The “French Calliope,” Madame Deshoulières, was an intimate friend of Mademoiselle de L’Enclos. Her career was romantic and even heroic. Her maiden name was Anne Antoinette Ligier de la Garde, she was a goddaughter of Anne of Austria, who held her at the font when she was christened. She was the daughter of the queen’s _maître d’hôtel_, and was born in one of the little apartments of the Louvre. Beauty and grace and high talent distinguished her as she grew up. Her father caused her to be very strictly reared, and no books were permitted her except philosophical and religious works. One day, however, she detected her maid reading one of the pastoral romances of d’Urfé. She was immediately fired with desire, as a true daughter of Eve, to taste of the delightful fruit of the vice of romantic fiction, and said she would ask her father’s permission for it. This frightened the _bonne_ so much, that, to purchase her charge’s silence, she offered to lend her the interesting history of _The Shepherds of Lignon_, in which she had been so surreptitiously absorbed; and upon these followed the novels of Calprenède and of Madeleine de Scudéri. But if these books sufficed for all the intellectual needs of the run of the young ladies of the period, Antoinette was a girl of brains, and soon returned to her first love of more healthy and solid literature, and of poetry; and she studied for some time the art of versification under Hesnaut, whose fame is best remembered by the gifts of his pupil. At eighteen she became the wife of Monsieur de Boisguerry, Seigneur Deshoulières, a gentleman of Poitou, in the service of the Prince de Condé. The queen had been displeased at this marriage, whereat Monsieur de la Garde explained that his child had to be provided for, and his emolument in Her Majesty’s service had not been so great that it could be forthcoming from that source. This offended the queen, and the offence was aggravated by the suspicion of Frondeur leanings hanging about him, so that Antoinette’s dowry from her royal godmother was but a small one. Three months after their marriage, Monsieur Deshoulières was summoned to follow Condé to Spain, and his wife returned to her old home, which was, however, no longer at the Louvre, but in a small house at Auteuil. Here she spent the time in study, finding her chief delight in the philosophical works of Gassendi, now for some years a professor of the College of France. On the return of her husband to the frontier, she hastened to meet him, and the two repaired to Brussels, where the Court received her with high distinction; but in addition to her acquirements, her grace and beauty won her admiration so marked, that it became aggressive, and she was forced to repulse the unwelcome attentions thrust upon her. This turned friends into enemies, who satisfied their revenge by representing her as a spy of Mazarin and of the queen—a far-fetched accusation enough, which, however, obtained wide credence.