(22.) When the Roman emperors were making their triumphal entries, they never protected themselves in a more effeminate, easy, and efficacious manner against the wind, the rain, the dust, and the sun, than the citizens of Paris do when they are driven from one end of the town to another. What a difference between their habits and the mules on which their forefathers rode! The latter did not know how to deprive themselves of the necessaries of life to get superfluities, nor to prefer show to substance; their houses were never illuminated with wax-candles, and they never warmed themselves by a little fire, for in their time such candles were only used at the altar and in the Louvre;[380] they never ate a bad dinner in order to keep a carriage; they were convinced that men had legs given them to walk, and they did walk. In dry weather they kept themselves clean; in wet they did not mind to dirty their shoes and stockings, and to cross a street or passage with the same alacrity as a sportsman rides over ploughed fields, or a soldier gets wet in the trenches. They had not then invented the harnessing of two men to carry them in a Sedan chair; then several magistrates walked to the two courts,[381] and with as good a grace as Augustus formerly went on foot to the Capitol. Pewter in those days shone on the tables and the sideboards, brass and iron in the chimneys, whilst silver and gold lay safe in coffers. Women were then waited on by women, and there were even women in the kitchen. Such fine names as “governor” and “governess” were not unknown to our forefathers, for they knew to whom the children of kings and of great princes were intrusted;[382] but their children had the same servants they had, and they themselves were satisfied to superintend their education. Everything they did was calculated; their expenses were in proportion to their means; their liveries, their carriages, their furniture, their household expenses, their town and country houses were all in accordance with their incomes and their station in life. Outward distinctions existed, however, amongst them, so that it was impossible to mistake the wife of an attorney for the wife of a judge, and a commoner or a mere servant for a nobleman. Less desirous to spend or enlarge their patrimony than to keep it, they left it entire to their heirs, led a tranquil life, and died a peaceful death; then, there was no complaint of hard times, of excessive misery, of scarcity of money; they had less than we have, and yet they had enough, richer through their economy and their moderation than through their incomes or estates. To conclude, in former days people observed this maxim, that what is splendour, pomp, and magnificence in nobles of high rank, is extravagance, folly, and stupidity in private gentlemen.[383] [Illustration] VIII. OF THE COURT.