While Louis XIV was building Versailles, his contemporaries were trying to create a new way of life that was opposed to Versailles. Such an alternative for them was the sphere of private relationships - an ideal space of communication where a person himself constructed his own identity. These experiments were carried out not only in life, but also on paper, thanks to which the reader of this book has a double opportunity to get acquainted with how the contemporaries of Louis XIV imagined the art of private life, and to expand their understanding of French literature of the 17th century.