The Luxembourg was commodious and gay. Mademoiselle enjoyed it, and it pleased her to arrange for herself a grand existence as a Princess, rich and independent. Nothing could be more displeasing to the Court. As soon as Louis XIV. had assumed full power, he let it be seen that he wished no social centre in his kingdom other than his own palace. His cousin did not take this fact into account. This was not bravado. It was due to the impossibility of comprehending that "a person of her quality" could be reduced to the role of satellite. It is certain that nature had not prepared her for this role. "I would rather pass my life in solitude," wrote she, "than restrain in any way my proud humour, even at the expense of my fortune. I have no complaisance, and I demand a great deal from others."[94] She also adds: "I do not willingly praise others and very rarely blame myself." With this avowed disposition, it would perhaps have been wiser not to go too often to the Louvre. It was a great imprudence to attract the crowd to herself as she had done at the time in which she was openly opposing the Tuileries. The salon of Mademoiselle became the first in Paris, the most interesting and select. Since Paris had tasted the pleasures of clever conversation and discovered, under the direction of Mme. de Rambouillet, the genius of this delicate art, it could not do without it. The initiator was still living, but she was old and ill, and her circle had long been dispersed.[95] Mlle. de Scudery had collected together as many of the remnants of her first salon as she could, and had thus laid the foundation for the famous Saturdays, at which wit and knowledge were dispensed in abundance. Nevertheless, it was not the same. The Saturdays of "Sapho" brought back the literary people to the pedantry from which Mme. de Rambouillet had more or less delivered them. They were left too much to themselves, and, thus isolated, they had lost a certain intellectual grace acquired by the friction between the aristocrats and the blue-stockings. The mind as well as the body has its own manners, and they may be bad or good. In 1661, the Court alone had breeding. There existed no other society in which the first comer understood how to speak a language easy and _galant_, well adapted to plumed hats and elegant bows. These belonged to the traditions of the place. Such courtesies were lacking with the learned friends of Mlle. de Scudery, who no longer felt themselves spurred on by the fine gentlemen, so alert, capable of such light railleries, and detesting pedants.