Marguerite de la Sablière

Mme de la Sablière

Marguerite de la Sablière (c. 1640 – 8 January 1693), was a French salonist, friend and patron of La Fontaine, was the wife of Antoine Rambouillet, sieur de la Sablière (1624–1679), a Protestant financier and poet entrusted with the administration of the royal estates, her maiden name being Marguerite Hessein.

She received an excellent education in Latin, mathematics, physics and anatomy from the best scholars of her time. For example, Joseph Sauveur and Gilles Personne de Roberval taught her mathematics, physics, and astronomy.^[1] Her house became a meeting-place for poets, scientists and men of letters, no less than for brilliant members of the court of Louis XIV.

About 1673 Mme de la Sablière received into her house La Fontaine, whom for twenty years she relieved of every kind of material anxiety. Another friend and inmate of the house was the traveller and physician François Bernier, whose abridgment of the works of Gassendi was written for Mme de la Sablière. The abbé Chaulieu and his fellow-poet, Charles Auguste, marquis de La Fare, were among her most intimate associates.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux mocked her scientific pretensions in his Satire sur les femmes: holding an astrolabe, her efforts to observe Jupiter were portrayed as weakening her sight and ruining her complexion. In reply, Charles Perrault's Apologie des femmes defended her.^[1]

La Fare sold his commission in the army to be able to spend his time with her. This liaison, which seems to have been the only serious passion of her life, was broken in 1679. La Fare was seduced from his allegiance, according to Mme de Sevigné by his love of play, but to this must be added a new passion for the actress La Champmeslé.

Mme de la Sablière thenceforward gave more and more attention to good works, much of her time being spent in the hospital for incurables. Her husband's death in the same year increased her serious tendencies, and she was presently converted to Roman Catholicism. She died in Paris on 8 January 1693.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} JH; MBO (1999), "La Sablière, Marguerite Hessein, Madame de (1640?-1693)", in Ogilvie, Marilyn; Harvey, Joy, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, II, Routledge, ISBN 978-0415920407, http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/la-sablire-marguerite-hessein-madame-tf/ 

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Marguerite de La Sabliere". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Marguerite_De_La_Sabliere. 

Persondata
Name	Sabliere, Marguerite de la
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Date of birth	1640
Place of birth
Date of death	1693
Place of death