After the death of Louis XIV, Paris became a hotbed of new ideas, salons, cenacles, and debates. Intellectual and worldly life was exciting in the French capital, a benchmark in civilized Europe: French was imposed as the language of wit, intelligence and conversation. There are innumerable testimonies of the fascination that France and its language aroused: monarchs like Frederick II and Catherine of Russia; princes and great lords like Eugene of Savoy or the Marshal of Saxony; cultivated travelers like Hamilton or Caraccioli; writers, abbots, or diplomats, like Franklin, Galiani, Grimm, or Beckford. Marc Fumaroli offers us an erudite and vivid portrait of all of them, accompanied by fragments of letters or other writings that testify to the appeal of the ideal of "noble life" they pursued.