LA SABLIERE, MARGUERITE DE (c. friend and patron of La Fontaine, was the wife of Antoine Ram bouillet, sieur de la Sabliere (1624-1679), a Protestant financier entrusted with the administration of the royal estates, her maiden name being Marguerite Hessein. She received an excellent educa tion in Latin, mathematics, physics and anatomy from the best scholars of her time, and her house became a meeting-place for poets, scientists, men of letters, and courtiers, members of the court of Louis XIV. About 1673 Mme. de la Sabliere received into her house La Fontaine, whom for twenty years she relieved of every kind of material anxiety. Another friend and inmate of the house was the traveller and physician Francois Bernier. The abbe Chaulieu and his fellow-poet, Charles Auguste, marquis de La Fare, were among her most intimate associates. La Fare sold his commission in the army to be able to spend his time with her. This liaison, which seems to have been the only serious passion of her life, was broken in 1679. She died in Paris on Jan. 8, 1693. LA SALE (or LA SALLE), ANTOINE DE (c. 1462?), French writer, was born in Provence, probably at Arles. He was a natural son of Bernard de la Salle, a famous soldier of fortune, who served many masters, among others the Angevin dukes. In 1402 Antoine entered the court of Anjou, probably as a page, and in 1407 he was at Messina with Duke Louis II., who had gone there to enforce his claim to the kingdom of Sicily. The next years he perhaps spent in Brabant, for he was present at two tournaments given at Brussels and Ghent. With other gentle men from Brabant, whose names he has preserved, he took part in the expedition of 1415 against the Moors, organized by John I. of Portugal. In 1420 he accompanied Louis III. on another ex pedition to Naples, making in that year an excursion from Norcia to the Monte della Sibilla, and the neighbouring Lake of Pilate, the story of which forms one of the episodes of La Salade. La Sale probably returned with Louis III. of Anjou, who was also comte de Provence, in 1426 to Provence, where he was acting as viguier of Arles in 1429. In 1434 Rene, Louis's successor, made La Sale tutor to his son Jean d'Anjou, duc de Calabre, to whom he dedicated, between the years 1438 and 1447, his La Salade, which is a text-book of the studies necessary for a prince. Be tween 1439 and 1442 he was again in Italy with Rene. After 4o years' service of the house of Anjou, La Sale left it to become tutor to the sons of Louis de Luxembourg, comte de Saint Pol, who took him to Flanders and presented him at the court of Philippe le Bon, duke of Burgundy. For his new pupils he wrote at Chatelet-sur-Oise, in 1451, a moral work entitled La Salle.
He was nearly 7o years of age when he completed, in 1456, the famous Hystoire et plaisante cronicque du petit Jehan de Saintre et de la jeune dame des Belles-Cousines, Sans autre nom nommer, dedicated to his former pupil, Jean de Calabre. The Reconfort a Madame de Neufville, a consolatory epistle including two sto ries of parental fortitude, was written at Vendeuil-sur-Oise about 1458, and in 1459 La Sale produced his treatise Des anciens tournois et faictz d'armes and the Journee d'Onneur et de Prouesse. He followed his patron to Genappe in Brabant when the Dauphin took refuge at the Burgundian court.
La Sale is generally accepted as the author of one of the most famous satires in the French language, Les Quinze Joyes de mari age, because his name has been disengaged from an acrostic at the end of the Rouen ms. He has been credited with the famous
collection of stories supposed to be narrated by various persons at the court of Philippe le Bon, and which was entitled the Cent Nouvelles, for which Louis XI. was long held responsible, but modern criticism is against the attribution. The last mention of La Sale's name is in 1461.
Petit Jehan de Saintre gives, at the point when the traditions of chivalry were fast disappearing, an account of the education of an ideal knight and rules for his conduct under many different circumstances. When Petit Jehan, aged 13, is persuaded by the Dame des Belles-Cousines to accept her as his lady, she gives him systematic instruction in religion, courtesy, chivalry and the arts of success. Saintre becomes an accomplished knight, the fame of whose prowess spreads throughout Europe. This section of the romance gives a very charming picture of the manners of the time. Unfortunately in the second part this virtuous lady falls a victim to a vulgar intrigue with Damp Abbe. One of La Sale's commentators, M. Joseph Neve, makes the too ingenious sugges tion that the second section is designed simply to show how the hero, after passing through the other grades of education, learns at last by experience to arm himself against coquetry. Petit Jehan de Saintre was dedicated to the duc de Calabre. His wife, Marie de Bourbon, was one of the "Belles-Cousines" who contended for the favour of Jacques or Jacquet de Lalaing in the Livre des faits de Jacques Lalaing which forms the chief source of the early exploits of Petit Jehan and is usually attributed to the Burgun dian herald Lefevre. Jehan de Saintre flourished in the Hundred Years' War, was taken prisoner after Poitiers, with the elder Boucicaut, and was employed in negotiating the treaty of Bretigny. Froissart mentioned him as "le meilleur et le plus vaillant chevalier de France." Evidence in favour of La Sale's authorship of Les Quinze Joyes de Mariage is brought forward by M. E. Gossart (Bibliophile belge, 1871, pp. 83-87). Gaston Paris (Revue de Paris, Dec. 1897) expressed an opinion that to find anything like the malicious pene tration by which La Sale divines the most intimate details of married life, it is necessary to travel as far as Balzac.
best editions of La Sale's works are:—Petit Jehan de Saintre by J. M. Guichard (1843) ; Les Quinze Joyes de ma riage by P. Jannet (Bibl. elzev., 1857), and by Heuckenkamp (i9oi).
La Salade was printed more than once during the 16th century. La Salle was never printed ; for its contents see E. Gossart in the Bibli ophile belge (1871, pp. 77 et seq.). See also Joseph Neve, Antoine de la Salle, sa vie et ses ouvrages . . . suivi du Reconfort de Madame de Fresne . . . et de fragments et documents inedits (1903), who argues for the rejection of Les Quinze Joyes from La Sale's works; Pietro Toldo, Contributo alto studio della novella francese del XV e XV1 secolo (1895), and a review of it by Gaston Paris in the Journal des Savants (May 1895) ; L. Stern, "Versuch iiber Antoine de la Salle," in Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen, vol. xlvi. ; G. Raynaud, "Un Nouveau Manuscrit du Petit Jehan de Saintre," in Romania, vol. xxxi.