WILL it be believed that despotism has its partizans on the ground of the necessity for encouraging the fine arts? The brilliancy of the reign of Louis XIV. has to an incredible extent multiplied the number of those who think thus. According to them the crowning glory of all human society is to have fine tragedies, fine comedies and other works of art. There are those who willingly forgive all the evil wrought by priests, since without the priests we should not have had the comedy of _Tartuffe_. * * * * * WHAT is a cardinal? He is a priest clad in scarlet, who receives a hundred thousand crowns from the king, to flout him in the name of the pope. * * * * * SOCIETY is composed of two great classes--those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. * * * * * CHANGE in fashion is the tax which the industry of the poor levies on the vanity of the rich. * * * * * IT is an incontestable fact that there are in France seven million folk who beg for alms, and another twelve millions who are too poor to give them. * * * * * THE nobility, say the nobles, is an intermediary between the king and the people.... Precisely; just as the hound is the intermediary between the huntsman and the hares. * * * * * FRANCE is a country where it is often useful to exhibit one’s vices, and invariably dangerous to exhibit one’s virtues. * * * * * A FRIEND said to me _à propos_ of some ridiculous ministerial blunders: “If it were not for the government, we should have nothing left to laugh at in France.” * * * * * IN France we leave unmolested those who set fire to the house and persecute those who sound the alarm bell. * * * * * PARIS is a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four fifths of the inhabitants die of grief. * * * * * WHEN princes condescend to emerge from their miserable systems of etiquette it is never in favour of a man of merit, but of a wench or a buffoon. When women forget themselves it is never for love of an honest man but of a rascal. In short when people break the yoke of public opinion, it is rarely to rise above it, nearly always to descend below it. * * * * * ONE must make choice between loving women and knowing them; there is no middle course. * * * * * NATURALISTS tell us that in all animal species degeneration begins in the female. In civilised society philosophers can apply this observation to morals. * * * * *