In this opinion Pontis echoed the general impression. At the time when La Grande Mademoiselle was born, the man of quality no longer had a right to be "brutal,"--in other words, to betray coarseness of nature. New customs and new manners exacted from the man of noble birth tact and good breeding, not science. But it was requisite that the nobleman's mind should be "formed" by the influence and discourse of a man of letters, so that he might be capable of judging witty and intellectual works ("works of the mind").
Marshal Montmorency,[16] son of the Constable, who "hardly knew how to write his own name," had always in his employ cultured and intellectual people, who "made verses" for him on a multitude of such subjects as it was befitting his high estate that he should know; such subjects as were calculated to give him an air of intelligence and general information. His intellectual advisers informed him what to think and what to say of the current questions of the day.[17] It was good form for great and noble houses to entertain at least one _autheur_. As there were no public journals or reviews, the _autheur_ took the place of literary chronicles and literary criticism. He talked of the last dramatic sketch, or of the last new novel.
It was not long before another step in advance was taken, by which every nobleman was permitted to entertain his own personal _autheur_, and to compose "works of the mind" for himself. But he who succumbed to the epidemic (_cacoëthes scribendi_), owed it to his birth and breeding to hide his malady, or to make excuses for it.
Mlle. de Scudéry puts in the mouth of _Sapho_ (herself) in _Le Grand Cyrus_[18]:
Nothing is more inconvenient than to be intellectual or to be treated as if one were so, when one has a noble heart and a certain degree of birth; for I hold that it is an indubitable fact that from the moment one separates himself from the multitude, distinguishing one's self by the enlightenment of one's mind; when one acquires the reputation of having more mind than another, and of writing well enough--in prose or in verse--to be able to compose books, then, I say, one loses one half of one's nobility--if one has any--and one is not one half as important as another of the same house and of the same blood, who has not meddled with writings....