RAMBOUILLET, HOTEL DE. The house which, toward the middle of the seventeenth century, was the most famous meeting-place of the cultivated society of Paris. The hotise itself had previously been known as the Hotel Pisini, the residence of the of that name, whose daughter, Catherine de Vivonne, received it as a part of her dowry on her marriage in 1600 with the future Marquis de Rambouillet. Dissatisfied with the style of the house, she had it entirely remodeled between 1610 and 1617. After its completion the young beauty, weary of the crowded assemblies of the Louvre, decided to remain at home and make leer own bonne supply all the society she desired. Here, for a generation. assembled the most bril liant coterie in Paris, known, from their in sistence on refinement in speech and manners, as pracieu.r. .Among early frequenters were Riche lieu, Malherbe. Balzae, Corneille, Racan, Voiture, and, somewhat later, Bossuet, Manage, Chapelain. Scarron, Saint-Evremond, Benserade, and La Roehefoucauld. There too were trained the ladies who were to found literary salons in their turn, Madame de in Fayette, _Madeleine de Scudcry, the Duchess of Longueville„ and Madame de Its influence was altogether refining, but it led in some to an exaggeration which resulted in a most ludicrous affectation. It must be borne in mind that .MoliAre, in his Pri'
eicuses ridicules, was satirizing not this ac complished group, but the exaggerations of their pedantic imitators. From a little before 1620 the society which assembled here repre sented all that was best and brightest in the social life of the time. Its lustre began to decline after the marriage lin 164.51 of the daughter of the house to the Due he Montausier; and the troubles of the Fronde, the death of rn de Bambouillet in 1652, and his wife's increasing age and infirmities put an end to it. To the move ment begnn by _Madame de 1ZambouiIlet is to be attributed an enrichment and purification of the literary and polite langnage, which gained in precision and flexibility and was thus differen tiated sharply from every-day speech. From her Caine also an improvement in the social position of women, and in the forms of good conversation, in which France has ever since excelled. Con sult: Vincent, The h 5t.1 de lea mbouillet (Bos ton, 1900) ; Cousin, La franeaisc au XI horn sierle (Paris, ; Livot, Pri'cieux et prericuses (ib., 1859) : lIoederer, Lu polio cn France pendant le XVIIme sa'cic fib., 1834) ; and Somaize's curious (;rand dietionnaire des pri'cieuscs fib., 1661; new ed. 1556).