Those who regard Catherine de Rambouillet as one of the most engaging figures of Europe in the seventeenth century, must regret that, from an age where portrait-painting was so largely cultivated, no picture of her has come down to us. All we know is that she was beautiful and tall; the poets compared her to a pine tree. It was supposed that she never consented to sit to a painter, but M. Magne has discovered that there were portraits. Scudéry, he believes, possessed engravings from paintings by Van Mol and by du Cayer. The earlier of these, painted in 1645, represented her gazing at the dead body of her father. These works of art appear to be hopelessly lost. We are thrown back on the written "portraits," in the alembicated style of the middle of the century, which adorn a host of novels and poems. Of these the fullest is that introduced by Madeleine de Scudéry into the seventh volume of her huge romance, _Le Grand Cyrus_. M. Emile Magne, confronted with the "precious" terms of this description, and the vagueness of it, loses his temper with poor Mlle. de Scudéry, whom he calls _cette pécore_. It is true that the physical details which would interest us are omitted, but it is hardly true to say, that "il est impossible de rien démêler au griffonage [de Mlle. de Scudéry], sinon que Mme. de Rambouillet était belle." This is not quite just, and to avenge the great Madeleine for being called a _pécore_, I will quote, what M. Magne surprisingly omits, part of the character of Cléomire, the pseudonym of Mme. de Rambouillet in _Cyrus_:
She is tall and graceful. The delicacy of her complexion is beyond expression. The eyes of Cléomire are so admirably beautiful that no painter has ever been able to do justice to them. All her passions are in subjection to her good sense.
This might be more precise, but the touch about the eyes is helpful. Chapelain celebrated (in 1666, just after her death)
Cet air, cette douceur, cette grâce, ce port, Ce chef d'œuvre admiré du Midi jusqu'au Nord;
And Tallemant, always the best reporter, speaks of the permanent beauty of her complexion, which she would never consent to touch artificially. The only concession to fashion which she made in old age was to rouge her lips, which had turned blue. Tallemant wished she would not do even this. When she was very old, her head shook with a sort of palsy; this was attributed to her having indulged too much in the eating of pounded ambergris, but perhaps a more obvious reason could be found for so natural an infirmity.