Mademoiselle, whom nothing tired, set an example, and seasoned these "games of action" with _causeries_, some of which happily have been preserved for us by Segrais,[6] her Secretary of the Commandments. Thanks to him, we know, even admitting that he may have slightly rearranged his reports, what they talked about at the court of Saint-Fargeau, and one cannot fail to be somewhat surprised. He tells us all sorts of things of which we never should have dreamed, things that we have never imagined as subjects of interest in the seventeenth century. In this age which believed itself entirely indifferent towards nature, conversation nevertheless fell ceaselessly upon the beauties of landscape. People paused to admire "points of view," sought them, and endeavoured to explain why they were beautiful. The reasons given were, that those who knew how to enjoy a large forest and "the beautiful carpet of moss at the feet," actually preferred landscapes made more intelligible through the intervention of man. A desert pleased them less than an inhabited country, a wild landscape less than sunny collections of cultivated fields and orchards symmetrically planted, recalling "the agreeable variety of parterres made by the ingenuity of man." Mademoiselle praises in her _Memoires_ the view from the end of the terrace. She attempts to describe it and fails. Segrais also tries in vain. It was impossible at that epoch. The vocabulary did not exist which could furnish words to describe a landscape. The creation of our descriptive vocabulary is one of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's[7] greatest glories. In compensation, Segrais knew very well how to explain why the beauty of the view, about which he had so ineffectively written, pleased him and his companions. He said that, arranged by chance, it conformed to the rules of classic pictures and in no way appeared the sole work of nature. Neither the valley of the Loing nor the immense marsh which closed this side of the chateau, nor the island in the midst of this marsh, with clumps of trees, nor the church and small height which could be perceived, seemed placed without human intervention. "And this," writes Segrais, "is so well represented in those excellent landscapes of the great artists, that all who look upon it believe that they have seen the marsh, church, and little island in a thousand pictures." Literature, imaginative literature at least, also held a considerable place in the conversation. Mademoiselle, who had read nothing before her sojourn at Saint-Fargeau, was anxious to make up for lost time. "I am a very ignorant creature," writes she, at the beginning of her exile, "detesting reading and having seen only the gazettes. Henceforth I am going to apply myself and see if it be possible to like a thing from deliberate determination."