country beyond recognition. Hundreds of cities and villages were burned by Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch and Swedish soldiers, who made the unfortunate country their battleground. Of the seventeen million inhabitants thirteen millions were killed or swept away by starvation and the pest. Agriculture, commerce, industries and arts were annihilated. Of many villages nothing remained but their names. According to the chronicles of these times, one could wander for many miles without seeing a living creature except wolves and raven. All joy and happiness, in which the German people had been so rich, were extinguished. To women the cup of sorrow would never become empty, as hate, revenge, cruelty, and the lowest passions combined to fill their lives with endless mental and physical agonies.
During these dreadful times such social gatherings as had become the fashion among the refined people of Italy during the period of the Renaissance, were of course out of the question. Far happier in this respect was France, where the era of the "Salons" began, many of which became known throughout Europe, for the inspiration and refinement that spread out from them.
It was to the exceptional qualities of a young and noble-minded woman of Italian birth, that the first salon in France owed its origin and its distinctive character. This lady was Catherine Pisani, the daughter of Jean de Vivonne, Marquis of Pisani. Born at Rome in 1588, she married the French Marquis of Rambouillet, with whom she moved to Paris. Repelled by the gilded hollowness and license of the court of King Henry IV. she retired, about the year 1608, to her husbands stately palace, which became famous as the "Hotel Rambouillet." Its pride was a suite of salons or parlors, arranged for purposes of reception and so devised as to allow many visitors to move easily. With their draperies in blue and gold, their cozy corners, choice works of art, Venetian lamps, and crystal vases always filled with fragrant flowers, these rooms were indeed ideal places for social and literary gatherings.
As Amelia Gere Mason has described in a series of articles about the French Salons, written for the "Century Magazine" of 1890, Mm. de Rambouillet "sought to assemble here all that was most distinguished, whether for wit, beauty, talent, or birth, into an atmosphere of refinement and simple elegance which would tone down all discordant elements and raise life to the level of a fine art. There was a strongly intellectual flavor in the amusements, as well as in the discussions of this salon, and the place of honor was given to genius, learning, and good manners, rather than to rank. But the spirit was by no means purely literary. The exclusive
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