Purity of feeling however was the soul of the system. Authors and poets were admitted as admirers, but they never got beyond the villa of _Jolis Vers_. When Voiture, who had glorified Julie d'Angennes his life-long, ventured to kiss her hand, he was thrown from the fortifications of the castle of _Petit Soins_, and soused into the lake of Indifference: even her noble admirer, the duke Montauzier, was forced to paddle on the river of Inclination, for fourteen years[35], before he was admitted to the city of Tenderness, and allowed to make her his wife. Their style of life was as eccentric as their talk. The lady rose in the morning, dressed herself with elegance, and then went to bed. The French bed, placed in an alcove, had a passage round it, called the _ruelle_; to be at the top of the _ruelle_ was the post of honour; and Voiture, under the title of _Alcovist_, long held this envied post, beside the pillow of his adored Julie, while he never was allowed to touch her little finger. The folly had its accompanying good. The respect which the women exacted, and the virtue they preserved, exalted them, and in spite of their high-flown sentiments, and metaphysical conceits, wits did not disdain to "put a soul into the body of" nonsense. Rochefoucauld, Menage, madame de Sévigné, madame Des Houillères, Balzac, Vaugelas, and others, frequented the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and lent the aid of their talents to dignify their _galimathias_.
But it was too much for the honest comic poet to bear. He perceived the whole of society infected--nobles and prelates, ladies and poets, marquisses and lacqueys, all wandered about the _Pays de Tendre_, lost in a very labyrinth of inextricable nonsense. They assumed fictitious names[36], they promulgated fictitious sentiments; they admired each other, according as they best succeeded in being as unnatural as possible. Molière stripped the scene and personages of their gilding in a moment. His fair _Précieuses_ were the daughters of a _bourgeois_ named Gorgibus, who quitted their homely names of Cathos and Madelon, for Aminte and Polixene, dismissed their admirers for proposing to marry them, scolded their father for not possessing _le bel air des choses_, and are taken in by two valets whom they believe to be nobles, who easily imitate the foppery and sentimentalism, which these young ladies so much admire.[37]