<Ul> <Li> June--The Comédie Italienne theater troupe is banned after they perform La Fausse prude at the Hôtel de Bourgogne; the play has an unflattering character clearly representing Madame de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of Louis XIV . The actors are compelled to leave the city . </Li> </Ul> <Li> June--The Comédie Italienne theater troupe is banned after they perform La Fausse prude at the Hôtel de Bourgogne; the play has an unflattering character clearly representing Madame de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of Louis XIV . The actors are compelled to leave the city . </Li> <Li> 1698 <Ul> <Li> 18 September--A mysterious prisoner wearing a black velvet mask is incarcerated in the Bastille . Voltaire romanticizes this story into that of a prisoner with an iron mask, who later becomes the subject of the novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas . </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Ul> <Li> 18 September--A mysterious prisoner wearing a black velvet mask is incarcerated in the Bastille . Voltaire romanticizes this story into that of a prisoner with an iron mask, who later becomes the subject of the novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas . </Li> </Ul>

Who wanted france to be the cultural center of europe in the 1600s