It was not around the queen that this honorable and agreeable society gathered; it was at the Hotel Rambouillet, around Catherine de Vivonne, in Rue St.Thomas du Louvre.
Literature was there represented by Malherbe and Racan, afterwards by Balzac and Voiture, Gombault and Chapelain, who constantly met there, in company with Princess de Conde and her daughter, subsequently Duchess de Longueville, Mademoiselle du Vigean, Madame and Mdlle.

d'Epernon, and the Bishop of Lucon himself, quite young as yet, but already famous.

"All the wits were received at the Hotel Rambouillet, whatever their condition," says M.Cousin: "all that was asked of them was to have good manners; but the aristocratic tone was established there without any effort, the majority of the guests at the house being very great lords, and the mistress being at one and the same time Rambouillet and Vivonne.
The wits were courted and honored, but they did not hold the dominion." At that great period which witnessed the growth of Richelieu's power, and of the action he universally exercised upon French society, at the outcome from the moral licentiousness which Henry IV.'s example had encouraged in his court, and after a certain roughness, the fruit of long civil wars, a lesson was taught at Madame de Rambouillet's of modesty, grace, and lofty politeness, together with the art of forming good ideas and giving them good expression, sometimes with rather too much of far-fetched and affected cleverness, always in good company, and with much sweetness and self-possession on the part of the mistress of the house.

In 1627, Cardinal Richelieu, having become minister, sent the Marquis of Rambouillet as ambassador to Spain.

He wanted to be repaid for this favor.