ABSTRACT
Louis de Bourbon was born at a time of particularly intense intellectual and religious ferment in Europe. Changes in assumptions about social relationships influenced his behaviour as well as the interpretation that others put onto that behaviour, and he was centrally placed in the working out of new attitudes because of the Conde family's link with the salon of Mme de Rambouillet. The chief determinant of social attitudes in the late 1630s and the 1640s was a new sensibility brought about by the evolution in assumptions concerning the will and the passions. The code of honnetete being gradually worked out in the salons, novels and treatises of the 1630s and 1640s was predicated on the assumption that the claims of the individual to moral freedom must be restricted in the interests of moral harmony. Conde's fascination with the heroic potential of the individual certainly provided the foundation for his own quest for sublimity, which provoked the admiration of his compatriots.
