The stately mansion of Rambouillet, with its magnificent grand salon, and blue chamber, the special haunt of the poets, its daintily furnished smaller chambers, and richly-draped alcoves and cosy corners, was only one among many houses entertaining the society of the world which was devoted, or assumed devotion, to art and literature. There were the Saturdays of Madame de Sablé, and notably also the receptions of Mademoiselle Scudéri. Mademoiselle de L’Enclos’ own apartments were thronged on her reception nights with the company of talented and famous men and women, though that genial admirer of hers, St Evrémond, once had the temerity to criticise the beauty, or the lack of it, in the ladies of the _côtérie_. It might, of course, as he said, arise from mere chance; but otherwise it was a mistake; since it suggested the idea that Ninon could not sufficiently prize her own beauty; and on the score of the hidden compliment the audacity was condoned. After the coolness that followed upon Ninon’s _liaison_ with the Marquis de Rambouillet, the society of the salon of the marquise somewhat thinned for awhile; while the salon of the rue des Tournelles was more thronged than ever. The _cachet_ that admitted to all these various assemblies would appear to have been that only of fair breeding and connexions, and some intellectual pretension, though the supply of that was not necessarily very great, since the leaven of would-be wits and of absolute stupidity—the “mostly fools” Carlyle says the world is peopled with—would seem to have been even curiously large. One and all, however, were full of ambition to air the rhymes, and often senseless epigrams and dreary sonnets and conceits, generated in their miserable brains. Perhaps the only one of this crowd of triflers who is worth recording is the Baron de Miranges. In addition to the fact that he was never known to sit still two consecutive minutes, he was supremely ugly; marked with the smallpox, he squinted, his chin was awry, his nose twisted to one side. He was the first to jest at all these defects. One day he met a man on the Pont Neuf, an entire stranger to him, and halting before him, Miranges, in a sort of transport of satisfaction, gave a joyous cry and threw himself upon the individual’s neck, saying: “Oh, sir! how charmed I am at this meeting, and for what a number of years I have been looking for you!” “Indeed?” said the other, in a tone of astonishment. “I do not think I have the honour of knowing you.” “No. Unluckily I have met you much too late; but I look at you, I contemplate you, and I am happy.” “But why?” “Yes, yes, indeed,” replied Monsieur de Miranges; “let us embrace each other again. I have always despaired of ever finding a man uglier than myself, but now—yes, you are that man.”