MARQUISE DE (1588-1665), French salonniere, was the daughter and heiress of Jean de Vivonne, marquis of Pisani, and Giulia Savelli. She was married at twelve to Charles d'Angennes, vi dame of Le Mans, and afterwards marquis of Rambouillet. The young marquise found the coarseness and intrigue that then reigned in the French court little to her taste, and after the birth of her eldest daughter, Julie d'Angennes, in 1607, she began to gather round her the circle afterwards so famous. She established herself at the Hotel Pisani, called later the Hotel de Rambouillet. Almost all the more remarkable personages in French society and French literature frequented it, especially during the second quar ter of the 17th century. Madame de Rambouillet's natural abili ties had been carefully trained, but were not extraordinary. She had genuine kindness and a lack of prejudice that enabled her to entertain on the same footing princes and princesses of the blood royal, and men of letters, while among her intimate friends was the beautiful Angelique Paulet. The respect paid to ability in her salon effected a great advancement in the position of French men of letters. The almost uniform excellence of the memoirs and letters of the period may be traced largely to the development of conversation as a fine art at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the consequent establishment of a standard of clear and adequate ex pression. Mme. de Rambouillet was known as the "incomparable Arthenice," the name being an anagram for Catherine, devised by Malherbe and Racan. Among the famous incidents in the story of the Hotel are the sonnet war between the Uranistes and the Jobistes—partisans of two famous sonnets by Voiture and Ben serade—and the composition by all the famous poets of the day of the Guirlande de Julie, a collection of poems on different flowers, addressed in 1641 to Julie d'Angennes, afterwards duch esse de Montausier. Julie herself was responsible for a good
deal of the preciosity for which the Hotel was later ridiculed.
The Precieuses, who are usually associated with Moliere's avowed caricatures and with the extravagances of Mlle. de Scudery, but whose name, it must be remembered, Madame de Sevigne herself was proud to bear—insisted on a ceremonious gallantry from their suitors and friends, though it seems from the account given by Tallemant des Reaux that practical jokes of a mild kind were by no means excluded from the Hotel de Rambouillet. They especially favoured an elaborate and quin tessenced kind of colloquial and literary expression, imitated from Marini and Gongora, and then fashionable throughout Europe. Moliere's attack was probably levelled not at the Hotel de Ram bouillet itself, but at the numerous coteries which in the course of years had sprung up in imitation of it. But the satire did in truth touch the originators as well as the imitators,—the former more closely perhaps than they perceived. The Hotel de Rambouillet continued open till the death of its mistress, on Dec. 2, 1665, but the troubles of the Fronde diminished its influence.
The chief original authorities respecting Madame de Rambouillet and her set are Tallemant des Reaux in his Historiettes, and Antoine Baudeau de Somaize in his Grand Dictionnaire des Precieuses (1660). Many modern writers have treated the subject, notably Victor Cousin, La Societe francaise au xviie siècle (2 vols., 1856), and C. L. Livet, Precieux et Precieuses . . . (5859). There is an admirable edition (1875) of the Guirlande de Julie by 0. Uzanne.