires de Gaston._] [Footnote 2: _Mémoires de Gaston._] [Footnote 3: _Mémoires de Gaston._] [Footnote 4: _Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier._] [Footnote 5: Sauval (1620-1670), _Histoire et recherches sur les antiquités de Paris_.] [Footnote 6: The gate of the "Conférence" was built at the time the great improvements were begun, in 1633. It was built after the grand plans of Cardinal de Richelieu and according to his own instructions (Gamboust).] [Footnote 7: Piganiol de la Force (1673-1753), _Description of the City of Paris_, etc.] [Footnote 8: _Estat de la France_ (Collection Danjou).] [Footnote 9: _Extraits des comptes et dépenses du roi pour l'année 1616_ (Collection Danjou).] [Footnote 10: _Mémoires de Mathieu Molé._] [Footnote 11: Letter written by Pontis.] [Footnote 12: _Richelieu et la monarchie absolue._] [Footnote 13: _Mémoires_ of Lenet.] [Footnote 14: See his _Mémoires_.] [Footnote 15: A few years before his death, which occurred in 1670.] [Footnote 16: Beheaded in 1632, aged thirty-seven years.] [Footnote 17: Tallemant.] [Footnote 18: The first volume of _Le Grand Cyrus_ appeared in 1649; the last in 1653.] [Footnote 19: Mademoiselle de Scudéry uses the word _propre_, meaning "elegant," etc.] [Footnote 20: In _Clélie_.] [Footnote 21: Tallemant.] [Footnote 22: The first number bears date 1605.] [Footnote 23: The first number appeared May 1, 1631.] [Footnote 24: _Recueil_, etc. _Discours sur plusieurs points importants de l'état present des affaires de France._] [Footnote 25: _Recueil_, etc. _Avertissement aux provinces sur les nouveaux mouvements du royaume_, by the Sieur de Cléonville (1631).] [Footnote 26: _Mémoires_ of Mademoiselle.] CHAPTER II I. Anne of Austria and Richelieu--Birth of Louis XIV.--II. _L'Astrée_ and its Influence--III. Transformation of the Public Manners--The Creation of the Salon--The Hôtel de Rambouillet and Men of Letters. I