France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs
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.
*****
NOTES:
[Footnote 2301: Champfort, 110.]
[Footnote 2302: George Sand, V. 59. "I was rebuked for everything; I
never made a movement which was not criticized."]
[Footnote 2303: "Paris, Versailles, et les provinces," I. 162.--"The
king of Sweden is here; he 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.]
[Footnote 2304: Stendhal, "Rome, Naples and Florence," 379. Stated by an
English lord.]
[Footnote 2305: 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.]
[Footnote 2306: 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.]
[Footnote 2307: 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.]
[Footnote 2308: Mme. de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap. XVII.--George Sand, I.
72. The young Mme. de Francueil, on seeing Rousseau for the first time,
burst into tears.]
[Footnote 2309: 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.]
[Footnote 2310: 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.]
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