jest, or he was in a playful humor, or deigned to tell a story, it was ever with infinite grace, and a noble refined air which I have found only in him.” “Never was man so naturally polite,[5] nor of such circumspect politeness, so powerful by degrees, nor who better discriminated age, worth, and rank, both in his replies and in his deportment. . . . His salutations, more or less marked, but always slight, were of incomparable grace and majesty. . . . He was admirable in the different acknowledgments of salutes at the head of the army and at reviews. . . . But especially toward women , there was nothing like it. . . . Never did he pass the most insignificant woman without taking off his hat to her; and I mean chambermaids whom he knew to be such. . . Never did he chance to say anything disobliging to anybody. . . . Never before company anything mistimed or venturesome, but even to the smallest gesture, his walk, his bearing, his features, all were proper, respectful, noble, grand, majestic, and thoroughly natural.”
Such is the model, and, nearly or remotely, it is imitated up to the end of the ancient régime. If it undergoes any change, it is only to become more sociable. In the eighteenth century, except on great ceremonial occasions, it is seen descending step by step from its pedestal. It no longer imposes “that stillness around it which lets one hear a fly walk.” “Sire,” said the Marshal de Richelieu, who had seen three reigns, addressing Louis XVI, “under Louis XIV no one dared utter a word; under Louis XV people whispered; under your Majesty they talk aloud.” If authority is a loser, society is the gainer; etiquette, insensibly relaxed, allows the introduction of ease and cheerfulness. Henceforth the great, less concerned in overawing than in pleasing, cast off stateliness like an uncomfortable and ridiculous garment, “seeking respect less than applause. It no longer suffices to be affable; one has to appear amiable at any cost with one’s inferiors as with one’s equals.”[6] The French princes, says again a contemporary lady, “are dying with fear of being deficient in favors.”[7] Even around the throne “the style is free and playful.” The grave and disciplined court of Louis XIV became at the end of the century, under the smiles of the youthful queen, the most seductive and gayest of drawing-rooms. Through this universal relaxation, a worldly existence gets to be perfect. “He who has not lived before 1789,” says Talleyrand at a later period, “knows nothing of the charm of living.” It was too great; no other way of living was appreciated; it engrossed man wholly. When society becomes so attractive, people live for it alone.
II. SOCIAL LIFE HAS PRIORITY.
Subordination of it to other interests and duties. – Indifference to public affairs. – They are merely a subject of jest. – Neglect of private affairs. – Disorder in the household and abuse of money.
There is neither leisure nor taste for other matters, even for things which are of most concern to man, such as public affairs, the household, and the family. – With respect to the first, I have already stated that people abstain from them, and are indifferent; the administration of things, whether local or general, is out of their hands and no longer interests them. They only allude to it in jest; events of the most serious consequence form the subject of witticisms. After the edict of the Abbé Terray, which half ruined the state creditors, a spectator, too much crowded in the theater, cried out, “Ah, how unfortunate that our good Abbé Terray is not here to cut us down one-half I” Everybody laughs and applauds. All Paris the following day, is consoled for public ruin by repeating the phrase. – Alliances, battles, taxation, treaties, ministries, coups d’état, the entire history of the country, is put into epigrams and songs. One day,[8] in an assembly of young people belonging to the court, one of them, as the current witticism was passing around, raised his hands in delight and exclaimed, “How can one help being pleased with great events, even with disturbances, when they provide us with such amusing witticisms!” Thereupon the sarcasms circulate, and every disaster in France is turned into nonsense. A song on the battle of Hochstaedt was pronounced poor, and some one in this connection said “I am sorry that battle was lost – the song is so worthless.”[9] – Even when eliminating from this trait all that belongs to the sway of impulse and the license of paradox, there remains the stamp of an age in which the State is almost nothing and society almost everything. We may on this principle divine what order of talent was required in the ministers. M. Necker, having given a magnificent supper with serious and comic opera, “finds that this festivity is worth more to him in credit, favor, and stability than all his financial schemes put together. . . . His last arrangement concerning the vingtième was only talked about for one day, while everybody is still talking about his fête; at Paris, as well as in Versailles, its attractions are dwelt on in detail, people emphatically declaring that Monsieur and Mme. Necker are a grace to society.”[10] Good society devoted to pleasure imposes on those in office the obligation of providing pleasures for it. It might also say, in a half-serious, half-ironical tone, with Voltaire, “that the gods created kings only to give fêtes every day, provided they varied; that life is too short to make any other use of it; that lawsuits, intrigues, warfare, and the quarrels of priests, which consume human life, are absurd and horrible things; that man is born only to enjoy himself;” and that among the essential things we must put the “superfluous” in the first rank.
According to this, we can easily foresee that they will be as little concerned with their private affairs as with public affairs. Housekeeping, the management of property, domestic economy, are in their eyes vulgar, insipid in the highest degree, and only suited to an intendant or a butler. Of what use are such persons if we must have such cares? Life is no longer a festival if one has to provide the ways and means. Comforts, luxuries, the agreeable must flow naturally and greet our lips of their own accord. As a matter of course and without his intervention, a man belonging to this world should find gold always in his pocket, a handsome coat on his toilet table, powdered valets in his antechamber, a gilded coach at his door, a fine dinner on his table, so that he may reserve all his attention to be expended in favors on the guests in his drawing-room. Such a mode of living is not to be maintained without waste, and the domestics, left to themselves, make the most of it. What matter is it, so long as they perform their duties? Moreover, everybody must live, and it is pleasant to have contented and obsequious faces around one. – Hence the first houses in the kingdom are given up to pillage. Louis XV, on a hunting expedition one day, accompanied by the Duc de Choiseul,[11] inquired of him how much he thought the carriage in which they were seated had cost. M. de Choiseul replied that he should consider himself fortunate to get one like it for 5,000 or 6,000 francs; but, “His Majesty paying for it as a king, and not always paying cash, might have paid 8,000 francs for it.” – “You are wide of the mark,” rejoined the king, “for this vehicle, as you see it, cost me 30,000 francs. . . . The robberies in my household are enormous, but it is impossible to put a stop to them.” – So the great help themselves as well as the little, either in money, or in kind, or in services. There are in the king’s household fifty-four horses for the grand equerry, thirty-eight of them being for Mme. de Brionne, the administratrix of the office of the stables during her son’s minority; there are two hundred and fifteen grooms on duty, and about as many horses kept at the king’s expense for various other persons, entire strangers to the department.[12] What a nest of parasites on this one branch of the royal tree! Elsewhere I find Madame Elisabeth, so moderate, consuming fish amounting to 30,000 francs per annum; meat and game to 70,000 francs; candles to 60,000 francs; Mesdames burn white and yellow candles to the amount of 215,068 francs; the light for the queen comes to 157,109 francs. The street at Versailles is still shown, formerly lined with stalls, to which the king’s valets resorted to nourish Versailles by the sale of his dessert. There is no article from which the domestic insects do not manage to scrape and glean something. The king is supposed to drink orgeat and lemonade to the value of 2,190 francs. “The grand broth, day and night,” which Mme. Royale, aged six years, sometimes drinks, costs 5,201 francs per annum. Towards the end of the preceding reign[13] the femmes-de-chambre enumerate in the Dauphine’s outlay “four pairs of shoes per week; three ells of ribbon per diem, to tie her dressing-gown; two ells of taffeta per diem, to cover the basket in which she keeps her gloves and fan.” A few years earlier the king paid 200,000 francs for coffee, lemonade, chocolate, barley-water, and water-ices; several persons were inscribed on the list for ten or twelve cups a day, while it was estimated that the coffee, milk and bread each morning for each lady of the bed-chamber cost 2,000 francs per annum.[14] We can readily understand how, in households thus managed, the purveyors are willing to wait. They wait so well that often under Louis XV they refuse to provide and “hide themselves.” Even the delay is so regular that, at last; they are obliged to pay them five per cent. interest on their advances; at this rate, in 1778, after all Turgot’s economic reforms, the king still owes nearly 800,000 livres to his wine merchant, and nearly three millions and a half to his purveyor.[15] The same disorder exists in the houses which surround the throne. “Mme. de Guéménée owes 60,000 livres to her shoe-maker, 16,000 livres to her paper-hanger, and the rest in proportion.” Another lady, whom the Marquis de Mirabeau sees with hired horses, replies at his look of astonishment, “It is not because there are not seventy horses in our stables, but none of them are able to walk to day.”[16] Mme. de Montmorin, on ascertaining that her husband’s debts are greater than his property, thinks she can save her dowry of 200,000 livres, but is informed that she had given security for a tailor’s bill, which, “incredible and ridiculous to say, amounts to the sum of 180,000 livres.”[17] “One of the decided manias of these days,” says Mme. d’Oberkirk, “is to be ruined in everything and by everything.” “The two brothers Villemer build country cottages at from 500,000 to 600,000 livres; one of them keeps forty horses to ride occasionally in the Bois de Boulogne on horseback.”[18] In one night M. de Chenonceaux, son of M. et Mme. Dupin, loses at play 700,000 livres. “M. de Chenonceaux and M. de Francueil ran through seven or eight millions at this epoch. “[19] “The Duc de Lauzun, at the age of twenty-six, after having run through the capital of 100,000 crowns revenue, is prosecuted by his creditors for nearly two millions of indebtedness.”[20] “M. le Prince de Conti lacks bread and wood, although with an income of 600,000 livres,” for the reason that “he buys and builds wildly on all sides.”[21] Where would be the pleasure if these people were reasonable? What kind of a seignior is he who studies the price of things? And how can the exquisite be reached if one grudges money? Money, accordingly, must flow and flow on until it is exhausted, first by the innumerable secret or tolerated bleedings through domestic abuses, and next in broad streams of the master’s own prodigality, through structures, furniture, toilets, hospitality, gallantry, and pleasures. The Comte d’Artois, that he may give the queen a fête, demolishes, rebuilds, arranges, and furnishes Bagatelle from top to bottom, employing nine hundred workmen, day and night, and, as there is no time to go any distance for lime, plaster, and cut stone, he sends patrols of the Swiss guards on the highways to seize, pay for, and immediately bring in all carts thus loaded.[22] The Marshal de Soubise, entertaining the king one day at dinner and over night, in his country house, expends 200,000 livres.[23] Mme. de Matignon makes a contract to be furnished every day with a new head-dress at 24,000 livres per annum. Cardinal de Rohan has an alb bordered with point lace, which is valued at more than 100,000 livres, while his kitchen utensils are of massive silver.[24] – Nothing is more natural, considering their ideas of money; hoarded and piled up, instead of being a fertilizing stream, it is a useless marsh exhaling bad odors. The queen, having presented the Dauphin with a carriage whose silver-gilt trappings are decked with rubies and sapphires, naively exclaims, “Has not the king added 200,000 livres to my treasury? That is no reason for keeping them!”[25] They would rather throw it out of the window. Which was actually done by the Marshal de Richelieu with a purse he had given to his grandson, and which the lad, not knowing how to use, brought back intact. Money, on this occasion, was at least of service to the passing street-sweeper that picked it up. But had there been no passer-by to pick it up, it would have been thrown into the river. One day Mme. de B – , being with the Prince de Conti, hinted that she would like a miniature of her canary bird set in a ring. The Prince offers to have it made. His offer is accepted, but on condition that the miniature be set plain and without jewels. Accordingly the miniature is placed in a simple rim of gold. But, to cover over the painting, a large diamond, made very thin, serves as a glass. Mme. de B – , having returned the diamond, “M. le Prince de Conti had it ground to powder which he used to dry the ink of the note he wrote to Mme. de B – on the subject.” This pinch of powder cost 4 or 5,000 livres, but we may divine the turn and tone of the note. The extreme of profusion must accompany the height of gallantry, the man of the world being so much the more important according to his contempt for money.
III. UNIVERSAL PLEASURE SEEKING.
Moral divorce of husband and wife. – Gallantry. – Separation of parents and children. – Education, its object and omissions. – The tone of servants and purveyors. – Pleasure seeking universal.
In a drawing room the woman who receives the least attention from a man is his own wife, and she returns the compliment. Hence at a time like this, when people live for society and in society, there is no place for conjugal intimacy. – Moreover, when a married couple occupy an exalted position they are separated by custom and decorum. Each party has his or her own household, or at least their own apartments, servants, equipage, receptions and distinct society, and, as entertainment entails ceremony, they stand towards each other in deference to their rank on the footing of polite strangers. They are each announced in each other’s apartment; they address each other “Madame, Monsieur,” and not alone in public, but in private; they shrug their shoulders when, sixty leagues out from Paris, they encounter in some old chateau a provincial wife ignorant enough to say “my dear ” to her husband before company.[26] – Already separated at the fireside, the two lives diverge beyond it at an ever increasing radius. The husband has a government of his own: his private command, his private regiment, his post at court, which keeps him absent from home; only in his declining years does his wife consent to follow him into garrison or into the provinces.[27] And rather is this the case because she is herself occupied, and as seriously as himself; often with a position near a princess, and always with an important circle of company which she must maintain. At this epoch woman is as active as man,[28] following the same career, and with the same resources, consisting of the flexible voice, the winning grace, the insinuating manner, the tact, the quick perception of the right moment, and the art of pleasing, demanding, and obtaining; there is not a lady at court who does not bestow regiments and benefices. Through this right the wife has her personal retinue of solicitors and protégés, also, like her husband, her friends, her enemies, her own ambitions, disappointments, and rancorous feeling; nothing could be more effectual in the disruption of a household than this similarity of occupation and this division of interests. – The tie thus loosened ends by being sundered under the ascendancy of opinion. “It looks well not to live together,” to grant each other every species of tolerance, and to devote oneself to society. Society, indeed, then fashions opinion, and through opinion it creates the morals which it requires.
Toward the middle of the century the husband and wife lodged under the same roof, but that was all. “They never saw each other, one never met them in the same carriage; they are never met in the same house; nor, with very good reason, are they ever together in public.” Strong emotions would have seemed odd and even “ridiculous;” in any event unbecoming; it would have been as unacceptable as an earnest remark “aside” in the general current of light conversation. Each has a duty to all, and for a couple to entertain each other is isolation; in company there is no right to the tête-à-tête.[29] It was hardly allowed for a few days to lovers.[30] And even then it was regarded unfavorably; they were found too much occupied with each other. Their preoccupation spread around them an atmosphere of “constraint and ennui; one had to be upon one’s guard and to check oneself.” They were “dreaded.” The exigencies of society are those of an absolute king, and admit of no partition. “If morals lost by this, society was infinitely the gainer,” says M. de Bezenval, a contemporary; “having got rid of the annoyances and dullness caused by the husbands’ presence, the freedom was extreme; the coquetry both of men and women kept up social vivacity and daily provided piquant adventures.” Nobody is jealous, not even when in love. “People are mutually pleased and become attached; if one grows weary of the other, they part with as little concern as they came together. Should the sentiment revive they take to each other with as much vivacity as if it were the first time they had been engaged. They may again separate, but they never quarrel. As they have become enamored without love, they part without hate, deriving from the feeble desire they have inspired the advantage of being always ready to oblige.”[31] Appearances, moreover, are respected. An uninformed stranger would detect nothing to excite suspicion. An extreme curiosity, says Horace Walpole,[32] or a great familiarity with things, is necessary to detect the slightest intimacy between the two sexes. No familiarity is allowed except under the guise of friendship, while the vocabulary of love is as much prohibited as its rites apparently are. Even with Crébillon fils, even with Laclos, at the most exciting moments, the terms their characters employ are circumspect and irreproachable. Whatever indecency there may be, it is never expressed in words, the sense of propriety in language imposing itself not only on the outbursts of passion, but again on the grossness of instincts. Thus do the sentiments which are naturally the strongest lose their point and sharpness; their rich and polished remains are converted into playthings for the drawing room, and, thus cast to and fro by the whitest hands, fall on the floor like a shuttlecock. We must, on this point, listen to the heroes of the epoch; their free and easy tone is inimitable, and it depicts both them and their actions. “I conducted myself,” says the Duc de Lauzun, “very prudently, and even deferentially with Mme. de Lauzun; I knew Mme. de Cambis very openly, for whom I concerned myself very little; I kept the little Eugénie whom I loved a great deal; I played high, I paid my court to the king, and I hunted with him with great punctuality.”[33] He had for others, withal, that indulgence of which he himself stood in need. “He was asked what he would say if his wife (whom he had not seen for ten years) should write to him that she had just discovered that she was enceinte. He reflected a moment and then replied, ‘I would write, and tell her that I was delighted that heaven had blessed our union; be careful of your health; I will call and pay my respects this evening.’ ” There are countless replies of the same sort, and I venture to say that, without having read them, one could not imagine to what a degree social art had overcome natural instincts.
“Here at Paris,” writes Mme. d’Oberkirk, “I am no longer my own mistress. I scarcely have time to talk with my husband and to answer my letters. I do not know what women do that are accustomed to lead this life; they certainly have no families to look after, nor children to educate.” At all events they act as if they had none, and the men likewise. Married people not living together live but rarely with their children, and the causes that disintegrate wedlock also disintegrate the family. In the first place there is the aristocratic tradition, which interposes a barrier between parents and children with a view to maintain a respectful distance. Although enfeebled and about to disappear,[34] this tradition still subsists. The son says ” Monsieur” to his father; the daughter comes “respectfully” to kiss her mother’s hand at her toilet. A caress is rare and seems a favor; children generally, when with their parents, are silent, the sentiment that usually animates them being that of deferential timidity. At one time they were regarded as so many subjects, and up to a certain point they are so still; while the new exigencies of worldly life place them or keep them effectually aside. M. de Talleyrand stated that he had never slept under the same roof with his father and mother. And if they do sleep there, they are not the less neglected. “I was entrusted,” says the Count de Tilly, “to valets; and to a kind of preceptor resembling these in more respects than one.” During this time his father ran after women. “I have known him,” adds the young man, “to have mistresses up to an advanced age; he was always adoring them and constantly abandoning them.” The Duc de Lauzun finds it difficult to obtain a good tutor for his son; for this reason the latter writes, “he conferred the duty on one of my late mother’s lackeys who could read and write tolerably well, and to whom the title of valet-de-chambre was given to insure greater consideration. They gave me the most fashionable teachers besides; but M. Roch (which was my mentor’s name) was not qualified to arrange their lessons, or to qualify me to benefit by them. I was, moreover, like all the children of my age and of my station, dressed in the handsomest clothes to go out, and naked and dying with hunger in the house,”[35] and not through unkindness, but through household oversight, dissipation, and disorder, attention being given to things elsewhere. One might easily count the fathers who, like the Marshal de Belle-Isle, brought up their sons under their own eyes, and themselves attended to their education methodically, strictly, and with tenderness. As to the girls, they were placed in convents; relieved from this care, their parents only enjoy the greater freedom. Even when they retain charge of them they are scarcely more of a burden to them. Little Fé1icité de Saint-Aubin[36] sees her parents “only on their waking up and at meal times.” Their day is wholly taken up; the mother is making or receiving visits; the father is in his laboratory or engaged in hunting. Up to seven years of age the child passes her time with chambermaids who teach her only a little catechism, “with an infinite number of ghost stories.” About this time she is taken care of; but in a way which well portrays the epoch. The Marquise, her mother, the author of mythological and pastoral operas, has a theater built in the chateau; a great crowd of company resorts to it from Bourbon-Lancy and Moulins; after rehearsing twelve weeks the little girl, with a quiver of arrows and blue wings, plays the part of Cupid, and the costume is so becoming she is allowed to wear it in common during the entire day for nine months. To finish the business they send for a dancing- fencing master, and, still wearing the Cupid costume, she takes lessons in fencing and in deportment. “The entire winter is devoted to playing comedy and tragedy.” Sent out of the room after dinner, she is brought in again only to play on the harpsichord or to declaim the monologue of Alzire before a numerous assembly. Undoubtedly such extravagances are not customary; but the spirit of education is everywhere the same; that is to say, in the eyes of parents there is but one intelligible and rational existence, that of society, even for children, and the attentions bestowed on these are solely with a view to introduce them into it or to prepare them for it. Even in the last years of the ancient régime[37] little boys have their hair powdered, “a pomatumed chignon (bourse), ringlets, and curls”; they wear the sword, the chapeau under the arm, a frill, and a coat with gilded cuffs; they kiss young ladies’ hands with the air of little dandies. A lass of six years is bound up in a whalebone waist; her large hoop- petticoat supports a skirt covered with wreaths; she wears on her head a skillful combination of false curls, puffs, and knots, fastened with pins, and crowned with plumes, and so high that frequently “the chin is half way down to her feet”; sometimes they put rouge on her face. She is a miniature lady, and she knows it; she is fully up in her part, without effort or inconvenience, by force of habit; the unique, the perpetual instruction she gets is that on her deportment; it may be said with truth that the fulcrum of education in this country is the dancing-master.[38] They could get along with him without any others; without him the others were of no use. For, without him, how could people go through easily, suitably, and gracefully the thousand and one actions of daily life, walking, sitting down, standing up, offering the arm, using the fan, listening and smiling, before eyes so experienced and before such a refined public? This is to be the great thing for them when they become men and women, and for this reason it is the thing of chief importance for them as children. Along with graces of attitude and of gesture, they already have those of the mind and of expression. Scarcely is their tongue loosened when they speak the polished language of their parents. The latter amuse themselves with them and use them as pretty dolls; the preaching of Rousseau, which, during the last third of the last century, brought children into fashion, produces no other effect. They are made to recite their lessons in public, to perform in proverbs, to take parts in pastorals. Their sallies are encouraged. They know how to turn a compliment, to invent a clever or affecting repartee, to be gallant, sensitive, and even spirituelle. The little Duc d’Angoulême, holding a book in his hand, receives Suffren, whom he addresses thus: “I was reading Plutarch and his illustrious men. You could not have entered more apropos.”[39] The children of M. de Sabran, a boy and a girl, one eight and the other nine, having taken lessons from the comedians Sainval and Larive, come to Versailles to play before the king and queen in Voltaire’s “Oreste,” and on the little fellow being interrogated about the classic authors, he replies to a lady, the mother of three charming girls, “Madame, Anacreon is the only poet I can think of here!” Another, of the same age, replies to a question of Prince Henry of Prussia with an agreeable impromptu in verse.[40] To cause witticisms, trivialities, and mediocre verse to germinate in a brain eight years old, what a triumph for the culture of the day! It is the last characteristic of the régime which, after having stolen man away from public affairs, from his own affairs, from marriage, from the family, hands him over, with all his sentiments and all his faculties, to social worldliness, him and all that belong to him. Below him fine ways and forced politeness prevail, even with his servants and tradesmen. A Frontin has a gallant unconstrained air, and he turns a compliment.[41] An Abigail needs only to be a kept mistress to become a lady. A shoemaker is a “monsieur in black,” who says to a mother on saluting the daughter, “Madame, a charming young person, and I am more sensible than ever of the value of your kindness,” on which the young girl, just out of a convent, takes him for a suitor and blushes scarlet. Undoubtedly less unsophisticated eyes would distinguish the difference between this pinchbeck louis d’or and a genuine one; but their resemblance suffices to show the universal action of the central mint-machinery which stamps both with the same effigy, the base metal and the refined gold.
IV. ENJOYMENT.
The charm of this life. – Etiquette in the 18th Century. – Its perfection and its resources. -Taught and prescribed under feminine authority.
A society which obtains such ascendancy must possess some charm; in no country, indeed, and in no age has so perfect a social art rendered life so agreeable. Paris is the school-house of Europe, a school of urbanity to which the youth of Russia, Germany, and England resort to become civilized. Lord Chesterfield in his letters never tires of reminding his son of this, and of urging him into these drawing-rooms, which will remove “his Cambridge rust.” Once familiar with them they are never abandoned, or if one is obliged to leave them, one always sighs for them. “Nothing is comparable,” says Voltaire,[42] “to the genial life one leads there in the bosom of the arts and of a calm and refined voluptuousness; strangers and monarchs have preferred this repose, so agreeably occupied in it and so enchanting to their own countries and thrones. The heart there softens and melts away like aromatics slowly dissolving in moderate heat, evaporating in delightful perfumes.” Gustavus III, beaten by the Russians, declares that he will pass his last days in Paris in a house on the boulevards; and this is not merely complimentary, for he sends for plans and an estimate.[43] A supper or an evening entertainment brings people two hundred leagues away. Some friends of the Prince de Ligne “leave Brussels after breakfast, reach the opera in Paris just in time to see the curtain rise, and, after the spectacle is over, return immediately to Brussels, traveling all night.” – Of this delight, so eagerly sought, we have only imperfect copies, and we are obliged to revive it intellectually. It consists, in the first place, in the pleasure of living with perfectly polite people; there is no enjoyment more subtle, more lasting, more inexhaustible. Man’s self-esteem or vanity being infinite, intelligent people are always able to produce some refinement of attention to gratify it. Worldly sensibility being infinite there is no imperceptible shade of it permitting indifference. After all, Man is still the greatest source of happiness or of misery to Man, and in those days this everflowing fountain brought to him sweetness instead of bitterness. Not only was it essential not to offend, but it was essential to please; one was expected to lose sight of oneself in others, to be always cordial and good-humored, to keep one’s own vexations and grievances in one’s own breast, to spare others melancholy ideas and to supply them with cheerful ideas.
“Was any one old in those days? It is the Revolution which brought old age into the world, Your grandfather, my child,[44] was handsome, elegant, neat, gracious, perfumed, playful, amiable, affectionate, and good-tempered to the day of his death. People then knew how to live and how to die; there was no such thing as troublesome infirmities. If any one had the gout, ‘he walked along all the same and made no faces; people well brought up concealed their sufferings. There was none of that absorption in business which spoils a man inwardly and dulls his brain. People knew how to ruin themselves without letting it appear, like good gamblers who lose their money without showing uneasiness or spite. A man would be carried half dead to a hunt. It was thought better to die at a ball or at the play than in one’s bed, between four wax candles and horrid men in black. People were philosophers; they did not assume to be austere, but often were so without making a display of it. If one was discreet, it was through inclination and without pedantry or prudishness. People enjoyed this life, and when the hour of departure came they did not try to disgust others with living. The last request of my old husband was that I would survive him as long as possible and live as happily as I could.”
When, especially, women are concerned it is not sufficient to be polite; it is important to be gallant. Each lady invited by the Prince de Conti to Ile-Adam “finds a carriage and horses at her disposal; she is free to give dinners every day in her own rooms to her own friends.”[45] Mme. de Civrac having to go to the springs, her friends undertake to divert her on the journey; they keep ahead of her a few posts, and, at every place where she rests for the night, they give her a little féte champêtre disguised as villagers and in bourgeois attire, with bailiff and scrivener, and other masks all singing and reciting verses. A lady on the eve of Longchamp, knowing that the Vicomte de V – possesses two calèches, makes a request for one of them; it is disposed of; but he is careful not to decline, and immediately has one of the greatest elegance purchased to lend it for three hours; he is only too happy that anybody should wish to borrow from him, his prodigality appearing amiable but not astonishing.[46] The reason is that women then were queens in the drawing-room; it is their right; this is the reason why, in the eighteenth century, they prescribe the law and the fashion in all things.[47] Having formed the code of usages, it is quite natural that they should profit by it, and see that all its prescriptions are carried out. In this respect any circle “of the best company ” is a superior tribunal, serving as a court of last appeal.[48] The Maréchale de Luxembourg is an authority; there is no point of manners which she does not justify with an ingenious argument. Any expression, any neglect of the standard, the slightest sign of pretension or of vanity incurs her disapprobation, from which there is no appeal, and the delinquent is for ever banished from refined society. Any subtle observation, any well-timed silence, an ” oh” uttered in an appropriate place instead of an ” Ah,” secures from her, as from M. Talleyrand, a diploma of good breeding which is the commencement of fame and the promise of a fortune. Under such an “instructress” it is evident that deportment, gesture, language, every act or omission in this mundane sphere, becomes, like a picture or poem, a veritable work of art; that is to say, infinite in refinement, at once studied and easy, and so harmonious in its details that its perfection conceals the difficulty of combining them.
A great lady “receives ten persons with one courtesy, bestowing on each, through the head or by a glance, all that he is entitled to;”[49] meaning by this the shade of regard due to each phase of position, consideration, and birth. “She has always to deal with easily irritated amour-propres; consequently the slightest deficiency in proportion would be promptly detected,”[50] But she is never mistaken, and never hesitates in these subtle distinctions; with incomparable tact, dexterity, and flexibility of tone, she regulates the degrees of her welcome. She has one “for women of condition, one for women of quality, one for women of the court, one for titled women, one for women of historic names, another for women of high birth personally, but married to men beneath them; another for women who by marriage have changed a common into a distinguished name; another still for women of reputable names in the law; and, finally, another for those whose relief consists chiefly of expensive houses and good suppers.” A stranger would be amazed on seeing with what certain and adroit steps she circulates among so many watchful vanities without ever hurting or being hurt. “She knows how to express all through the style of her salutations; a varied style, extending through imperceptible gradations, from the accessory of a single shrug of the shoulder, almost an impertinence, to that noble and deferential reverence which so few women, even of the court, know how to do well; that slow bending forward, with lowered eyes and straightened figure, gradually recovering and modestly glancing at the person while gracefully raising the body up, altogether much more refined and more delicate than words, but very expressive as the means of manifesting respect.” – This is but a single action, and very common; there are a hundred others, and of importance. Imagine, if it is possible, the degree of elegance and perfection to which they attained through good breeding. I select one at random, a duel between two princes of the blood, the Comte d’Artois and the Duc de Bourbon; the latter being the offended party, the former, his superior, had to offer him a meeting[51], “As soon as the Comte d’Artois saw him he leaped to the ground, and walking directly up to him, said to him smiling: ‘Monsieur, the public pretends that we are seeking each other.’ The Duc de Bourbon, removing his hat, replied, ‘Monsieur, I am here to receive your orders.’ – ‘To execute your own,’ returned the Comte d’Artois, ‘but you must allow me to return to my carriage.’ He comes back with a sword, and the duel begins. After a certain time they are separated, the seconds deciding that honor is satisfied, ‘It is not for me to express an opinion,’ says the Comte d’Artois, ‘Monsieur le Duc de Bourbon is to express his wishes; I am here only to receive his orders.’ – ‘Monsieur,’ responds the Duc de Bourbon, addressing the Comte d’Artois, meanwhile lowering the point of his sword, ‘I am overcome with gratitude for your kindness, and shall never be insensible to the honor you have done me.’ ” – Could there be a more just and delicate sentiment of rank, position, and circumstance, and could a duel be surrounded with more graces? There is no situation, however thorny, which is not saved by politeness. Through habit, and a suitable expression, even in the face of the king, they conciliate resistance and respect. When Louis XV, having exiled the Parliament, caused it to be proclaimed through Mme. Du Barry that his mind was made up and that it would not be changed, “Ah, Madame,” replied the Duc de Nivernais, “when the king said that he was looking at yourself.” – “My dear Fontenelle,” said one of his lady friends to him, placing her hand on his heart, “the brain is there likewise.” Fontenelle smiled and made no reply. We see here, even with an academician, how truths are forced down, a drop of acid in a sugar- plum; the whole so thoroughly intermingled that the piquancy of the flavor only enhances its sweetness. Night after night, in each drawing-room, sugar-plums of this description are served up, two or three along with the drop of acidity, all the rest not less exquisite, but possessing only the sweetness and the perfume. Such is the art of social worldliness, an ingenious and delightful art, which, entering into all the details of speech and of action, transforms them into graces; which imposes on man not servility and falsehood, but civility and concern for others, and which, in exchange, extracts for him out of human society all the pleasure it can afford.
V. HAPPINESS.
What constitutes happiness in the 18th Century. – The fascination of display. – Indolence, recreation, light conversation.
One can very well understand this kind of pleasure in a summary way, but how is it to be made apparent? Taken by themselves the pastimes of society are not to be described; they are too ephemeral; their charm arises from their accompaniments. A narrative of them would be but tasteless dregs, does the libretto of an opera give any idea of the opera itself? – If the reader would revive for himself this vanished world let him seek for it in those works that have preserved its externals or its accent, and first in the pictures and engravings of Watteau, Fragonard and the Saint-Aubins, and then in the novels and dramas of Voltaire and Marivaux, and even in Collé and Crébillon fils;[52] then do we see the breathing figures and hear their voices, What bright, winning, intelligent faces beaming with pleasure and with the desire to please! What ease in bearing and in gesture! What piquant grace in the toilet, in the smile, in vivaciousness of expression, in the control of the fluted voice, in the coquetry of hidden meanings! How involuntarily we stop to look and listen! Attractiveness is everywhere, in the small spirituelle heads, in the slender hands, in the rumpled attire, in the pretty features, in the demeanor. The slightest gesture, a pouting or mutinous turn of the head, a plump little wrist peering from its nest of lace, a yielding waist bent over an embroidery frame, the rapid rustling of an opening fan, is a feast for the eyes and the intellect. It is indeed all daintiness, a delicate caress for delicate senses, extending to the external decoration of life, to the sinuous outlines, the showy drapery, and the refinements of comfort in the furniture and architecture. Fill your imagination with these accessories and with these figures and you will take as much interest in their amusements as they did. In such a place and in such company it suffices to be together to be content. Their indolence is no burden to them for they sport with existence. – At Chanteloup, the Duc de Choiseul, in disgrace, finds the fashionable world flocking to see him; nothing is done and yet no hours of the day are unoccupied.[53] “The Duchess has only two hours’ time to herself and these two hours are devoted to her toilet and her letters; the calculation is a simple one: she gets up at eleven; breakfasts at noon, and this is followed by conversation, which lasts three or four hours; dinner comes at six, after which there is play and the reading of the memoirs of Mme. de Maintenon.” Ordinarily “the company remains together until two o’clock in the morning.” Intellectual freedom is complete. There is no confusion, no anxiety. They play whist and tric-trac in the afternoon and faro in the evening. “They do to day what they did yesterday and what they will do to-morrow; the dinner-supper is to them the most important affair in life, and their only complaint in the world is of their digestion. Time goes so fast I always fancy that I arrived only the evening before.” Sometimes they get up a little race and the ladies are disposed to take part in it, “for they are all very agile and able to run around the drawing room five or six times every day.” But they prefer indoors to the open air; in these days true sunshine consists of candle-light and the finest sky is a painted ceiling; is there any other less subject to inclemencies or better adapted to conversation and merriment? – They accordingly chat and jest, in words with present friends, and by letters with absent friends. They lecture old Mme. du Deffant, who is too lively and whom they style the “little girl”; the young Duchesse, tender and sensible, is “her grandmamma.” As for “grandpapa,” M. de Choiseul, “a slight cold keeping him in bed he has fairy stories read to him all day long, a species of reading to which we are all given; we find them as probable as modern history. Do not imagine that he is unoccupied. He has had a tapestry frame put up in the drawing room at which he works, I cannot say with the greatest skill, but at least with the greatest assiduity. . . . Now, our delight is in flying a kite; grandpapa has never seen this sight and he is enraptured with it.” The pastime, in itself, is nothing; it is resorted to according to opportunity or the taste of the hour, now taken up and now let alone, and the abbé soon writes: “I do not speak about our races because we race no more, nor of our readings because we do not read, nor of our promenades because we do not go out. What, then, do we do? Some play billiards, others dominoes, and others backgammon. We weave, we ravel and we unravel. Time pushes us on and we pay him back.”
Other circles present the same spectacle. Every occupation being an amusement, a caprice or an impulse of fashion brings one into favor. At present, it is unraveling, every white hand at Paris, and in the chateaux, being busy in undoing trimmings, epaulettes and old stuffs, to pick out the gold and silver threads. They find in this employment the semblance of economy, an appearance of occupation, in any event something to keep them in countenance. On a circle of ladies being formed, a big unraveling bag in green taffeta is placed on the table, which belongs to the lady of the house; immediately all the ladies call for their bags and “voilà les laquais en l’air”[54] It is all the rage. They unravel every day and several hours in the day; some derive from it a hundred louis d’or per annum. The gentlemen are expected to provide the materials for the work; the Duc de Lauzun, accordingly, gives to Madame de V – a harp of natural size covered with gold thread; an enormous golden fleece, brought as a present from the Comte de Lowenthal, and which cost 2 or 3,000 francs, brings, picked to pieces, 5 or 600 francs. But they do not look into matters so closely. Some employment is essential for idle hands, some manual outlet for nervous activity; a humorous petulance breaks out in the middle of the pretended work. One day, when about going out, Madame de R – observes that the gold fringe on her dress would be capital for unraveling, whereupon, with a dash, she cuts one of the fringes off. Ten women suddenly surround a man wearing fringes, pull off his coat and put his fringes and laces into their bags, just as if a bold flock of tomtits, fluttering and chattering in the air, should suddenly dart on a jay to pluck out its feathers; thenceforth a man who enters a circle of women stands in danger of being stripped alive. All this pretty world has the same pastimes, the men as well as the women. Scarcely a man can be found without some drawing room accomplishment, some trifling way of keeping his mind and hands busy, and of filling up the vacant hour; almost all make rhymes, or act in private theatricals; many of them are musicians and painters of still-life subjects. M. de Choiseul, as we have just seen, works at tapestry; others embroider or make sword-knots. M. de Francueil is a good violinist and makes violins himself; and besides this he is “watchmaker, architect, turner, painter, locksmith, decorator, cook, poet, music-composer and he embroiders remarkably well.”[55] In this general state of inactivity it is essential “to know how to be pleasantly occupied in behalf of others as well as in one’s own behalf.” Madame de Pompadour is a musician, an actress, a painter and an engraver. Madame Adelaide learns watchmaking and plays on all instruments from a horn to the jew’s-harp; not very well, it is true, but as well as a queen can sing, whose fine voice is ever only half in tune. But they make no pretensions. The thing is to amuse oneself and nothing more; high spirits and the amenities of the hour cover all. Rather read this capital fact of Madame de Lauzun at Chanteloup: “Do you know,” writes the abbé, “that nobody possesses in a higher degree one quality you would never suspect of her, that of preparing scrambled eggs? This talent has been buried in the ground, she cannot recall the time she acquired it; I believe that she had it at her birth. Accident made it known, and immediately it was put to test. Yesterday morning, an hour for ever memorable in the history of eggs, the implements necessary for this great operation were all brought out, a heater, some gravy, some pepper and eggs. Behold Madame de Lauzun, at first blushing and in a tremor, soon with intrepid courage, breaking the eggs, beating them up in the pan, turning them over, now to the right, now to the left, now up and now down, with unexampled precision and success! Never was a more excellent dish eaten.” What laughter and gaiety in the group comprised in this little scene. And, not long after, what madrigals and allusions! Gaiety here resembles a dancing ray of sunlight; it flickers over all things and reflects its grace on every object.
VI. GAIETY.
Gaiety in the 18th Century. – Its causes and effects. – Toleration and license. – Balls, fêtes, hunts, banquets, pleasures. – Freedom of the magistrates and prelates.
The Frenchman’s characteristic,” says an English traveler in 1785, “is to be always gay;”[56] and he remarks that he must be so because, in France, such is the tone of society and the only mode of pleasing the ladies, the sovereigns of society and the arbiters of good taste. Add to this the absence of the causes which produce modern dreariness, and which convert the sky above our heads into one of leaden gloom. There was no laborious, forced work in those days, no furious competition, no uncertain careers, no infinite perspectives. Ranks were clearly defined, ambitions limited, there was less envy. Man was not habitually dissatisfied, soured and preoccupied as he is nowadays. Few free passes were allowed where there was no right to pass; we think of nothing but advancement; they thought only of amusing themselves. An officer, instead of raging and storming over the army lists, busies himself in inventing some new disguise for a masked ball; a magistrate, instead of counting the convictions he has secured, provides a magnificent supper. At Paris, every afternoon in the left avenue of the Palais-Royal, “fine company, very richly dressed, gather under the large trees;” and in the evening “on leaving the opera at half-past eight, they go back there and remain until two o’clock in the morning.” They have music in the open air by moonlight, Gavat singing, and the chevalier de Saint-George playing on the violin.[57] At Moffontaine, “the Comte de Vaudreuil, Lebrun the poet, the chevalier de Coigny, so amiable and so gay, Brongniart, Robert, compose charades every night and wake each other up to repeat them.” At Maupertuis in M. de Montesquiou’s house, at Saint-Ouen with the Marshal de Noailles, at Genevilliers with the Comte de Vandreuil, at Rainay with the Duc d’Orléans, at Chantilly with the Prince de Condé, there is nothing but festivity. We read no biography of the day, no provincial document, no inventory, without hearing the tinkling of the universal carnival. At Monchoix,[58] the residence of the Comte de Bédé, Châteaubriand’s uncle, “they had music, dancing and hunting, rollicking from morning to night, eating up both capital and income.” At Aix and Marseilles, throughout the fashionable world, with the Comte de Valbelle, I find nothing but concerts, entertainment, balls, gallantries, and private theatricals with the Comtesse de Mirabeau for the leading performer. At Chateauroux, M. Dupin de Francueil entertains “a troop of musicians, lackeys, cooks, parasites, horses and dogs, bestowing everything lavishly, in amusements and in charity, wishing to be happy himself and everybody else around him,” never casting up accounts, and going to ruin in the most delightful manner possible. Nothing arrests this gaiety, neither old age, exile, nor misfortune ; in 1793 it still subsists in the prisons of the Republic. A man in place is not then made uncomfortable by his official coat, puffed up by his situation, obliged to maintain a dignified and important air, constrained under that assumed gravity which democratic envy imposes on us as if a ransom. In 1753,[59] the parliamentarians, just exiled to Bourges, get up three companies of private theatricals and perform comedies, while one of them, M. Dupré de Saint-Maur, fights a rival with the sword. In 1787,[60] when the entire parliament is banished to Troyes the bishop, M. de Barral, returns from his chateau de Saint-Lye expressly to receive it, presiding every evening at a dinner of forty persons. “There was no end to the fêtes and dinners in the town; the president kept open house,” a triple quantity of food being consumed in the eating-houses and so much wood burned in the kitchens, that the town came near being put on short allowance. Feasting and jollity is but little less in ordinary times. A parliamentarian, like a seignior, must do credit to his fortune. See the letters of the President des Brosses concerning society in Dijon; it reminds us of the abbey of Thélème; then contrast this with the same town today.[61] In 1744, Monseigneur de Montigny, brother of the President de Bourbonne, apropos of the king’s recovery, entertains the workmen, tradesmen and artisans in his employ to the number of eighty, another table being for his musicians and comedians, and a third for his clerks, secretaries, physicians, surgeons, attorneys and notaries; the crowd collects around a triumphal car covered with shepherdesses, shepherds and rustic divinities in theatrical costume; fountains flow with wine “as if it were water,” and after supper the confectionery is thrown out of the windows. Each parliamentarian around him has his “little Versailles, a grand hotel between court and garden,” This town, now so silent, then rang with the clatter of fine equipages. The profusion of the table is astonishing, “not only on gala days, but at the suppers of each week, and I could almost say, of each day.” – Amidst all these fête-givers, the most illustrious of all, the President des Brosses, so grave on the magisterial bench, so intrepid in his remonstrances, so laborious,[62] so learned, is an extraordinary stimulator of fun (boute-entrain), a genuine Gaul, with a sparkling, inexhaustible fund of salacious humor: with his friends he throws off his perruque, his gown, and even something more. Nobody dreams of being offended by it; nobody conceives that dress is an extinguisher, which is true of every species of dress, and of the gown in particular. “When I entered society, in 1785,” writes a parliamentarian, “I found myself introduced in a certain way, alike to the wives and the mistresses of the friends of my family, passing Monday evening with one, and Tuesday evening with the other. And I was only eighteen, and I belonged to a family of magistrates.”[63] At Basville, at the residence of M. de Lamoignon, during the autumnal vacation and the Whitsuntide holidays, there are thirty persons at the table daily; there are three or four hunts a week, and the most prominent magistrates, M. de Lamoignon, M. Pasquier, M. de Rosambo, M. and Mme. d’Aguesseau, perform the “Barber of Seville ” in the chateau theater.
As for the cassock, it enjoys the same freedom as the robe. At Saverne, at Clairvaux, at Le Mans and at other places, the prelates wear it as freely as a court dress. The revolutionary upheaval was necessary to make it a fixture on their bodies, and, afterwards, the hostile supervision of an organized party and the fear of constant danger. Up to 1789 the sky is too serene and the atmosphere too balmy to lead them to button it up to the neck. “Freedom, facilities, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the Cardinal de Rohan to his secretary, “without these this life would be a desert.”[64] This is what the good cardinal took care to avoid; on the contrary he had made Saverne an enchanting world according to Watteau, almost “a landing-place for Cythera.” Six hundred peasants and keepers, ranged in a line a league long, form in the morning and beat up the surrounding country, while hunters, men and women, are posted at their stations. “For fear that the ladies might be frightened if left alone by themselves, the man whom they hated least was always left with them to make them feel at ease,” and as nobody was allowed to leave his post before the signal “it was impossible to be surprised.” – About one p.m. “the company gathered under a beautiful tent, on the bank of a stream or in some delightful place, where an exquisite dinner was served up, and, as everybody had to be made happy, each peasant received a pound of meat, two of bread and half a bottle of wine, they, as well as the ladies, only asking to begin it all over again.” The accommodating prelate might certainly have replied to scrupulous people along with Voltaire, that “nothing wrong can happen in good society.” In fact, so he did and in appropriate terms. One day, a lady accompanied by a young officer, having come on a visit, and being obliged to keep them over night, his valet comes and whispers to him that there is no more room. – ” ‘Is the bath-room occupied?’ – ‘No, Monseigneur!’ – ‘Are there not two beds there?’ – ‘Yes, Monseigneur, but they are both in the same chamber, and that officer. . . ‘ – ‘Very well, didn’t they come together? Narrow people like you always see something wrong. You will find that they will get along well together; there is not the slightest reason to consider the matter.’ ” And really nobody did object, either the officer or the lady. – At Granselve, in the Gard, the Bernardines are still more hospitable.[65] People resort to the fête of St. Bernard which lasts a couple of weeks; during this time they dance, and hunt, and act comedies, “the tables being ready at all hours.” The quarters of the ladies are provided with every requisite for the toilet; they lack nothing, and it is even said that it was not necessary for any of them to bring their officer. – I might cite twenty prelates not less gallant, the second Cardinal de Rohan, the hero of the necklace, M. de Jarente, bishop of Orleans, who keeps the record of benefices, the young M. de Grimaldi, bishop of Le Mans, M. de Breteuil, bishop of Montauban, M. de Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux, the Cardinal de Montmorency, grand-almoner, M. de Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, M. de Conzié, bishop of Arras,[66] and, in the first rank, the Abbé de Saint-Germain des Prés, Comte de Clermont, prince of the blood, who, with an income of 370,000 francs succeeds in ruining himself twice, who performs in comedies in his town and country residences, who writes to Collé in a pompous style and, who, in his abbatial mansion at Berny, installs Mademoiselle Leduc, a dancer, to do the honors of his table. – There is no hypocrisy. In the house of M. Trudaine, four bishops attend the performance of a piece by Collé entitled “Les accidents ou les Abbés,” the substance of which, says Collé himself, is so free that he did not dare print it along with his other pieces. A little later, Beaumarchais, on reading his “Marriage of Figaro” at the Maréchal de Richelieu’s domicile, not expurgated, much more crude and coarse than it is today, has bishops and archbishops for his auditors, and these, he says, “after being infinitely amused by it, did me the honor to assure me that they would state that there was not a single word in it offensive to good morals”[67] : thus was the piece accepted against reasons of State, against the king’s will, and through the connivance of all those most interested in suppressing it. “There is something more irrational than my piece, and that is its success,” said its author. The attraction was too strong. People devoted to pleasure could not dispense with the liveliest comedy of the age. They came to applaud a satire on themselves; and better still, they themselves acted in it. – When a prevalent taste is in fashion, it leads, like a powerful passion, to extreme extravagance; the offered pleasure must, at any price, be had. Faced with a momentary pleasure gratification, it is as a child tempted by fruit; nothing arrests it, neither the danger to which it is insensible, nor the social norms as these are established by itself.
VII. THEATER, PARADE AND EXTRAVAGANCE.
The principal diversion, elegant comedy. – Parades and extravagance.
To divert oneself is to turn aside from oneself, to break loose and to forget oneself; and to forget oneself fully one must be transported into another, put himself in the place of another, take his mask and play his part. Hence the liveliest of diversions is the comedy in which one is an actor. It is that of children who, as authors, actors and audience, improvise and perform small scenes. It is that of a people whose political régime excludes exacting manly tasks (soucis virile) and who sport with life just like children. At Venice, in the eighteenth century, the carnival lasts six months; in France, under another form, it lasts the entire year. Less familiar and less picturesque, more refined and more elegant, it abandons the public square where it lacks sunshine, to shut itself up in drawing-rooms where chandeliers are the most suitable for it. It has retained of the vast popular masquerade only a fragment, the opera ball, certainly very splendid and frequented by princes, princesses and the queen; but this fragment, brilliant as it is, does not suffice; consequently, in every chateau, in every mansion, at Paris and in the provinces, it sets up travesties on society and domestic comedies. – On welcoming a great personage, on celebrating the birthday of the master or mistress of the house, its guests or invited persons perform in an improvised operetta, in an ingenious, laudatory pastoral, sometimes dressed as gods, as Virtues, as mythological abstractions, as operatic Turks, Laplanders and Poles, similar to the figures then gracing the frontispieces of books, sometimes in the dress of peasants, pedagogues, peddlers, milkmaids and flower-girls like the fanciful villagers with which the current taste then fills the stage. They sing, they dance, and come forward in turn to recite petty verses composed for the occasion consisting of so many well-turned compliments.[68] – At Chantilly “the young and charming Duchesse de Bourbon, attired as a voluptuous Naiad, guides the Comte du Nord, in a gilded gondola, across the grand canal to the island of Love;” the Prince de Conti, in his part, serves as pilot to the Grand Duchesse; other seigniors and ladies “each in allegorical guise,” form the escort,[69] and on these limpid waters, in this new garden of Alcinous, the smiling and gallant retinue seems a fairy scene in Tasso. – At Vaudreuil, the ladies, advised that they are to be carried off to seraglios, attire themselves as vestals, while the high-priest welcomes them with pretty couplets into his temple in the park; meanwhile over three hundred Turks arrive who force the enclosure to the sound of music, and bear away the ladies in palanquins along the illuminated gardens. At the little Trianon, the park is arranged as a fair, and the ladies of the court are the saleswomen, “the queen keeping a café,” while, here and there, are processions and theatricals; this festival costs, it is said, 100,000 livres, and a repetition of it is designed at Choisy attended with a larger outlay.
Alongside of these masquerades which stop at costume and require only an hour, there is a more important diversion, the private theatrical performance, which completely transforms the man, and which for six weeks, and even for three months, absorbs him entirely at rehearsals. Towards 1770,[70] “the rage for it is incredible; there is not an attorney in his cottage who does not wish to have a stage and his company of actors.” A Bernardine living in Bresse, in the middle of a wood, writes to Collé that he and his brethren are about to perform “La Partie de Chasse de Henri IV,” and that they are having a small theater constructed “without the knowledge of bigots and small minds.” Reformers and moralists introduce theatrical art into the education of children; Mme. de Genlis composes comedies for them, considering these excellent for the securing of a good pronunciation, proper self-confidence and the graces of deportment. The theater, indeed, then prepares man for society as society prepares him for the theater; in either case he is on display, composing his attitude and tone of voice, and playing a part; the stage and the drawing room are on an equal footing. Towards the end of the century everybody becomes an actor, everybody having been one before.[71] “We hear of nothing but little theaters set up in the country around Paris.” For a long time those of highest rank set the example. Under Louis XV. the Ducs d’Orléans, de Nivernais, d’Ayen, de Coigny, the Marquises de Courtenvaux, and d’Entraigues, the Comte de Maillebois, the Duchesse de Brancas, the Comtesse d’Estrades form, with Madame de Pompadour, the company of the “small cabinets;” the Due de la Vallière is the director of them; when the piece contains a ballet the Marquis de Courtenvaux, the Duc de Beuvron, the Comtes de Melfort and de Langeron are the titular dancers.[72] “Those who are accustomed to such spectacles,” writes the sedate and pious Duc de Luynes, “agree in the opinion that it would be difficult for professional comedians to play better and more intelligently.” The passion reaches at last still higher, even to the royal family. At Trianon, the queen, at first before forty persons and then before a more numerous audience, performs Colette in “Le Devin de Village,” Gotte, in “La Gageure imprévue,” Rosine in “Le Barbier de Seville,” Pierette in “Le Chasseur et la Laitière,”[73] while the other comedians consist of the principal men of the court, the Comte d’Artois, the Comtes d’Adhémar and de Vaudreuil, the Comtesse de Guiche, and the Canoness de Polignac. A theater is formed in Monsieur’s domicile; there are two in the Comte d’Artois’s house, two in that of the Duc d’Orléans, two in the Comte de Clermont’s, and one in the Prince de Condé’s. The Comte de Clermont performs serious characters; the Duc d’Orléans represents, with completeness and naturalness, peasants and financiers; M. de Miromesnil, keeper of the seals, is the smartest and most finished of Scapins; M. de Vaudreuil seems to rival Molé; the Comte de Pons plays the “Misanthrope” with rare perfection.[74] “More than ten of our ladies of high rank,” writes the Prince de Ligne, “play and sing better than the best of those I have seen in our theaters.” By their talent judge of their study, assiduity and zeal. It is evident that for many of them it is the principal occupation. In a certain chateau, that of Saint-Aubin, the lady of the house, to secure a large enough troupe, enrolls her four chambermaids in it, making her little daughter, ten years old, play the part of Zaire, and for over twenty months she has no vacation. After her bankruptcy, and in her exile, the first thing done by the Princess de Guéménée was to send for upholsterers to arrange a theater. In short, as nobody went out in Venice without a mask so here nobody comprehended life without the masqueradings, metamorphoses, representations and triumphs of the player.
The last trait I have to mention, yet more significant, is the afterpiece. Really, in this fashionable circle, life is a carnival as free and almost as rakish as that of Venice. The play commonly terminates with a parade borrowed from La Fontaine’s tales or from the farces of the Italian drama, which are not only pointed but more than free, and sometimes so broad that they cant be played only before princes and courtesans;”[75] a morbid palate, indeed, having no taste for orgeat, instead demanding a dram. The Duc d’Orléans sings on the stage the most spicy songs, playing Bartholin in “Nicaise,” and Blaise in “Joconde.” “Le Marriage sans Curé,” “Leandre grosse,” “L’amant poussif,” “Leandre Etalon,” are the showy titles of the pieces composed by Collé “for the amusement of His Highness and the Court.” For one which contains salt there are ten stuffed with strong pepper. At Brunoy, at the residence of Monsieur, so gross are they[76] the king regrets having attended; “nobody had any idea of such license; two women in the auditorium had to go out, and, what is most extraordinary, they had dared to invite the queen.” – Gaiety is a sort of intoxication which draws the cask down to the dregs, and when the wine is gone it draws on the lees. Not only at their little suppers, and with courtesans, but in the best society and with ladies, they commit the follies of a bagnio. Let us use the right word, they are blackguards, and the word is no more offensive to them than the action. “For five or six months,” writes a lady in 1782,”[77] “the suppers are followed by a blind man’s buff or by a draw-dance, and they end in general mischievousness, (une polissonnerie générale).” Guests are invited a fortnight in advance. “On this occasion they upset the tables and the furniture; they scattered twenty caraffes of water about the room; I finally got away at half-past one, wearied out, pelted with handkerchiefs, and leaving Madame de Clarence hoarse, with her dress torn to shreds, a scratch on her arm, and a bruise on her forehead, but delighted that she had given such a gay supper and flattered with the idea of its being the talk the next day.” – This is the result of a craving for amusement. Under its pressure, as under the sculptor’s thumb, the face of the century becomes transformed and insensibly loses its seriousness; the formal expression of the courtier at first becomes the cheerful physiognomy of the worldling, and then, on these smiling lips, their contours changed, we see the bold, unbridled grin of the scamp.[78]
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Notes:
[1]. “LA VIE DE SALON” is Taine’s title. In Le Robert & Collins’ Dictionary salon is translated as “lounge” (Brit.) sitting room, living room, or (cercle littéraire) salon.
[2]. De Loménie, “Beaumarchais et son temps,” I. 403. Letter of Beaumarchais, (Dec. 24, 1764.) – The travels of Mme. d’Aulnoy and the letters of Mme. de Villars. – As to Italy see Stendhal, “Rome, Naples et Florence.” – For Germany see the “Mémoires” of the Margrave of Bareith, also of the Chevalier Lang. – For England see my “Histoire de la litérature Anglaise,” vols. III. IV.
[3]. Volney, “Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis d’Amérique.” The leading trait of the French Colonist when compared with the colonists of other nations, is, according to this writer, the craving for neighbors and conversation
[4]. Mme. de Caylus, “Souvenirs,” p. 108.
[5]. St. Simon, 461.
[6]. Duc de Lévis, p. 321.
[7]. Mme. de Genlis, “Souvenirs de Félicie,” p. 160. – It is important, however, to call attention to the old-fashioned royal attitude under Louis XV and even Louis XVI. “Although I was advised,” says Alfieri, “that the king never addressed ordinary strangers, I could not digest the Olympian-Jupiter look with which Louis XV measured the person presented to him, from head to foot, with such an impassible air; if a fly should be introduced to a giant, the giant, after looking at him, would smile, or perhaps remark. – ‘What a little mite!’ In any event, if he said nothing, his face would express it for him.” Alfieri, Mémoires,” I.138, 1768. (Alfieri, Vittorio, born in Asti in 1749 – Florence 1803. Italian poet and playwright. (SR.) – See in Mme. d’Oberkirk’s “Mémoires.” (II. 349), the lesson administered by Mme. Royale, aged seven and a half years, to a lady introduced to her.
[8]. Champfort, 26, 55; Bachaumont, I. 136 (Sept 7,1762). One month after the Parliament had passed a law against the Jesuits, little Jesuits in wax appeared, with a snail for a base. “By means of a thread the Jesuit was made to pop in and out from the shell. It is all the rage – here is no house without its Jesuit.”
[9]. On the other hand, the song on the battle of Rosbach is charming.
[10]. “Correspondance secrète,” by Métra, Imbert, etc., V. 277 (Nov. 17, 1777). – Voltaire, “Princesse de Babylone.”
[11]. Baron de Bezenval, “Mémoires,” II. 206. An anecdote related by the Duke.
[12]. Archives nationales, a report by M. Texier (1780). A report by M. Mesnard de Chousy (01, 738).
[13]. “Marie Antoinette,” by d’Arneth and Geffroy, I. 277 (February 29. 1772).
[14]. De Luynes, XVII. 37 (August, 1758). – D’Argenson, February 11, 1753.
[15]. Archives nationales, 01, 738. Various sums of interest are paid: 12,969 francs to the baker, 39,631 francs to the wine merchant, and 173,899 francs to the purveyor.
[16]. Marquis de Mirabeau, “Traité de Population,” 60. – “Le Gouvemement de Normandie,” by Hippeau, II. 204 (Sept. 30, 1780).
[17]. Mme. de Larochejacquelein, “Mémoires,” p. 30. – Mme. d’Oberkirk, II. 66.
[18]. D’Argenson, January 26, 1753.
[19]. George Sand, “Histoire de ma vie,” I.78.
[20]. “Marie Antoinette,” by d’Arneth and Geffroy, I. 61 (March 18, 1777).
21. D’Argenson, January 26, 1753.
[22]. “Marie Antoinette,” III. 135, November 19, 1777.
[23]. Barbier, IV., 155. The Marshal de Soubise had a hunting lodge to which the king came from time to time to eat an omelet of pheasants’ eggs, costing 157 livres, 10 sous. (Mercier, XII 192; according to the statement of the cook who made it.)
[24]. Mme. d’Oberkirk, I. 129, II. 257.
[25]. Mme. de Genlis, “Souvenirs de Félicie,” 80; and “Théâtre de l’Education,” II. 367. A virtuous young woman in ten months runs into debt to the amount of 70,000 francs: “Ten louis for a small table, 15 louis for another, 800 francs for a bureau, 200 francs for a small writing desk, 300 francs for a large one. Hair rings, hair glass, hair chain, hair bracelets, hair clasps, hair necklace, hair box, 9,900 francs,” etc.
[26]. Mme. de Genlis, “Adèle et Théodore,” III. 14.
[27]. Mme. d’Avray, sister of Mme. de Genlis, sets the example, for which she is at first much criticized.
[28]. “When I arrived in France M. de Choiseul’s reign was just over. The woman who seemed nice to him, or could only please his sister-in-law the Duchesse de Gramont, was sure of being able to secure the promotion to colonel and lieutenant general of any man they proposed. Women were of consequence even in the eyes of the old and of the clergy; they were thoroughly familiar, to an extraordinary degree, with the march of events; they knew by heart the characters and habits of the king’s friends and ministers. One of these, on returning to his château from Versailles, informed his wife about every thing with which he had been occupied; at home he says one or two words to her about his water-color sketches, or remains silent and thoughtful, pondering over what he has just heard in Parliament. Our poor ladies are abandoned to the Society of those frivolous men who, for want of intellect, have no ambition, and of course no employment (dandies).” (Stendhal, “Rome, Naples, and Florence,” 377. A narrative by Colonel Forsyth).
[29]. De Bezenval, 49, 60. – “Out of twenty seigniors at the court there are fifteen not living with their wives, and keeping mistresses. Nothing is so common at Paris among certain people.” (Barbier, IV. 496.
[30]. Ne soyez point époux, ne soyez point amant, Soyez l’homme du jour et vous serez charmant.
[31]. Crébillon, fills. “La nuit et le moment,” IX, 14.
[32]. Horace Walpole’s letters (January 15, 1766). – The Duke de Brissac, at Louveciennes, the lover of Mme. du Barry, and passionately fond of her, always in her society assumed the attitude of a polite stranger. (Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, “Souvenirs,” I. 165.)
[33]. De Lauzun, 51. – Champfort, 39. – “The Duc de – whose wife had just been the subject of scandal, complained to his mother-in-law: the latter replied with the greatest coolness, ‘Eh, Monsieur, you make a good deal of talk about nothing. Your father was much better company.’ ” (Mme. d’Oberkirk, II. 135, 241). – “A husband said to his wife, I allow you everything except princes and lackeys.’ He had it right since these two extremes brought dishonor on account of the scandal attached to them.” (Sénac de Meilhan, “Considérations sur les moeurs.) – On a wife being discovered by a husband, he simply exclaims, “Madame, what imprudence! Suppose that I was any other man.” (La femme au dix-huitième siècle,” 201.)
[34]. See in this relation the somewhat ancient types, especially in the provinces. “My mother, my sister, and myself, transformed into statues by my father’s presence, only recover ourselves after he leaves the room.” (Châteaubriand, “Mémoires,” I. 17, 28, 130). – “Mémoires de Mirabeau,” I. 53.) The Marquis said of his father Antoine: “I never had the honor of kissing the cheek of that venerable man. . . At the Academy, being two hundred leagues away from him, the mere thought of him made me dread every youthful amusement which could be followed by the least unfavorable results.” – Paternal authority seems almost as rigid among the middle and lower classes. (“Beaumarchais et son temps,” by De Loménie, I. 23. – “Vie de mon père,” by Restif de la Bretonne, passim.)
[35]. Sainte-Beuve, “Nouveaux lundis,” XII, 13; – Comte de Tilly, “Mémoires,” I. 12; Duc de Lauzun, 5. – “Beaumarchais,” by de Loménie, II. 299.
[36]. Madame de Genlis, “Mémoires,” ch 2 and 3.
[37]. Mme. d’Oberkirk. II. 35. – This fashion lasts until 1783. – De Goncourt, “La femme au dix-huitième siècle, 415, – “Les petits parrains,” engraving by Moreau. – Berquin, “L’ami des enfants,”passim. – Mme. de Genlis, “Théâtre de l’Education,” passim.
[38]. Lesage, “Gil Blas de Santillane”: the discourse of the dancing-master charged with the education of the son of Count d’Olivarés.
[39]. “Correspondance.” by Métra, XIV. 212; XVI. 109. – Mme. d’Oberkirk. II, 302.
[40]. De Ségur, I. 297:
Ma naissance n’a rien de neuf,
J’ai suivi la commune régle,
Mais c’est vous qui sortez d’un oeuf, Car vous êtes un aigle.
Mme. de Genlis, “Mémoires,” ch. IV. Mme. de Genlis wrote verses of this kind at twelve years of age.
[41]. Already in the Précieuses of Molière, the Marquis de Mascarille and the Vicomte de Jodelet. – And the same in Marivaux, “L’épreuve, les jeux de l’amour et du hasard,” ete. – Lesage, “Crispin rival de son maître.” – Laclos, “Les liaisons dangéreuses,” first letter.
[42]. Voltaire, “Princesse de Babylone.”
[43]. “Gustave III,” by Geffroy, II. 37. – Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, I. 81.
[44]. George Sand, I. 58-60. A narration by her grandmother, who, at thirty years of age, married M. Dupin de Francuiel, aged sixty-two.
[45]. Mme. de Genlis, “Souvenirs de Félicie,” 77. – Mme. Campan, III. 74. – Mme. de Genlis, “Dict. des Etiquettes,” I. 348.
[46]. See an anecdote concerning this species of royalty in “Adèle et Théodore, I. 69” by Mme. de Genlis. – Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, I. 156: “Women ruled then; the Revolution has dethroned them. . . This gallantry I speak of has entirely disappeared.”
[47]. “Women in France to some extent dictate whatever is to be said and prescribe whatever is to be done in the fashionable world.” (“A comparative view,” by John Andrews, 1785.)
[48]. Mme. d’Oberkirk, I. 299. – Mme. de Genlis, “Mémoires,” ch. XI.
[49]. De Tilly, I. 24.
[50]. Necker, “Oeuvres complètes,” XV, 259.
[51]. Narrated by M. de Bezenval, a witness of the duel.
[52]. See especially: Saint-Aubin, “Le bal paré,” “Le Concert;” – Moreau, “Les Elégants,” “La Vie d’un Seigneur à la mode,” the vignettes of “La nouvelle Héloise;” Beaudouin, “La Toilette,” “Le Coucher de la Mariée;” Lawreince, “Qu’en dit l’abbé? ” – Watteau, the first in date and in talent, transposes these customs and depicts them the better by making them more poetic. – Of the rest, reread “Marianne,” by Marivaux; “La Vérité dans le vin,” by Collé; “Le coin du feu,” “La nuit et le moment,” by Crébillon fils; and two letters in the “Correspondance inédite” of Mme. du Deffant, one by the Abbé Barthélemy and the other by the Chevalier de Boufflers, (I. 258, 341.).
[53]. “Correspondence inédite de Mme. du Deffant,” published by M. de Saint-Aulaire, I. 235, 258, 296, 302, 363.
[54]. Mme. de Genlis, “Dict. des Etiquettes,” II. 38. “Adèle et Théodore, I, 312, II, 350, – George Sand, “Histoire de ma vie,” I. 228. – De Goncourt, p. 111.
[55]. George Sand, I. 59.
[56]. “A comparative view,” etc., by John Andrews.
[57]. Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, I. 15, 154.
[58]. Châteaubriand, I. 34. – “Mémoires de Mirabeau,” passim. – George Sand, I. 59, 76.
[59]. Comptes rendus de la société de Berry (1863-1864).
[60]. “Histoire de Troyes pendant la Révolution,” by Albert Babeau, I. 46.
[61]. Foissets, “Le Président des Brosses,” 65, 69, 70, 346. – “Lettres du Président des Brosses,” (ed. Coulomb), passim. – Piron being uneasy concerning his “Ode à Priape,” President Bouhier, a man of great and fine erudition, and the least starched of learned ones, sent for the young man and said to him, “You are a foolish fellow. If any one presses you to know the author of the offence tell him that I am.” (Sainte-Beuve, “Nouveaux Lundis,” VII. 414.)
[62]. Foisset, ibid.. 185. Six audiences a week and often two a day besides his labors as antiquarian, historian, linguist, geographer, editor and academician.
[63]. “Souvenirs”, by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.
[64]. De Valfons, “Souvenirs,” 60.
[65]. Montgaillard (an eye-witness). “Histoire de France,” II. 246.
[66]. M. de Conzié is surprised at four o’clock in the morning by his rival, an officer in the guards. “Make no noise,” he said to him, “a dress like yours will be brought to me and I will have a cock made then we shall be on the same level.” A valet brings him his weapons. He descends into the garden of the mansion, fights with the officer and disarms him. (“Correspondance,” by Métra, XIV. May 20, 1783.) – “Le Comte de Clermont,” by Jules Cousin, passim. – “Journal de Collé,” III. 232 (July, 1769).
[67]. De Loménie, “Beaumarchais et son temps, II. 304.
[68]. De Luynes, XVL 161 (September, 1757). The village festival given to King Stanislas, by Mme. de Mauconseil at Bagatelle. – Bachaumont, III. 247 (September 7, 1767). Festival given by the Prince de Condé.
[69]. “Correspondance,” by Métra, XIII. 97 (June 15, 1782), and V. 232 (June 24 and 25, 1777). – Mme. de Genlis “Mémoires,” chap. XIV.
[70]. Bachaumont, November 17, 1770. – “Journal de Collé,” III. 136 (April 29, 1767). – De Montlosier, “Mémoires,” I. 43. “At the residence of the Commandant (at Clermont) they would have been glad to enlist me in private theatricals.”
[71]. “Correspondance.” by Métra, II. 245 (Nov. 18. 1775).
[72]. Julien. “Histoire du Théâtre de Madame de Pompadour.” These representations last seven years and cost during the winter alone of 1749, 300,000 livres. – De Luynes, X. 45. – Mme. de Hausset, 230.
[73]. Mme. Campan, I. 130. – Cf. with caution, the Mémoires, are suspect, as they have been greatly modified and arranged by Fleury. – De Goncourt, 114.
74. Jules Cousin, ” Le Comte de Clermont,” p.21. – Mme. de Genlis, “Mémoires,” chap. 3 and 11. – De Goncourt, 114.
[75]. Bachaumont, III. 343 (February 23, 1768) and IV. 174, III. 232. – “Journal d Collé,” passim. – Collé, Laujon and Poisinet are the principal purveyors for these displays; the only one of merit is “La Verité dans le Vin.” In this piece instead of “Mylord.” there was at first the “bishop of Avranches,” and the piece was thus performed at Villers-Cotterets in the house of the Duc d’Orléans.
[76]. Mme. d’Oberkirk, II. 82. – On the tone of the best society see “Correspondance” by Métra, I. 50, III. 68, and Bezenval (Ed. Barrière) 387 to 394.
[77]. Mme. de Genlis, “Adèle et Théodore,” II. 362.
[78]. George Sand, I. 85. “At my grandmother’s I have found boxes full of couplets, madrigals and biting satires…. I burned some of them so obscene that I would not dare read them through, and these written by abbés I had known to my infancy and by a marquis of the best blood.” Among other examples, toned down, the songs on the Bird and the Shepherdess, may be read in “Correspondance,” by Métra.
CHAPTER III. DISADVANTAGES OF THIS DRAWING ROOM LIFE.
I.
Its Barrenness and Artificiality. – Return to Nature and sentiment.
MERE pleasure, in the long run, ceases to gratify, and however agreeable this drawing room life may be, it ends in a certain hollowness. Something is lacking without any one being able to say precisely what that something is; the soul becomes restless, and slowly, aided by authors and artists, it sets about investigating the cause of its uneasiness and the object of its secret longings. Barrenness and artificiality are the two traits of this society, the more marked because it is more complete, and, in this one, pushed to extreme, because it has attained to supreme refinement. In the first place naturalness is excluded from it; everything is arranged and adjusted, – decoration, dress, attitude, tone of voice, words, ideas and even sentiments. “A genuine sentiment is so rare,” said M. de V– , “that, when I leave Versailles, I sometimes stand still in the street to see a dog gnaw a bone.”[1] Man, in abandoning himself wholly to society, had withheld no portion of his personality for himself while decorum, clinging to him like so much ivy, had abstracted from him the substance of his being and subverted every principle of activity.
“There was then,” says one who was educated in this style,[2] “a certain way of walking, of sitting down, of saluting, of picking up a glove, of holding a fork, of tendering any article, in short, a complete set of gestures and facial expressions, which children had to be taught at a very early age in order that habit might become a second nature, and this conventionality formed so important an item in the life of men and women in aristocratic circles that the actors of the present day, with all their study, are scarcely able to give us an idea of it.”
Not only was the outward factitious but, again, the inward; there was a certain prescribed mode of feeling and of thinking, of living and of dying. It was impossible to address a man without placing oneself at his orders, or a woman without casting oneself at her feet, Fashion, ‘le bon ton,’ regulated every important or petty proceeding, the manner of making a declaration to a woman and of breaking an engagement, of entering upon and managing a duel, of treating an equal, an inferior and a superior. If any one failed in the slightest degree to conform to this code of universal custom, he is called “a specimen.” A man of heart or of talent, D’Argenson, for example, bore a surname of “simpleton,” because his originality transcended the conventional standard. “That has no name, there is nothing like it!” embodies the strongest censure. In conduct as in literature, whatever departs from a certain type is rejected. The quantity of authorized actions is as great as the number of authorized words. The same super- refined taste impoverishes the initiatory act as well as the initiatory expression, people acting as they write, according to acquired formulas and within a circumscribed circle. Under no consideration can the eccentric, the unforeseen, the spontaneous, vivid inspiration be accepted. Among twenty instances I select the least striking since it merely relates to a simple gesture, and is a measure of other things. Mademoiselle de – obtains, through family influence, a pension for Marcel, a famous dancing-master, and runs off, delighted, to his domicile to convey him the patent. Marcel receives it and at once flings it on the floor: “Mademoiselle, did I teach you to offer an object in that manner? Pick up that paper and hand it to me as you ought to.” She picks up the patent and presents it to him with all suitable grace. “That’s very well, Mademoiselle, I accept it, although your elbow was not quite sufficiently rounded, and I thank you.”[3] So many graces end in becoming tiresome; after having eaten rich food for years, a little milk and dry bread becomes welcome.
Among all these social flavorings one is especially abused; one which, unremittingly employed, communicates to all dishes its frigid and piquant relish, I mean insincerity (badinage). Society does not tolerate passion, and in this it exercises its right. One does not enter company to be either vehement or somber; a strained air or one of concentration would appear inconsistent. The mistress of a house is always right in reminding a man that his emotional constraint brings on silence. “Monsieur Such-a-one, you are not amiable to day.” To be always amiable is, accordingly, an obligation, and, through this training, a sensibility that is diffused through innumerable little channels never produces a broad current. “One has a hundred friends, and out of these hundred friends two or three may have some chagrin every day; but one could not award them sympathy for any length of time as, in that event, one would be wanting in consideration for the remaining ninety-seven;”[4] one might sigh for an instant with some one of the ninety-seven, and that would be all. Madame du Deffant, having lost her oldest friend, the President Hénault, that very day goes to sup in a large assemblage: “Alas,” she exclaimed, “he died at six o’clock this evening; otherwise you would not see me here.” Under this constant régime of distractions and diversions there are no longer any profound sentiments; we have nothing but an epidermic exterior; love itself is reduced to “the exchange of two fantasies.” – And, as one always falls on the side to which one inclines, levity becomes deliberate and a matter of elegance.[5] Indifference of the heart is in fashion; one would be ashamed to show any genuine emotion. One takes pride in playing with love, in treating woman as a mechanical puppet, in touching one inward spring, and then another, to force out, at will, her anger or her pity. Whatever she may do, there is no deviation from the most insulting politeness; the very exaggeration of false respect which is lavished on her is a mockery by which indifference for her is fully manifested. – But they go still further, and in souls naturally unfeeling, gallantry turns into wickedness. Through ennui and the demand for excitement, through vanity, and as a proof of dexterity, delight is found in tormenting, in exciting tears, in dishonoring and in killing women by slow torture. At last, as vanity is a bottomless pit, there is no species of blackness of which these polished executioners are not capable; the personages of Laclos are derived from these originals.[6] – Monsters of this kind are, undoubtedly, rare; but there is no need of reverting to them to ascertain how much egotism is harbored in the gallantry of society. The women who erected it into an obligation are the first to realize its deceptiveness, and, amidst so much homage without heat, to pine for the communicative warmth of a powerful sentiment. – The character of the century obtains its last trait and “the man of feeling comes on the stage.
II.RETURN TO NATURE AND SENTIMENT.
Final trait of the century, an increased sensitivity in the best circles. – Date of its advent. – Its symptoms in art and in literature. – Its dominion in private. – Its affectations. – Its sincerity. – Its delicacy.
It is not that the groundwork of habits becomes different, for these remain equally worldly and dissipated up the last. But fashion authorizes a new affectation, consisting of effusions, reveries, and sensibilities as yet unknown. The point is to return to nature, to admire the country, to delight in the simplicity of rustic manners, to be interested in village people, to be human, to have a heart, to find pleasure in the sweetness and tenderness of natural affections, to be a husband and a father, and still more, to possess a soul, virtues, and religious emotions, to believe in Providence and immortality, to be capable of enthusiasm. One wants to be all this, or at least show an inclination that way. In any event, if the desire does exist it is one the implied condition, that one shall not be too much disturbed in his ordinary pursuits, and that the sensations belonging to the new order of life shall in no respect interfere with the enjoyments of the old one. Accordingly the exaltation which arises is little more than cerebral fermentation, and the idyll is to be almost entirely performed in the drawing-rooms. Behold, then, literature, the drama, painting and all the arts pursuing the same sentimental road to supply heated imaginations with factitious nourishment.[7] Rousseau, in labored periods, preaches the charms of an uncivilized existence, while other masters, between two madrigals, fancy the delight of sleeping naked in the primeval forest. The lovers in “La Nouvelle Héloise” interchange passages of fine style through four volumes, whereupon a person “not merely methodical but prudent,” the Comtesse de Blot, exclaims, at a social gathering at the Duchesse de Chartres’, “a woman truly sensitive, unless of extraordinary virtue, could refuse nothing to the passion of Rousseau.”[8] People collect in a dense crowd in the Exhibition around “L’Accordée de Village,” “La Cruche Cassée,” and the “Retour de nourrice,” with other rural and domestic idylls by Greuze; the voluptuous element, the tempting undercurrent of sensuality made perceptible in the fragile simplicity of his artless maidens, is a dainty bit for the libertine tastes which are kept alive beneath moral aspirations.[9] After these, Ducis, Thomas, Parny, Colardeau, Boucher, Delille, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Marmontel, Florian, the mass of orators, authors and politicians, the misanthrope Champfort, the logician La Harpe, the minister Necker, the versifiers and the imitators of Gessner and Young, the Berquins, the Bitaubés, nicely combed and bedizened, holding embroidered handkerchiefs to wipe away tears, are to marshal forth the universal eclogue down to the acme of the Revolution. Marmontel’s “Moral Tales” appear in the columns of the “Mercure” for 1791 and 1792,[10] while the number following the massacres of September opens with verses “to the manes of my canary-bird. “
Consequently, in all the details of private life, sensibility displays its magniloquence. A small temple to Friendship is erected in a park. A little altar to Benevolence is set up in a private closet. Dresses à la Jean-Jacques-Rousseau are worn “analogous to the principles of that author.” Head-dresses are selected with “puffs au sentiment” in which one may place the portrait of one’s daughter, mother, canary or dog, the whole “garnished with the hair of one’s father or intimate friend.”[11] People keep intimate friends for whom “they experience something so warm and so tender that it nearly amounts to a passion” and whom they cannot go three hours a day without seeing. “Every time female companions interchange tender ideas the voice suddenly changes into a pure and languishing tone, each fondly regarding the other with approaching heads and frequently embracing,” and suppressing a yawn a quarter of an hour after, with a nap in concert, because they have no more to say. Enthusiasm becomes an obligation. On the revival of “Le père de famille” there are as many handkerchiefs counted as spectators, and ladies faint away. “It is customary, especially for young women, to be excited, to turn pale, to melt into tears and, generally, to be seriously affected on encountering M. de Voltaire; they rush into his arms, stammer and weep, their agitation resembling that of the most passionate love.”[12] – When a society-author reads his work in a drawing-room, fashion requires that the company should utter exclamations and sob, and that some pretty fainting subject should be unlaced. Mme. de Genlis, who laughs at these affectations, is no less affected than the rest. Suddenly some one in the company is heard to say to the young orphan whom she is exhibiting: “Pamela, show us Héloise,” whereupon Pamela, loosening her hair, falls on her knees and turns her eyes up to heaven with an air of inspiration, to the great applause of the assembly.[13] Sensibility becomes an institution. The same Madame de Genlis founds an order of Perseverance which soon includes “as many as ninety chevaliers in the very best society.” To become a member it is necessary to solve some riddle, to answer a moral question and pronounce a discourse on virtue. Every lady or chevalier who discovers and publishes “three well-verified virtuous actions” obtains a gold medal. Each chevalier has his “brother in arms,” each lady has her bosom friend and each member has a device, and each device, framed in a little picture, figures in the “Temple of Honor,” a sort of tent gallantly decorated, and which M. de Lauzun causes to be erected in the middle of a garden.[14] – The sentimental parade is complete, a drawing room masquerade being visible even in this revival of chivalry.
The froth of enthusiasm and of fine words nevertheless leaves in the heart a residuum of active benevolence, trustfulness, and even happiness, or, at least, expansiveness and freedom. Wives, for the first time, are seen accompanying their husbands into garrison; mothers desire to nurse their infants, and fathers begin to interest themselves in the education of their children. Simplicity again forms an element of manners. Hair-powder is no longer put on little boys’ heads; many of the seigniors abandon laces, embroideries, red heels and the sword, except when in full dress. People appear in the streets “dressed à la Franklin, in coarse cloth, with a knotty cane and thick shoes.”[15] The taste no longer runs on cascades, statues and stiff and pompous decorations; the preference is for the English garden. The queen arranges a village for herself at the Trianon, where, “dressed in a frock of white cambric muslin and a gauze neck-handkerchief, and with a straw hat,” she fishes in the lake and sees her cows milked. Etiquette falls away like the paint scaling off from the skin, disclosing the bright hue of natural emotions. Madame Adelaide takes up a violin and replaces an absent musician to let the peasant girls dance16 The Duchesse de Bourbon goes out early in the morning incognito to bestow alms, and “to see the poor in their garrets.” The Dauphine jumps out of her carriage to assist a wounded post-boy, a peasant knocked down by a stag. The king and the Comte d’Artois help a carter to extract his cart from the mud. People no longer think about self-constraint, and self-adjustment, and of keeping up their dignity under all circumstances, and of subjecting the weaknesses of human nature to the exigencies of rank. On the death of the first Dauphin,[17] whilst the people in the room place themselves before the king to prevent him from entering it, the queen falls at his knees, and he says to her, weeping, “Ah, my wife, our dear child is dead, since they do not wish me to see him.” And the narrator adds with admiration; “I always seem to see a good farmer and his excellent wife a prey to the deepest despair at the loss of their beloved child.” Tears are no longer concealed, as it is a point of honor to be a human being. One becomes human and familiar with one’s inferiors. A prince, on a review, says to the soldiers on presenting the princess to them, “My boys, here is my wife.” There is a disposition to make people happy and to take great delight in their gratitude. To be kind, to be loved is the object of the head of a government, of a man in place. This goes so far that God is prefigured according to this model. The “harmonies of nature” are construed into the delicate attentions of Providence; on instituting filial affection the Creator “deigned to choose for our best virtue our sweetest pleasure.”[18] – The idyll which is imagined to take place in heaven corresponds with the idyll practiced on earth. From the public up to the princes, and from the princes down to the public, in prose, in verse, in compliments at festivities, in official replies, in the style of royal edicts down to the songs of the market-women, there is a constant interchange of graces and of sympathies. Applause bursts out in the theater at any verse containing an allusion to princes, and, a moment after, at the speech which exalts the merits of the people, the princes return the compliment by applauding in their turn.[19] – On all sides, just as this society is vanishing, a mutual deference, a spirit of kindliness arises, like a soft and balmy autumnal breeze, to dissipate whatever harshness remains of its aridity and to mingle with the radiance of its last hours the perfume of dying roses. We now encounter acts and words of infinite grace, unique of their kind, like a lovely, exquisite little figure on old Sèvres porcelain. One day, on the Comtesse Amélie de Boufflers speaking somewhat flippantly of her husband, her mother-in-law interposes, “You forget that you are speaking of my son.” – “True, mamma, I thought I was only speaking of your son-in-law.” It is she again who, on playing “the boat,” and obliged to decide between this beloved mother-in-law and her own mother, whom she scarcely knew, replies, “I would save my mother and drown with my mother-in-law.”[20] The Duchesse de Choiseul, the Duchesse de Lauzun, and others besides, are equally charming miniatures. When the heart and the mind combine their considerations they produce masterpieces, and these, like the art, the refinements and the society which surrounds them, possess a charm unsurpassed by anything except their own fragility.
III. Personality Defects.
The failings of character thus formed. – Adapted to one situation but not to a contrary situation. – Defects of intelligence. – Defects of disposition. – Such a character is disarmed by good-breeding.
The reason is that, the better people have become adapted to a certain situation the less prepared are they for the opposite situation. The habits and faculties that serve them in the previous condition become prejudicial to them in the new one. In acquiring talents adapted to tranquil times they lose those suited to times of agitation, reaching the extreme of feebleness at the same time with the extreme of urbanity. The more polished an aristocracy becomes the weaker it becomes, and when no longer possessing the power to please it not longer possesses the strength to struggle. And yet, in this world, we must struggle if we would live. In humanity, as in nature, empire belongs to force. Every creature that loses the art and energy of self-defense becomes so much more certainly a prey according as its brilliancy, imprudence and even gentleness deliver it over in advance to the gross appetites roaming around it. Where find resistance in characters formed by the habits we have just described? To defend ourselves we must, first of all, look carefully around us, see and foresee, and provide for danger. How could they do this living as they did? Their circle is too narrow and too carefully enclosed. Confined to their castles and mansions they see only those of their own sphere, they hear only the echo of their own ideas, they imagine that there is nothing beyond the public seems to consist of two hundred persons. Moreover, disagreeable truths are not admitted into a drawing-room, especially when of personal import, an idle fancy there becoming a dogma because it becomes conventional. Here, accordingly, we find those who, already deceived by the limitations of their accustomed horizon, fortify their delusion still more by delusions about their fellow men. They comprehend nothing of the vast world, which envelops their little world; they are incapable of entering into the sentiments of a bourgeois, of a villager; they have no conception of the peasant as he is but as they would like him to be. The idyll is in fashion, and no one dares dispute it; any other supposition would be false because it would be disagreeable, and as the drawing rooms have decided that all will go well, all must go well. Never was a delusion more complete and more voluntary. The Duc d’Orléans offers to wager a hundred louis that the States-General will dissolve without accomplishing anything, not even abolishing the lettre-de-cachet.. After the demolition has begun, and yet again after it is finished, they will form opinions no more accurate. They have no idea of social architecture; they know nothing about its materials, its proportions, or its harmonious balance; they have had no hand in it, they have never worked at it. They are entirely ignorant of the old building[21] in which they occupy the first story. They are not qualified to calculate either its pressure or its resistance.[[22]] They conclude, finally, that it is better to let the thing tumble in, and that the restoration of the edifice in their behalf will follow its own course, and that they will return to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for them, and freshly gilded, to begin over again the pleasant conversation which an accident, some tumult in the street, had interrupted.[23] Clear-sighted in society, they are obtuse in politics. They examine everything by the artificial light of candles; they are disturbed and bewildered in the powerful light of open day. The eyelid has grown stiff through age. The organ so long bent on the petty details of one refined life no longer takes in the popular life of the masses, and, in the new sphere into which it is suddenly plunged, its refinement becomes the source of its blindness.
Nevertheless action is necessary, for danger is seizing them by the throat. But the danger is of an ignoble species, while their education has provided them with no arms suitable for warding it off. They have learned how to fence, but not how to box. They are still the sons of those at Fontenoy, who, instead of being the first to fire, courteously raised their hats and addressed their English antagonists, “No, gentlemen, fire yourselves.” Being the slaves of good-breeding they are not free in their movements. Numerous acts, and those the most important, those of a sudden, vigorous and rude stamp, are opposed to the respect a well-bred man entertains for others, or at least to the respect which he owes to himself. They do not consider these allowable among themselves; they do not dream of their being allowed, and, the higher their position the more their rank fetters them. When the royal family sets out for Varennes the accumulated delays by which they are lost are the result of etiquette. Madame de Touzel insists on her place in the carriage to which she is entitled as governess of the Children of France. The king, on arriving, is desirous of conferring the marshal’s baton on M. de Bouillé, and after running to and fro to obtain a baton he is obliged to borrow that of the Duc de Choiseul. The queen cannot dispense with a traveling dressing-case and one has to be made large enough to contain every imaginable implement from a warming-pan to a silver porridge-dish, with other dishes besides; and, as if there were no shifts to be had in Brussels, there had to be a complete outfit in this line for herself and her children.[24] – A fervent devotion, even humanness, the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity, profound ignorance,[25] the lack or rigidity of the comprehension and determination are still greater with the princes than with the nobles. – All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak. They have not the physical superiority that can master it, the vulgar charlatanism which can charm it away, the tricks of a Scapin to throw it off the scent, the bull’s neck, the mountebank’s gestures, the stentor’s lungs, in short, the resources of the energetic temperament and of animal cunning, alone capable of diverting the rage of the unchained brute. To find such fighters, they seek three or four men of a different race and education, men having suffered and roamed about, a brutal commoner like the abbé Maury, a colossal and dirty satyr like Mirabeau, a bold and prompt adventurer like that Dumouriez who, at Cherbourg, when, through the feebleness of the Duc de Beuvron, the stores of grain were given up and the riot began, hooted at and nearly cut to pieces, suddenly sees the keys of the storehouse in the hands of a Dutch sailor, and, yelling to the mob that it was betrayed through a foreigner having got hold of the keys, himself jumps down from the railing, seizes the keys and hands them to the officer of the guard, saying to the people, “I am your father, I am the man to be responsible for the storehouse!”[26] To entrust oneself with porters and brawlers, to be collared by a political club, to improvise on the highways, to bark louder than the barkers, to fight with the fists or a cudgel, as much later with the young and rich gangs, against brutes and lunatics incapable of employing other arguments, and who must be answered in the same vein, to mount guard over the Assembly, to act as volunteer constable, to spare neither one’s own hide nor that of others, to be one of the people to face the people, all these are simple and effectual proceedings, but so vulgar as to appear to them disgusting. The idea of resorting to such means never enters their head; they neither know how, nor do they care to make use of their hands in such business.[27] They are skilled only in the duel and, almost immediately, the brutality of opinion, by means of assaults, stops the way to polite combats. Their arms, the shafts of the drawing-room, epigrams, witticisms, songs, parodies, and other needle thrusts are impotent against the popular bull.[28] Their personality lacks both roots and resources; through super-refinement it has weakened; their nature, impoverished by culture, is incapable of the transformations by which we are renewed and survive. – An all-powerful education has repressed, mollified, and enfeebled their very instincts. About to die, they experience none of the reactions of blood and rage, the universal and sudden restoration of the forces, the murderous spasm, the blind irresistible need of striking those who strike them. If a gentleman is arrested in his own house by a Jacobin we never find him splitting his head open.[29] They allow themselves to be taken, going quietly to prison; to make an uproar would be bad taste; it is necessary, above all things, to remain what they are, well-bred people of society. In prison both men and women dress themselves with great care, pay each other visits and keep up a drawing-room; it may be at the end of a corridor, by the light of three or four candles; but here they circulate jests, compose madrigals, sing songs and pride themselves on being as gallant, as gay and as gracious as ever: need people be morose and ill-behaved because accident has consigned them to a poor inn? They preserve their dignity and their smile before their judges and on the cart; the women, especially, mount the scaffold with the ease and serenity characteristic of an evening entertainment. It is the supreme characteristic of good-breeding, erected into an unique duty, and become to this aristocracy a second nature, which is found in its virtues as well as in its vices, in its faculties as well as in its impotencies, in its prosperity as at its fall, and which adorns it even in the death to which it conducts.
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Notes:
[1]. Champfort, 110.
[2]. George Sand, V. 59. “I was rebuked for everything; I never made a movement which was not criticized.”
[3]. “Paris, Versailles, et les provinces,” I. 162. – “The king of Sweden is here; be wears rosettes on his breeches; all is over; he is ridiculous, and a provincial king.” (“Le Gouvernement de Normandie,” by Hippeau, IV. 237, July 4, 1784.
[4]. Stendhal, “Rome, Naples and Florence,” 379. Stated by an English lord.
[5] Marivaux, “La Petit-Maître corrigé. – Gresset, “Le Méchant.” Crébillon fils, “La Nuit et le Moment,” (especially the scene between the scene between Citandre and Lucinde). – Collé, “La Verité dans le Vin,” (the part of the abbé with the with the présidente). – De Bezenval, 79. (The comte de Frise and Mme. de Blot). “Vie privée du Maréchal de Richelieu,” (scenes with Mme. Michelin). – De Goncourt, 167 to 174.
[6]. Laclos, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Mme. de Merteuil was copied after a Marquise de Grenoble. – Remark the difference between Lovelace and Valmont, one being stimulated by pride and the other by vanity.
[7]. The growth of sensibility is indicated by the following dates: Rousseau, “Sur l’influence des lettres et des arts,” 1749; “Sur l’inégalité,” 1753; “Nouvelle Héloise,” 1759. Greuze, “Le Pére de Famille lisant la Bible,” 1755; “L’Accordée de Village,” 1761. Diderot, “Le fils natural,” 1757; “Le Pére de Famille,” 1758.
[8]. Mme. de Genlis, “Mémoires,” chap. XVII. – George Sand, I. 72. The young Mme. de Francueil, on seeing Rousseaufor the first time, burst into tears.
[9]. This point has been brought out with as much skill as accuracy by Messieurs de Goncourt in “L’Art au dix-huitième siècle,” I. 433- 438.
[10]. The number for August, 1792, contains “Les Rivaux d’eux- mêmes.” – About the same time other pieces are inserted in the “Mercure,” such as “The federal union of Hymen and Cupid,” “Les Jaloux,” “A Pastoral Romance,” “Ode Anacréontique à Mlle. S. D. . . . ” etc.
[11]. Mme. de Genlis, “Adéle et Théodore,” I. 312. – De Goncourt, “La Femme an dixhuitième siècle,” 318. – Mme. d’Oberkirk, I. 56. – Description of the puff au sentiment of the Duchesse de Chartres (de Goncourt, 311): “In the background is a woman seated in a chair and holding an infant, which represents the Duc de Valois and his nurse. On the right is a parrot pecking at a cherry, and on the left a little Negro, the duchess’s two pets: the whole is intermingled with locks of hair of all the relations of Mme. de Chartres, the hair of her husband, father and father-in-law.”
[12]. Mme. de Genlis, “Les Dangers du Monde.” I, scène VII; II, scène IV; – “Adèle et Théodore,” I. 312; – “Souvenirs de Félicie,” 199; – Bachaumont, IV, 320.
[13]. Mme. de la Rochejacquelein, “Mémoires.”
[14]. Mme. de Genlis, “Mémoires,” chap. XX. – De Lauzun, 270.
[15]. Mme. d’Oberkirk, II. 35 (1783-1784). Mme. Campan, III. 371. – Mercier, “Tableau de Paris,” passim.
[16]. “Correspondance” by Métra, XVII. 55, (1784).– Mme. d’Oberkirk, II. 234. – “Marie Antoinette,” by d’Arneth and Geffroy, II. 63, 29.
[17]. “Le Gouvernement de Normandie,” by Hippeau, IV. 387 (Letters of June 4, 1789, by an eye-witness).
[18]. Florian, “Ruth”.
[19]. Hippeau, IV. 86 (June 23, 1773), on the representation of “Le Siege de Calais,” at the Comédie Française, at the moment when Mlle. Vestris has pronounced these words:
Le Français dans son prince aime à trouver un frère Qui, né fils de l’Etat, en devienne le père.
“Long and universal plaudits greeted the actress who had turned in the direction of the Dauphin.” In another place these verses recur:
Quelle leçon pour vous, superbes potentats! Veillez sur vos sujets dans le rang le plus bas, Tel, loin de vos regards, dans la misère expire, Qui quelque jour peut-être, eût sauvé votre empire.
“The Dauphin and the Dauphine in turn applauded the speech. This demonstration of their sensibility was welcomed with new expressions of affection and gratitude.”
[20]. Madame de Genlis, “Souvenirs de Félicie,” 76, 161.
[21]. M. de Montlosier; in the Constituent Assembly, is about the only person familiar with feudal laws.
[22]. “A competent and impartial man who would estimate the chances of the success of the Révolution would find that there are more against it than against the five winning numbers in a lottery; but this is possible, and unfortunately, this time, they all came out” (Duc de Lévis, “Souvenirs,” 328.)
[23]. “Corinne,” by Madame de Staël, the character of the Comte d’Erfeuil. – Malonet, “Mémoires,” II. 297 (a memorable instance of political stupidity).
[24]. Mme. Campan, II. 140, 313. – Duc de Choiseul, “Mémoires.”
[25]. Journal of Dumont d’Urville, commander of the vessel which transported Charles X. into exile in 1830. – See note 4 at the end of the volume.
[26]. Dumouriez, “Mémoires,” III. chap. III. (July 21, 1789).
[27]. 1 “All these fine ladies and gentlemen who knew so well how to bow and courtesy and walk over a carpet, could not take three steps on God’s earth without getting dreadfully fatigued. They could not even open or shut a door; they had not even strength enough to lift a log to put it on the fire; they had to call a servant to draw up a chair for them; they could not come in or go out by themselves. what could they have done with their graces, without their valets to supply the place of hands and feet?” (George Sand, V. 61.)
[28]. When Madame de F- had expressed a clever thing she felt quite proud of it. M- remarked that on uttering something clever about an emetic she was quite surprised that she was not purged. Champfort, 107.
[29]. The following is an example of what armed resistance can accomplish for a man in his own house. “A gentleman of Marseilles, proscribed and living in his country domicile, has provided himself with gun, pistols and saber, and never goes out without this armament, declaring that he will not be taken alive. Nobody dared to execute the order of arrest. (Anne Plumptree, “A Residence of three years in France,” (1802-1805), II. 115.
BOOK THIRD. THE SPIRIT AND THE DOCTRINE.
CHAPTER I. SCIENTIFIC ACQUISITION.
The composition of the revolutionary spirit. — Scientific acquisition its first element.
On seeing a man with a somewhat feeble constitution, but healthy in appearance and of steady habits, greedily swallow some new kind of