It was not long before she began to withdraw from even her friends, still continuing, however, her fine cuisine, the remarkable care of her health, and her medical experiments. Her dinners became celebrated, and invitations to them were much in demand; about them there were no signs of opulence, but her gatherings were distinguished for refinement and taste. Her friends were constantly asking her for her recipes, of the preparation of which no one but herself knew the secret. At the salon of Mme. de Sablé originated many famous literary works, such as the _Conférences sur le Calvinisme_, works on Cartesian philosophy, the _Logique de Port-Royal_, _Questions sur l'Amour_, _Les Maximes_, etc. She will be remembered as the initiator of many maxims, in the composition of which she excelled. A number of her sayings concerning friendship have been preserved. Two treatises, in the form of maxims, on the education of children and on friendship, respectively, are supposed to have come from her pen; from them La Rochefoucauld conceived the ideas he utilized in his famous _Maxims_. La Rochefoucauld's maxims were composed according to the chance of conversation, which gave rise to various subjects and led to his serious reflection upon them. Cousin even goes so far as to say that the _Pensées_ of Pascal would never have been published in that form had not the _Maxims_ enjoyed such favor. Pascal often visited Port-Royal and naturally followed the general reflective tendency of its society. His _Discours sur les Passions de l'Amour_ possibly originated at the salon of Mme. de Sablé, because the subject of which that work treated was one much discussed there. La Rochefoucauld was in the habit of sending his maxims to Mme. de Sablé with the message: "As you do nothing for nothing, I ask of you a carrot soup or mutton stew." When La Rochefoucauld entered the society of Mme. de Sablé, he had seen much of life, was familiar with most of the adventures and intrigues of the Fronde and the society of the time; he himself had acted his part in all, and at the age of fifty was ready to put his experience into a permanent form of reflection. His _Maxims_ created a stir, through the clearness and elegance of their character, their fine analyses of man as he was in the seventeenth century, and through their truthfulness and general applicability to men of every country. From all the illustrious women of the day, either he or Mme. de Sablé received letters of criticism or suggestion--eulogies and condemnations of which he took notice in his next edition. This shows the intense interest felt in the appearance of any new literary production.