The feminine society of the Saturdays had also too little intercourse with duchesses and marquises to replace the Hotel Rambouillet. Mlle. Bocquet, who filled a large place in the chronicles of the Saturdays, was very amiable and played the lute "marvellously,"[96] but she belonged to the small bourgeoisie. Mlle. Dupre, another intimate, was an intelligent and educated girl, who had made a special study of philosophy. She quoted Descartes too often to have "the air _galant_" in conversation. As much could be said of others. Mlle. de Scudery herself, who had been received in the best company and who had formally combated the "Blue-stockingism" with admirable good sense, had not written thirty-two octavo volumes with impunity. There still remained a little ink on the end of her fingers. It seemed as if all the pedants of France held their classes in her house. Plays upon words filled the papers scattered about, upon which "Prosecutions" were held. The "Illustrious Sapho" had truly inspired Moliere when he wrote _Les Precieuses Ridicules_; in vain, M. Cousin refuses to believe it.[97] I do not myself think that she escaped. Mademoiselle rendered to the wits of the day the service of sending them back to the Court for lessons in language and manners. We are well informed of this, thanks to the fantasy of a Princess which produced a little literature upon the model offered by the Luxembourg. In 1657, Mademoiselle, being at Champigny for the Richelieu lawsuit, the Princess of Tarente[98] and Mlle. de la Tremouille[99] showed her their literary portraits written by themselves.[100] These were imitations of those which Mlle. de Scudery, creator of the kind, gave in her romances,--the personalities to be divined with a key. "I had never before seen anything of the kind; I found them very _galants_, and wrote my own." After her own, she made others, and exacted them from those about her. From this resulted a repertoire unique of its kind, in which noble personages, of both sexes and all ages, have been so obliging as not to leave us ignorant of themselves, from the state of their teeth to their opinions upon love, nor have they omitted to present similar details concerning their friends. The collection of these _Portraits_[101] reveals to us how the aristocracy then viewed itself, or, at least, how it wished to be estimated by others. The ordinary beginning was to picture the face and bearing. The fashion was to do this with sincerity, which by no means indicates modesty. The famous Duchesse de Chatillon warned readers that she was going to speak with a naivete "the greatest possible."