Marguerite de la Sablière

Who was Marguerite de la Sablière?

Marguerite de la Sablière, was a French salonist, friend and patron of La Fontaine, was the wife of Antoine Rambouillet, sieur de la Sablière, 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. 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.