We learn from this letter how the companions of the Hôtel de Rambouillet passed their evenings. In Paris and in the distant provinces there were many imitations of the Salon; the germs of the enterprise had taken root all over France with literary results, which became the subject of serious study. The political consequences of the literary and social innovations claimed less attention. The domestication of the nobility originated in the Salon. When delicacy of manner was introduced as obligatory, the nobleman was in full possession of the rights of power; he could hunt and torture animals and inferior men, he could make war upon his neighbours, he could live in egotistical isolation, enjoying the luxuries bestowed by his seigniory, while the lower orders died of hunger at his door, because his rank was manifested by his freedom from rules which bound classes below his quality. The diversions introduced at the Salon de Rambouillet exacted sacrifice of self to the convenience of others. In the abstract this was an excellent thing, but its reaction was felt by the aristocracy; from restraining their selfishness the gallant courtiers passed on to the self-renunciation of the ancient Crusaders, and when Louis XIV. saw fit (for his own reasons) to turn his nobles into peaceful courtiers and grand barons of the ante-chamber, he found that his work had all been done; it was not possible to convert his warriors into courtiers, for he had no warriors; all the warriors had turned to knights of the carpet; their swords were wreathed with roses, and the ringing notes which had called men to arms had changed to the sighing murmurs of Durandarte; every man sat in a perfumed bower busily employed in making "sonnets to his mistress's eyebrows." Louis XIV. fumed because his Court resembled a salon; the incomparable Arthénice had given the restless cavaliers a taste for fine conversation and innocent pleasures, and by doing so she had minced the King's spoonmeat too fine; the absolute monarch could only modify a transformation accomplished independent of his will. [Illustration: LOUIS XIII., KING OF FRANCE AND OF NAVARRE FROM AN OLD PRINT] We have now to determine how much of their false exalted sentiment and their false ambition the princes, the chevaliers of the Fronde, and all the gallants of the quality owed to the dramatic theatre of their day; that estimated, we shall have gained a fair idea of the chief elements of the social body idealised by Corneille,--of all the elements save one, the element of Religion; that was a thing apart, to be considered especially and in its own time. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 27: _Relation de ce que c'est passé en l'affaire de la reyne au mois d'août, 1637, sui le sujet de la Porte et de l'Abbesse du Val-de-Grâce._ See document in the Bibliothèque National.]