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.2226—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.2227 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,2228 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.2229 It was hardly allowed for a few days to lovers.2230 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."2231 Appearances, moreover, are respected. An uninformed stranger would detect nothing to excite suspicion. An extreme curiosity, says Horace Walpole,2232 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."2233 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,2234 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,"2235 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 FÉlicitÉ de Saint-Aubin2236 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 rÉgime2237 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.2238 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."2239 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.2240 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.2241 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.