 The novellas represent a concession to the changed tastes of the French literary public. New miniature genres (the maxim, the tale, the fable) had replaced the outmoded genre of the prolix romance novel. Célinte (1661) and Mathilde d’Aguilar (1667) explore the distinctive traits of female psychology, especially in the area of the passions and the propensity toward curiosity. Promenade at Versailles (1669) exemplifies Scudéry’s royalist political philosophy at its most militant; Louis XIV is praised as the model of virtues and Versailles is depicted as a terrestrial paradise.