The Women of the French Salons

The Women of the French Salons is by Amelia Gere Mason. The preface says it has been a labor of love with many distinguished Frenchmen to recall the memories of the women who have made their society so illustrious. The preface adds that the social life of the two centuries in which women played so important a role in France is always full of human interest.

The Duchesse de Longueville, sister of the Grand Conde and heroine of the Fronde, is named as prominent among the fair faces that look out from court and salon. Cardinal Mazarin is quoted as saying of three women that they were capable of governing and overturning three kingdoms. Mme. Cornuel is a woman of whom it was said that every sin she confessed was an epigram. Of one woman, the book says that George Eliot was a greater novelist, a more accurate scholar, and a more logical thinker, but that in versatility, in intellectual spontaneity, in brilliancy of conversation and natural eloquence of thought she is without a rival.