In the solitude of Coppet, where she died at fifty-seven, during the last and darkest days of the Revolution, perhaps she realized in the tireless devotion of her husband and the loving care of Mme. de Stael the repose of heart which the brilliant world of Paris never gave her.

With all her gifts, which have left many records that may be read, and in spite of a few shadows that fall more or less upon all earthly relations, not the least of her legacies to posterity was the beautiful example, rarer then than now, of that true and sympathetic family life in which lies the complete harmony of existence, a safeguard against the storms of passion, a perennial fount of love that keeps the spirit young, the tranquility out of which spring the purest flowers of human happiness and human endeavor.

There were many salons of lesser note which have left agreeable memories. It would be pleasant to recall other clever and beautiful women whose names one meets so often in the chronicles of the time, and whose faces, conspicuous for their clear, strong outlines, still look out upon us from the galleries that perpetuate its life; but the list is too long and would lead us too far. From the moving procession of social leaders who made the age preceding the Revolution so brilliant I have chosen only the few who were most widely known, and who best represent its dominant types and its special phases.

The most remarkable period of the literary salons was really closed with the death of Mme. du Deffand, in 1780. Mme. Geoffrin had already been dead three years, and Mlle. de Lespinasse, four. Some of the most noted of the philosophers and men of letters were also gone, others were past the age of forming fresh ties, the young men belonged to another generation, and no new drawing rooms exactly replaced the old ones. Mme. Necker still received the world that was wont to assemble in the great salons, Mme. de Condorcet presided over a rival coterie, and there were numerous small and intimate circles; but the element of politics was beginning to intrude, and with it a degree of heat which disturbed the usual harmony. The reign of esprit, the perpetual play of wit had begun to pall upon the tastes of people who found themselves face to face with problems so grave and issues so vital. There was a slight reaction towards nature and simplicity. "They may be growing wiser," said Walpole, "but the intermediate change is dullness." For nearly half a century learned men and clever women had been amusing themselves with utopian theories, a few through conviction, the majority through fashion, or egotism, or the vanity of saying new things, just as the world is doing today. The doctrines put forth by Montesquieu, vivified by Voltaire, and carried to the popular heart by Rousseau had been freely discussed in the salons, not only by philosophers and statesmen, but by men of the world, poets, artists, and pretty women. The sparks of thought with which they played so lightly filtered slowly through the social strata. The talk of the drawing room at last reached the street. But the torch of truth which, held aloft, serves as a beacon star to guide the world towards some longed for ideal becomes often a deadly explosive when it falls among the poisonous vapors of inflammable human passions. Liberty, equality, fraternity assumed a new and fatal significance in the minds of the hungry and restless masses who, embittered by centuries of wrong, were ready to carry these phrases to their immediate and living conclusions. They had found their watchwords and their hour. The train was already laid beneath this complex social structure, and the tragedy that followed carried to a common ruin court and salon, philosophers and beaux esprits, innocent women and dreaming men.

That the salons were unconscious instruments in hastening the catastrophe, which was sooner or later inevitable, is undoubtedly true. Their influence in the dissemination of thought was immense. The part they played was, to a limited extent, precisely that of the modern press, with an added personal element. They moved in the drift of their time, directed its intelligence, and reflected its average morality. As centers of serious conversation they were distinctly stimulating. It is quite possible that they stimulated the intellect to the exclusion of the more solid qualities of character, and that they were the source of a vast amount of affectation. It was the fashion to have esprit, and those who were deficient in an article so essential to success were naturally disposed to borrow it, or to put on the semblance of it. But no phase of life is without its reverse side, and the present generation cannot claim freedom from pretension of the same sort. It is not unlikely that in expanding the intelligence they established new standards of distinction, which in a measure weakened the old ones. But if they precipitated the downfall of the court they began by rivaling, it was in the logical course of events, which few were wise enough to foresee, much less to determine.

It is worthy of remark that this reign of women, in which the manners and forms of modern society found their initiative and their models, was not a reign of youth, or beauty, though these qualities are never likely to lose their own peculiar fascination. It was, before all things, a reign of intelligence, and ascendency of women who had put on the hues of age without laying aside the permanent charm of a fully developed personality. It was intelligence blended with practical knowledge of the world and with the graceful amenities that heightened while half disguising its power. The women of the present have different aims. They are no longer content with the role of inspirer. Their methods are more direct. They depend less upon finesse, more upon inherent right and strength. But it is to the women who shone so conspicuously in France for more than two hundred years that we may trace the broadened intellectual life, the unfettered activities, the wide and beneficent influence of the women of today.



CHAPTER XVII. SALONS OF THE REVOLUTION—MADAME ROLAND

Change in the Character of the Salons—Mme. de Condorcet—Mme. Roland's Story of Her Own Life—A Marriage of Reason—Enthusiasm for the Revolution—Her Modest Salon—Her Tragical Fate

The salons of the Revolution were no longer simply the fountains of literary and artistic criticism, the centers of wit, intelligence, knowledge, philosophy, and good manners, but the rallying points of parties. They took the tone of the time and assumed the character of political clubs. The salon of 1790 was not the salon of 1770. A new generation had arisen, with new ideals and a new spirit that made for itself other forms or greatly modified the old ones. It was not led by philosophers and beaux esprits who evolved theories and turned them over as an intellectual diversion, but by men of action, ready to test these theories and force them to their logical conclusions. Mirabeau, Vergniaud, and Robespierre had succeeded Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert. Impelled towards one end, by vanity, ambition, love of glory, or genuine conviction, these men and their colleagues turned the salon, which had so long been the school of public opinion, into an engine of revolution. The exquisite flower of the eighteenth century had blossomed, matured, and fallen. Perhaps it was followed by a plant of sturdier growth, but the rare quality of its beauty was not repeated. The time was past when the gentle touch of women could temper the violence of clashing opinions, or subject the discussion of vital questions to the inflexible laws of taste. No tactful hostess could hold in leading strings these fiery spirits. The voices that had charmed the old generation were silent. Of the women who had made the social life of the century so powerful and so famous, many were quietly asleep before the storm broke; many were languishing in prison cells, with no outlook but the scaffold; some were pining in the loneliness of exile; and a few were buried in a seclusion which was their only safeguard.

But nature has always in reserve fresh types that come to the surface in a great crisis. The women who made themselves felt and heard above the din of revolution, though by no means deficient in the graces, were mainly distinguished for quite other qualities than those which shine in a drawing room or lead a coterie. They were either women of rare genius and the courage of their convictions, or women trained in the stern school of a bitter experience, who found their true milieu in the midst of stirring events. The names of Mme. de Stael, Mme. Roland, and Mme. de Condorcet readily suggest themselves as the most conspicuous representatives of this stormy period. With different gifts and in different measure, each played a prominent role in the brief drama to which they lent the inspiration of their genius and their sympathy, until they were forced to turn back with horror from that carnival of savage passions which they had unconsciously helped to let loose upon the world.

The salon of the young, beautiful, and gifted Mme. de Condorcet had its roots in the old order of things. During the ministry of Necker it was in come degree a rival of the Salon Helvetique, and included many of the same guests; later it became a rendezvous for the revolutionary party. The Marquis de Condorcet was not only philosopher, savant, litterateur, a member of two academies, and among the profoundest thinkers of his time, but a man of the world, who inherited the tastes and habits of the old noblesse. His wife, whom he had married late in life, was Sophie de Grouchy, sister of the Marechal, and was noted for remarkable talents, as well as for surpassing beauty. Belonging by birth and associations to the aristocracy, and by her pronounced opinions to the radical side of the philosophic party, her salon was a center in which two worlds met. In its palmy days people were only speculating upon the borders of an abyss which had not yet opened visibly before them. The revolutionary spirit ran high, but had not passed the limits of reason and humanity. Mme. de Condorcet, who was deeply tinged with the new doctrines, presided with charming grace, and her youthful beauty lent an added fascination to the brilliancy of her intellect and the rather grave eloquence of her conversation. In her drawing room were gathered men of letters and women of talent, nobles and scientists, philosophers and Beaux Esprits. Turgot and Malesherbes represented its political side; Marmontel, the Abbe Morellet, and Suard lent it some of the wit and vivacity that shone in the old salons. Literature, science, and the arts were discussed here, and there was more or less reading, music, or recitation. But the tendency was towards serious conversation, and the tone was often controversial.

The character of Condorcet was a sincere and elevated one. "He loved much and he loved many people," said Mlle. de Lespinasse. He aimed at enlightening and regenerating the world, not at overturning it; but, like many others, strong souls and true, he was led from practical truth in the pursuit of an ideal one. His wife, who shared his political opinions, united with them a fiery and independent spirit that was not content with theories. Her philosophic tastes led her to translate Adam Smith, and to write a fine analysis of the "Moral Sentiments." But the sympathy of which she spoke so beautifully, and which gave so living a force to the philosophy it illuminated, if not directed by broad intelligence and impartial judgment, is often like the ignis fatuus that plays over the poisonous marsh and lures the unwary to destruction. For a brief day the magical influence of Mme. de Condorcet was felt more or less by all who came within her circle. She inspired the equable temper of her husband with her own enthusiasm, and urged him on to extreme measures from which his gentler soul would have recoiled. When at last he turned from those scenes of horror, choosing to be victim rather than oppressor, it was too late. Perhaps she recalled the days of her power with a pang of regret when her friends had fallen one by one at the scaffold, and her husband, hunted and deserted by those he tried to serve, had died by his own hand, in a lonely cell, to escape a sadder fate; while she was left, after her timely release from prison, to struggle alone in poverty and obscurity, for some years painting water-color portraits for bread. She was not yet thirty when the Revolution ended, and lived far into the present century; but though the illusions of her youth had been rudely shattered, she remained always devoted to her liberal principles and a broad humanity.

The woman, however, who most fitly represents the spirit of the Revolution, who was at once its inspiration, its heroine, and its victim, is Mme. Roland. It is not as the leader of a salon that she takes her place in the history of her time, but as one of the foremost and ablest leaders of a powerful political party. Born in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, she had neither the prestige of a name nor the distinction of an aristocratic lineage. Reared in seclusion, she was familiar with the great world by report only. Though brilliant, even eloquent in conversation when her interest was roused, her early training had added to her natural distaste for the spirit, as well as the accessories, of a social life that was inevitably more or less artificial. She would have felt cramped and caged in the conventional atmosphere of a drawing room in which the gravest problems were apt to be forgotten in the flash of an epigram or the turn of a bon mot. The strong and heroic outlines of her character were more clearly defined on the theater of the world. But at a time when the empire of the salon was waning, when vital interests and burning convictions had for the moment thrown into the shade all minor questions of form and convenance, she took up the scepter in a simpler fashion, and, disdaining the arts of a society of which she saw only the fatal and hopeless corruption, held her sway over the daring and ardent men who gathered about her by the unassisted force of her clear and vigorous intellect.

It would be interesting to trace the career of the thoughtful and precocious child known as Manon or Marie Phlipon, who sat in her father's studio with the burin of an engraver in one hand and a book in the other, eagerly absorbing the revolutionary theories which were to prove so fatal to her, but it is not the purpose here to dwell upon the details of her life. In the solitude of a prison cell and under the shadow of the scaffold she told her own story. She has introduced us to the simple scenes of her childhood, the modest home on the Quai de l'Horloge, the wise and tender mother, the weak and unstable father. We are made familiar with the tiny recess in which she studies, reads, and makes extracts from the books which are such strange companions for her years. We seem to see the grave little face as it lights with emotion over the inspiring pages of Fenelon or the chivalrous heroes of Tasso, and sympathize with the fascination that leads the child of nine years to carry her Plutarch to mass instead of her prayer book. She portrays for us her convent life with its dreams, its exaltations, its romantic friendships, and its ardent enthusiasms. We have vivid pictures of the calm and sympathetic Sophie Cannet, to whom she unburdens all her hopes and aspirations and sorrows; of the lively sister Henriette, who years afterward, in the generous hope of saving her early friend, proposed to exchange clothes and take her place in the cells of Sainte-Pelagie. In the long and commonplace procession of suitors that files before us, one only touches her heart. La Blancherie has a literary and philosophic turn, and the young girl's imagination drapes him in its own glowing colors. The opposition of her father separates them, but absence only lends fuel to this virgin flame. One day she learns that his views are mercenary, that he is neither true nor disinterested, and the charm is broken. She met him afterward in the Luxembourg gardens with a feather in his hat, and the last illusion vanished.

There is an idyllic charm in these pictures so simply and gracefully sketched. She sees with the vision of one lying down to sleep after a life of pain, and dreaming of the green fields, the blue skies, the running brooks, the trees, the flowers, that make so beautiful a background for youthful loves and hopes. Perhaps we could wish sometimes that she were a little less frank. We miss a touch of delicacy in this nature that was so strong and self-poised. We are sorry that she dismissed La Blancherie quite so theatrically. There is a trace too much of consciousness in her fine self-analysis, perhaps a little vanity, and we half suspect that her unchildlike penetration and precocity of motive was sometimes the reflection of an afterthought. But it is to be remembered that, even in childhood, she had lived in such close companionship with the heroes and moralists of the past that their sentiments had become her own. She doubtless posed a little to herself, as well as to the world, but her frankness was a part of that uncompromising truthfulness which scorned disguises of any sort, and led her to paint faults and virtues alike.

Family sorrows—the death of the mother whom she adored, and the unworthiness of her father—combined to change the current of her free and happy life, and to deepen a natural vein of melancholy. In her loneliness of soul the convent seemed to offer itself as the sole haven of peace and rest. The child, who loved Fenelon, and dreamed over the lives of the saints, had in her much of the stuff out of which mystics and fanatics are made. Her ardent soul was raised to ecstasy by the stately ceremonial of the Church; her imagination was captivated by its majestic music, its mystery, its solemnity, and she was wont to spend hours in rapt meditation. But her strong fund of good sense, her firm reason fortified by wide and solid reading, together with her habits of close observation and analysis, saved her from falling a victim to her own emotional needs, or to chimeras of any sort. She had drawn her mental nourishment too long from Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, the English philosophers, and classic historians, to become permanently a prey to exaggerated sensibilities, though it was the same temperament fired by a sense of human inequality and wrong, that swept her at last along the road that led to the scaffold. At twenty-six the vocation of the religieuse had lost its fascination; the pious fervor of her childhood had vanished before the skepticism of her intellect, its ardent friendships had grown dim, its fleeting loves had proved illusive, and her romantic dreams ended in a cold marriage of reason.

It may be noted here that though Mme. Roland had lost her belief in ecclesiastical systems, and, as she said, continued to go to mass only for the "edification of her neighbors and the good order of society," there was always in her nature a strong undercurrent of religious feeling. Her faith had not survived the full illumination of her reason, but her trust in immortality never seriously wavered. The Invocation that was among her last written words is the prayer of a soul that is conscious of its divine origin and destiny. She retained, too, the firm moral basis that was laid in her early teachings, and which saved her from the worst errors of her time. She might be shaken by the storms of passion, but one feels that she could never be swept from her moorings.

Tall and finely developed, with dark brown hair; a large mouth whose beauty lay in a smile of singular sweetness; dark, serious eyes with a changeful expression which no artist could catch; a fresh complexion that responded to every emotion of a passionate soul; a deep, well-modulated voice; manners gentle, modest, reserved, sometimes timid with the consciousness that she was not readily taken at her true value—such was the PERSONNELLE of the woman who calmly weighed the possibilities of a life which had no longer a pleasant outlook in any direction, and, after much hesitation, became the wife of a grave, studious, austere man of good family and moderate fortune, but many years her senior.

It was this marriage, into which she entered with all seriousness, and a devotion that was none the less sincere because it was of the intellect rather than the heart, that gave the final tinge to a character that was already laid on solid foundations. Strong, clear-sighted, earnest, and gifted, her later experience had accented a slightly ascetic quality which had been deepened also by her study of antique models. Her tastes were grave and severe. But they had a lighter side. As a child she had excelled in music, dancing, drawing, and other feminine accomplishments, though one feels always that her distinctive talent does not lie in these things. She is more at home with her thoughts. There was a touch of poetry, too, in her nature, that under different circumstances might have lent it a softer and more graceful coloring. She had a natural love for the woods and the flowers. The single relief to her somber life at La Platiere, after her marriage, was in the long and lonely rambles in the country, whose endless variations of hill and vale and sky and color she has so tenderly and so vividly noted. In her last days a piano and a few flowers lighted the darkness of her prison walls, and out of these her imagination reared a world of its own, peopled with dreams and fancies that contrasted strangely with the gloom of her surroundings. This poetic vein was closely allied to the keen sensibility that tempered the seriousness of her character. With the mental equipment of a man, she combined the rich sympathy of a woman. Her devotion to her mother was passionate in its intensity; her letters to Sophie throb with warmth and sentiment. She is tender and loving, as well as philosophic and thoughtful. Her emotional ardor was doubtless partly the glow of youth and not altogether in the texture of a mind so eminently rational; but there were rich possibilities behind it. A shade of difference in the mental and moral atmosphere, a trace more or less of sunshine and happiness are important factors in the peculiar combination of qualities that make up a human being. The marriage of Mme. Roland led her into a world that had little color save what she brought into it. Her husband did not smile upon her friends. Sympathy other than that of the intellect she does not seem to have had. But her story is best told in her own words, written in the last days of her life.

"In considering only the happiness of my partner, I soon perceived that something was wanting to my own. I had never, for a single instant, ceased to see in my husband one of the most estimable of men, to whom I felt it an honor to belong; but I have often realized that there was a lack of equality between us, that the ascendency of an overbearing character, added to that of twenty years more of age, gave him too much superiority. If we lived in solitude, I had many painful hours to pass; if we went into the world, I was loved by men of whom I saw that some might touch me too deeply. I plunged into work with my husband, another excess which had its inconvenience; I gave him the habit of not knowing how to do without me for anything in the world, nor at any moment.

"I honor, I cherish my husband, as a sensible daughter adores a virtuous father to whom she would sacrifice even her lover; but I have found the man who might have been that lover, and remaining faithful to my duties, my frankness has not known how to conceal the feelings which I subjected to them. My husband, excessively sensitive both in his affections and his self-love, could not support the idea of the least change in his influence; his imagination darkened, his jealousy irritated me; happiness fled; he adored me, I sacrificed myself for him, and we were miserable.

"If I were free, I would follow him everywhere to soften his griefs and console his old age; a soul like mine leaves no sacrifices imperfect. But Roland was embittered by the thought of sacrifice, and the knowledge once acquired that I mad made one ruined his happiness; he suffered in accepting it, and could not do without it."

The sequel to this tale is told in allusions and half revelations, in her letters to Buzot, which glow with suppressed feeling; in her touching farewell to one whom she dared not to name, but whom she hoped to meet where it would not be a crime to love; in those final words of her "Last Thoughts"—"Adieu.... No, it is from thee alone that I do not separate; to leave the earth is to approach each other."

Beneath this semi-transparent veil the heart-drama of her life is hidden.

For the sake of those who would be pained by this story, as well as for her own, we would rather it had never been told. We should like to believe that the woman who worked so nobly with and for the man who died by his own hand five days after her death, because he could stay no longer in a world where such crimes were possible, had lived in the full perfection of domestic sympathy. But, if she carried with her an incurable wound, one cannot help regretting that her Spartan courage had not led her to wear the mantle of silence to the end. Posterity is curious rather than sympathetic, and the world is neither wiser nor better for these needless soul-revelations. There is always a certain malady of egotism behind them. But it is often easier to scale the heights of human heroism than to still the cry of a bruised spirit. Mme. Roland had moments of falling short of her own ideals, and this was one of them. Pure, loyal, self-sustained as she was, her strong sense of verity did not permit the veil which would have best served the interests of the larger truth. It is fair to say that she thought the malicious gossip of her enemies rendered this statement necessary to the protection of her fame. Perhaps, after all, she shows here her most human and lovable if not her strongest side. We should like Minerva better if she were not so faultlessly wise.

The outbreak of the Revolution found Mme. Roland at La Platiere, where she shared her husband's philosophic and economic studies, brought peace into a discordant family, attended to her household duties and the training of her child, devoted many hours to generous care for the sick and poor, and reserved a little leisure for poetry and the solitary rambles she loved so well. The first martial note struck a responsive chord in her heart. Her opportunity had come. Embittered by class distinctions over which she had long brooded, saturated with the sentiments of Rousseau, and full of untried theories constructed in the closet, with small knowledge of the wide and complex interests with which it was necessary to deal, she centered all the hitherto latent energies of her forceful nature upon the quixotic effort to redress human wrongs. Her birth, her intellect, her character, her temperament, her education, her associations—all led her towards the role she played so heroically. She had a keen appreciation for genuine values, but none whatever for factitious ones. Her inborn hatred of artificial distinctions had grown with her years and colored all her estimates of men and things. When she came to Paris, she noted with a sort of indignation the superior poise and courtesy of the men in the assembly who had been reared in the habit of power. It added fuel to her enmity towards institutions in which reason, knowledge, and integrity paid homage to fine language and distinguished manners. She found even Vergniaud too refined and fastidious in his dress for a successful republican leader. Her old contempt for a "philosopher with a feather" had in no wise abated. With such principles ingrained and fostered, it is not difficult to forecast the part Mme. Roland was destined to play in the coming conflict of classes. Whatever we may think of the wisdom of her attitude towards the Revolution, she represented at least its most sincere side. As she stood white-robed and courageous at the foot of the scaffold, facing the savage populace she had laid down her life to befriend, perhaps her perspectives were truer. Experience had given her an insight into the characters of men which is not to be gained in the library, nor in the worship of dead heroes. If it had not shaken her faith in human perfectibility, it had taught her at least the value of tradition in chaining brutal human passions.

The tragical fate of Mme. Roland has thrown a strong light upon the modest little salon in which the unfortunate Girondists met four times a week to discuss the grave problems that confronted them. A salon in the old sense it certainly was not. It had little in common with the famous centers of conversation and esprit. It was simply the rallying point of a party. The only woman present was Mme. Roland herself, but at first she assumed no active leadership. She sat at a little table outside of the circle, working with her needle, or writing letters, alive to everything that was said, venturing sometimes a word of counsel or a thoughtful suggestion, and often biting her lips to repress some criticism that she feared might not be within her province. She had left her quiet home in the country fired with a single thought—the regeneration of France. The men who gathered about her were in full accord with her generous aims. It was not to such enthusiasms that the old salons lost themselves. They had been often the centers of political intrigues, as in the days of the Fronde; or of religious partisanship, as during the troubles of Port Royal; they had ranged themselves for and against rival candidates for literary or artistic honors; but they had preserved, on the whole, a certain cosmopolitan character. All shades of opinion were represented, and social brilliancy was the end sought, not the triumph of special ideas. It is indeed true that earnest convictions were, to some extent, stifled in the salons, where charm and intelligence counted for so much, and the sterling qualities of character for so little. But the etiquette, the urbanity, the measure, which assured the outward harmony of a society that courted distinction of every kind, were quite foreign to the iconoclasts who were bent upon leveling all distinctions. The Revolution which attacked the whole superstructure of society, was antagonistic to its minor forms as well, and it was the revolutionary party alone which was represented in the salon of Mme. Roland. Brissot, Vergniaud, Petion, Guadet, and Buzot were leaders there—men sincere and ardent, though misguided, and unable to cope with the storm they had raised, to be themselves swept away by its pitiless rage. Robespierre, scheming and ambitious, came there, listened, said little, appropriated for his own ends, and bided his time. Mme. Roland had small taste for the light play of intellect and wit that has no outcome beyond the meteoric display of the moment, and she was impatient with the talk in which an evening was often passed among these men without any definite results. As she measured their strength, she became more outspoken. She communicated to them a spark of her own energy. The most daring moves were made at her bidding. She urged on her timid and conservative husband, she drew up his memorials, she wrote his letters, she was at once his stimulus, and his helper. Weak and vacillating men yielded to her rapid insight, her vigor, her earnestness, and her persuasive eloquence. This was probably the period of her greatest influence. Many of the swift changes of those first months may be traced to her salon. The moves which were made in the Assembly were concocted there, the orators who triumphed found their inspiration there. Still, in spite of her energy, her strength, and her courage, she prides herself upon maintaining always the reserve and decorum of her sex.

If she assumed the favorite role of the French woman for a short time while her husband was in the ministry, it was in a sternly republican fashion. She gave dinners twice a week to her husband's political friends. The fifteen or twenty men who met around her table at five o'clock were linked by political interests only. The service was simple, with no other luxury than a few flowers. There were no women to temper the discussions or to lighten their seriousness. After dinner the guests lingered for an hour or so in the drawing room, but by nine o'clock it was deserted. She received on Friday, but what a contrast to the Fridays of Mme. Necker in those same apartments! It was no longer a brilliant company of wits, savants, and men of letters, enlivened by women of beauty, esprit, rank, and fashion. There was none of the diversity of taste and thought which lends such a charm to social life. Mme. Roland tells us that she never had an extended circle at any time, and that, while her husband was in power, she made and received no visits, and invited no women to her house. She saw only her husband's colleagues, or those who were interested in his tastes and pursuits, which were also her own. The world of society wearied her. She was absorbed in a single purpose. If she needed recreation, she sought it in serious studies.

It is always difficult to judge what a man or a woman might have been under slightly altered conditions. But for some single circumstance that converged and focused their talent, many a hero would have died unknown and unsuspected. The key that unlocks the treasure house of the soul is not always found, and its wealth is often scattered on unseen shores. But it is clear that the part of Mme. Roland could never have been a distinctively social one. She lived at a time when great events brought out great qualities. Her clear intellect, her positive convictions, her boundless energy, and her ardent enthusiasm, gave her a powerful influence in those early days of the Revolution, that looked towards a world reconstructed but not plunged into the dark depths of chaos, and it is through this that she has left a name among the noted women of France. In more peaceful times her peculiar talent would doubtless have led her towards literature. In her best style she has rare vigor and simplicity. She has moments of eloquent thought. There are flashes of it in her early letters to Sophie, which she begs her friend not to burn, though she does not hope to rival Mme. de Sevigne, whom she takes for her model. She lacked the grace, the lightness, the wit, the humor of this model, but she had an earnestness, a serious depth of thought, that one does not find in Mme. de Sevigne. She had also a vein of sentiment that was an underlying force in her character, though it was always subject to her masculine intellect. She confesses that she should like to be the annalist of her country, and longs for the pen of Tacitus, for whom she has a veritable passion. When one reads her sharp, incisive pen-portraits, drawn with such profound insight and masterly skill, one feels that her true vocation was in the world of letters. At the close she verges a little upon the theatrical, as sometimes in her young days. But when she wrote her final records she felt her last hours slipping away. Life, with its large possibilities undeveloped and its promises unfulfilled, was behind her. Darkness was all around her, eternal silence before her. And she had lived but thirty-nine years.

Mme. Roland does not really belong to the world of the salons, though she has been included among them by some of her own cotemporaries. She was of quite another genre. She represents a social reaction in which old forms are adapted to new ideas and lose their essential quality by the change. But she foreshadows a type of woman that has had great influence since the salons have lost their prestige. She relied neither upon the reflected light of a coterie, the arts of the courtier, nor the subtle power of personal attraction; but, firm in her convictions, clear in her purpose, and unselfish in her aims, she laid down her interests, and, in the end, her life, upon the altar of liberty and humanity. She could hardly be regarded, however, as herself a type. She was cast in a rare mold and lived under rare conditions. She was individual, as were Hypatia, Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday—a woman fitted for a special mission which brought her little but a martyr's crown and a permanent fame.



CHAPTER XVIII. MADAME DE STAEL

Supremacy of Her Genius—Her Early Training—Her Sensibility—a Mariage de Convenance—Her Salon—Anecdote of Benjamin Constant—Her Exile—Life at Coppet—Secret Marriage—Close of a Stormy Life.

The fame of all other French women is more or less overshadowed by that of one who was not only supreme in her own world, but who stands on a pinnacle so high that time and distance only serve to throw into stronger relief the grand outlines of her many-sided genius. Without the simplicity and naturalness of Mme. de Sevigne, the poise and judgment of Mme. de Lafayette, or the calm foresight and diplomacy of Mme. de Maintenon, Mme. de Stael had a brilliancy of imagination, a force of passion, a grasp of intellect, and a diversity of gifts that belonged to none of these women. It is not possible within the limits of a brief chapter to touch even lightly upon the various phases of a character so complex and talents so versatile. One can only gather a few scattered traits and indicate a few salient points in a life of which the details are already familiar. As woman, novelist, philosopher, litterateur, and conversationist, she has marked, if not equal, claims upon our attention. To speak of her as simply the leader of a salon is to merge the greater talent into the less, but her brilliant social qualities in a measure brought out and illuminated all the others. It was not the gift of reconciling diverse elements, and of calling out the best thoughts of those who came within her radius, that distinguished her. Her personality was too dominant not to disturb sometimes the measure and harmony which fashion had established. She did not listen well, but her gift was that of the orator, and, taking whatever subject was uppermost into her own hands, she talked with an irresistible eloquence that held her auditors silent and enchained. Living as she did in the world of wit and talent which had so fascinated her mother, she ruled it as an autocrat.

The mental coloring of Mme. de Stael was not taken in the shade, as that of Mme. Roland had been. She was reared in the atmosphere of the great world. That which her eager mind gathered in solitude was subject always to the modification which contact with vigorous living minds is sure to give. The little Germaine Necker who sat on a low stool at her mother's side, charming the cleverest men of her time by her precocious wit; who wrote extracts from the dramas she heard, and opinions upon the authors she read; who made pen-portraits of her friends, and cut out paper kings and queens to play in the tragedies she composed; whose heart was always overflowing with love for those around her, and who had supreme need for an outlet to her sensibilities, was a fresh type in that age of keen analysis, cold skepticism, and rigid forms. The serious utterances of her childhood were always suffused with feeling. She loved that which made her weep. Her sympathies were full and overflowing, and when her vigorous and masculine intellect took the ascendency it directed them, but only partly held them in check. It never dulled nor subdued them. The source of her power, as also of her weakness, lay perhaps in her vast capacity for love. It gave color and force to her rich and versatile character. It animated all she did and gave point to all she wrote. It found expression in the eloquence of her conversation, in the exaltation and passionate intensity of her affections, in the fervor of her patriotism, in the self-forgetful generosity that brought her very near the verge of the scaffold. Here was the source of that indefinable quality we call genius—not genius of the sort which Buffon has defined as patience, but the divine flame that crowns with life the dead materials which patience has gathered.

It was impossible that a child so eager, so sympathetic, so full of intellect and esprit, should not have developed rapidly in the atmosphere of her mother's salon. Whether it was the best school for a young girl may be a question, but a character like that of Mme. de Stael is apt to go its own way in whatever circumstances it finds itself. She was the despair of Mme. Necker, whose educational theories were altogether upset by this precocious daughter who refused to be cast in a mold. But she was habituated to a high altitude of thought. Men like Marmontel, La Harpe, Grimm, Thomas, and the Abbe Raynal delighted in calling out her ready wit, her brilliant repartee, and her precocious ideas. Surrounded thus from childhood with all the appointments as well as the talent and esprit that made the life of the salons so fascinating; inheriting the philosophic insight of her father, the literary gifts of her mother, to which she added a genius all her own; heir also to the spirit of conversation, the facility, the enthusiasm, the love of pleasing which are the Gallic birthright, she took her place in the social world as a queen by virtue of her position, her gifts, and her heritage. Already, before her marriage, she had changed the tone of her mother's salon. She brought into it an element of freshness and originality which the dignified and rather precise character of Mme. Necker had failed to impart. She gave it also a strong political coloring. This influence was more marked after she became the wife of the Swedish ambassador, as she continued for some time to pass her evenings in her mother's drawing room, where she became more and more a central figure. Her temperament and her tastes were of the world in which she lived, but her reason and her expansive sympathies led her to ally herself with the popular cause; hence she was, to some extent, a link between two conflicting interests.

It was in 1786 that Mme. de Stael entered the world as a married woman. This marriage was arranged for her after the fashion of the time, and she accepted it as she would have accepted anything tolerable that pleased her idolized father and revered mother. When only ten years of age, she observed that they took great pleasure in the society of Gibbon, and she gravely proposed to marry him, that they might always have this happiness. The full significance of this singular proposition is not apparent until one remembers that the learned historian was not only rather old, but so short and fat as to call out from one of his friends the remark that when he needed a little exercise he had only to take a turn of three times around M. Gibbon. The Baron de Stael had an exalted position, fine manners, a good figure, and a handsome face, but he lacked the one thing that Mme. de Stael most considered, a commanding talent. She did not see him through the prism of a strong affection which transfigures all things, even the most commonplace. What this must have meant to a woman of her genius and temperament whose ideal of happiness was a sympathetic marriage, it is not difficult to divine. It may account, in some degree, for her restlessness, her perpetual need of movement, of excitement, of society. But, whatever her domestic troubles may have been, they were of limited duration. She was quietly separated from her husband in 1798. Four years later she decided to return to Coppet with him, as he was unhappy and longed to see his children. He died en route.

The period of this marriage was one of the most memorable of France, the period when noble and generous spirits rallied in a spontaneous movement for national regeneration. Mme. De Stael was in the flush of hope and enthusiasm, fresh from the study of Rousseau and her own dreams of human perfectibility; radiant, too, with the reflection of her youthful fame. Among those who surrounded her were the Montmorencys, Lafayette, and Count Louis de Narbonne, whose brilliant intellect and charming manners touched her perhaps too deeply for her peace of mind. There were also Barnave, Chenier, Talleyrand, Mirabeau, Vergniaud, and many others of the active leaders of the Revolution. A few woman mingled in her more intimate circle, which was still of the old society. Of these were the ill-fated Duchesse de Gramont, Mme. de Lauzun, the Princesse de Poix, and the witty, lovable Marechale de Beauvau. As a rule, though devoted to her friends and kind to those who sought her aid, Mme. de Stael did not like the society of women. Perhaps they did not always respond to her elevated and swiftly flowing thoughts; or it may be that she wounded the vanity of those who were cast into the shade by talents so conspicuous and conversation so eloquent, and who felt the lack of sympathetic rapport. Society is au fond republican, and is apt to resent autocracy, even the autocracy of genius, when it takes the form of monologue. It is contrary to the social spirit. The salon of Mme. de Stael not only took its tone from herself, but it was a reflection of herself. She was not beautiful, and she dressed badly; indeed, she seems to have been singularly free from that personal consciousness which leads people to give themselves the advantages of an artistic setting, even if the taste is not inborn. She was too intent upon what she thought and felt, to give heed to minor details. But in her conversation, which was a sort of improvisation, her eloquent face was aglow, her dark eyes flashed with inspiration, her superb form and finely poised head seemed to respond to the rhythmic flow of thoughts that were emphasized by the graceful gestures of an exquisitely molded hand, in which she usually held a sprig of laurel. "If I were queen," said Mme. de Tesse, "I would order Mme. de Stael to talk to me always."

But this center in which the more thoughtful spirits of the old regime met the brilliant and active leaders of the new was broken up by the storm which swept away so many of its leaders, and Mme. de Stael, after lingering in the face of dangers to save her friends, barely escaped with her life on the eve of the September massacres of 1792. "She is an excellent woman," said one of her contemporaries, "who drowns all her friends in order to have the pleasure of angling for them."

Mme. de Stael resumed her place and organized her salon anew in 1795. But it was her fate to live always in an atmosphere surcharged with storms. She was too republican for the aristocrats, and too aristocratic for the republicans. Distrusted by both parties and feared by the Directoire, she found it advisable after a few months to retire to Coppet. Less than two years later she was again in Paris. Her friends were then in power, notably Talleyrand. "If I remain here another year I shall die," he had written her from America, and she had generously secured the repeal of the decree that exiled him, a kindness which he promptly forgot. Though her enthusiasm for the republic was much moderated, and though she had been so far dazzled by the genius of Napoleon as to hail him as a restorer of order, her illusions regarding him were very short-lived. She had no sympathy with his aims at personal power. Her drawing room soon became the rallying point for his enemies and the center of a powerful opposition. But she had a natural love for all forms of intellectual distinction, and her genius and fame still attracted a circle more or less cosmopolitan. Ministers of state and editors of leading journals were among her guests. Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte were her devoted friends. The small remnant of the noblesse that had any inclination to return to a world which had lost its charm for them found there a trace of the old politeness. Mathieu de Montmorency, devout and charitable; his brother Adrien, delicate in spirit and gentle in manners; Narbonne, still devoted and diplomatic, and the Chevalier de Boufflers, gay, witty, and brilliant, were of those who brought into it something of the tone of the past regime. There were also the men of the new generation, men who were saturated with the principles of the Revolution though regretting its methods. Among these were Chebnier, Regnault, and Benjamin Constant.

The influence of Mme. de Stael was at its height during this period. Her talent, her liberal opinions, and her persuasive eloquence gave her great power over the constitutional leaders. The measures of the Government were freely discussed and criticized in her salon, and men went out with positions well defined and speeches well considered. The Duchesse d'Abrantes relates an incident which aptly illustrates this power and its reaction upon herself. Benjamin Constant had prepared a brilliant address. The evening before it was to be delivered, Mme. de Stael was surrounded by a large and distinguished company. After tea was served he said to her:

"Your salon is filled with people who please you; if I speak tomorrow, it will be deserted. Think of it."

"One must follow one's convictions," she replied, after a moment's hesitation.

She admitted afterward that she would never have refused his offer not to compromise her, if she could have foreseen all that would follow.

The next day she invited her friends to celebrate his triumph. At four o'clock a note of excuse; in an hour, ten. From this time her fortunes waned. Many ceased to visit her salon. Even Talleyrand, who owed her so much, came there no more.

In later years she confessed that the three men she had most loved were Narbonne, Talleyrand, and Mathieu de Montmorency. Her friendship for the first of these reached a passionate exaltation, which had a profound and not altogether wholesome influence upon her life. How completely she was disenchanted is shown in a remark she made long afterward of a loyal and distinguished man: "He has the manners of Narbonne and a heart." It is a character in a sentence. Mathieu de Montmorency was a man of pure motives, who proved a refuge of consolation in many storms, but her regard for him was evidently a gentler flame that never burned to extinction. Whatever illusions she may have had as to Talleyrand—and they seem to have been little more than an enthusiastic appreciation of his talent—were certainly broken by his treacherous desertion in her hour of need. Not the least among her many sorrows was the bitter taste of ingratitude.

But Napoleon, who, like Louis XIV, sought to draw all influences and merge all power in himself, could not tolerate a woman whom he felt to be in some sense a rival. He thought he detected her hand in the address of Benjamin Constant which lost her so many friends. He feared the wit that flashed in her salon, the satire that wounded the criticism that measured his motives and his actions. He recognized the power of a coterie of brilliant intellects led by a genius so inspiring. His brothers, knowing her vulnerable point and the will with which she had to deal, gave her a word of caution. But the advice and intercession of her friends were alike without avail. The blow which she so much feared fell at last, and she found herself an exile and a wanderer from the scenes she most loved.

We have many pleasant glimpses of her life at Coppet, but a shadow always rests upon it. A few friends still cling to her through the bitter and relentless persecutions that form one of the most singular chapters in history, and offer the most remarkable tribute to her genius and her power. We find here Schlegel, Sismondi, Mathieu de Montmorency, Prince Augustus, Monti, Mme. Recamier, and many other distinguished visitors of various nationalities. The most prominent figure perhaps was Benjamin Constant, brilliant, gifted, eloquent, passionate, vain, and capricious, the torturing consolation and the stormy problem of her saddest years. She revived the old literary diversions. At eleven o'clock, we are told, the guests assembled at breakfast, and the conversations took a high literary tone. They were resumed at dinner, and continued often until midnight. Here, as elsewhere, Mme. de Stael was queen, holding her guests entranced by the magic of her words. "Life is for me like a ball after the music has ceased," said Sismondi when her voice was silent. She was a veritable Corinne in her esprit, her sentiment, her gift of improvisation, and her underlying melancholy. But in this choice company hers was not the only voice, though it was heard above all the others. Thought and wit flashed and sparkled. Dramas were played—the "Zaire" and "Tancred" of Voltaire, and tragedies written by herself. Mme. Recamier acted the Aricie to Mme. de Stael's Phedre. This life that seems to us so fascinating, has been described too often to need repetition. It had its tumultuous elements, its passionate undercurrents, its romantic episodes. But in spite of its attractions Mme. de Stael fretted under the peaceful shades of Coppet. Its limited horizon pressed upon her. The silence of the snowcapped mountains chilled her. She looked upon their solitary grandeur with "magnificent horror." The repose of nature was an "infernal peace" which plunged her into gloomier depths of ennui and despair. To some one who was admiring the beauties of Lake Leman she replied; "I should like better the gutters of the Rue du Bac." It was people, always people, who interested her. "French conversation exists only in Paris," she said, "and conversation has been from infancy my greatest pleasure." Restlessly she sought distraction in travel, but wherever she went the iron hand pressed upon her still. Italy fostered her melancholy. She loved its ruins, which her imagination draped with the fading colors of the past and associated with the desolation of a living soul. But its exquisite variety of landscape and color does not seem to have touched her. "If it were not for the world's opinion," she said, "I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, but I would travel five hundred leagues to talk with a clever man whom I have not met." Germany gave her infinite food for thought, but her "astonishing volubility," her "incessant movement," her constant desire to know, to discuss, to penetrate all things wearied the moderate Germans, as it had already wearied the serious English. "Tell me, Monsieur Fichte," she said one day, "could you in a short time, a quarter of an hour for example, give me a glimpse of your system and explain what you understand by your ME; I find it very obscure." The philosopher was amazed at what he thought her impertinence, but made the attempt through an interpreter. At the end of ten minutes she exclaimed, "That is sufficient, Monsieur Fichte. That is quite sufficient. I comprehend you perfectly. I have seen your system in illustration. It is one of the adventures of Baron Munchhausen." "We are in perpetual mental tension," said the wife of Schiller. Even Schiller himself grew tired. "It seems as if I were relieved of a malady," he said, when she left.

It was this excess of vivacity and her abounding sensibility that constituted at once her fascination and her misfortune. Her beliefs were enthusiasms. Her friendships were passions. "No one has carried the religion of friendship so far as myself," she said. To love, to be loved was the supreme need of her soul; but her love was a flame that irradiated her intellect and added brilliancy to the life it consumed. She paints in "Corinne" the passions, the struggles, the penalties, and the sorrows of a woman of genius. It is a life she had known, a life of which she had tasted the sweetest delights and experienced the most cruel disenchantments. "Corinne" at the Capitol, "Corinne" thinking, analyzing, loving, suffering, triumphing, wearing a crown of laurel upon her head and an invisible crown of thorns upon her heart—it is Mme. de Stael self-revealed by the light of her own imagination.

It was in a moment of weakness and weariness, when her idols had one after another been shattered, and all the pleasant vistas of her youth seemed shut out forever, that she met M. de Rocca, a wounded officer of good family, but of little more than half her years, whose gentle, chivalric character commanded her admiration, whose suffering touched her pity, and whose devotion won her affection. "I will love her so much that she will end by marrying me," he said, and the result proved his penetration. This marriage, which was a secret one, has shadowed a little the brilliancy of her fame, but if it was a weakness to bend from her high altitude, it was not a sin, though more creditable to her heart than to her worldly wisdom. At all events it brought into her life a new element of repose, and gave her a tender consolation in her closing years.

When at last the relentless autocrat of France found his rock-bound limits, and she was free to return to the spot which had been the goal of all her dreams, it was too late. Her health was broken. It is true her friends rallied around her, and her salon, opened once more, retook a little of its ancient glory. Few celebrities who came to Paris failed to seek the drawing room of Mme. de Stael, which was still illuminated with the brilliancy of her genius and the splendor of her fame. But her triumphs were past, and life was receding. Her few remaining days of weakness and suffering, darkened by vain regrets, were passed more and more in the warmth and tenderness of her devoted family, in the noble and elevated thought that rose above the strife of politics into the serene atmosphere of a Christian faith. At her death bed Chateaubriand did her tardy justice. "Bon jour, my dear Francis; I suffer, but that does not prevent me from loving you," she said to one who had been her critic, but never her friend. Her magnanimity was as unfailing as her generosity, and it may be truly said that she never cherished a hatred.

The life of Mme. de Stael was in the world. She embodied the French spirit; she could not conceive of happiness in a secluded existence; a theater and an audience were needed to call out her best talents. She could not even bear her griefs alone. The world was taken into her confidence. She demanded its sympathy. She chanted exquisite requiems over her dead hopes and her lost illusions, but she chanted them in costume, never quite forgetting that her role was a heroic one. She added, however, to the gifts of an improvisatrice something infinitely higher and deeper. There was no problem with which she was not ready to deal. She felt the pulse beats in the great heart of humanity, and her tongue, her pen, her purse, and her influence were ever at the bidding of the unfortunate. She traversed all fields of thought, from the pleasant regions of poetry and romance to the highest altitudes of philosophy. We may note the drift of her ardent and imaginative nature in the youthful tales into which she wove her romantic dreams, her fancied griefs, her inward struggles, and her tears. In the pages of "Corinne" we read the poetry, the sensibility, the passion, the melancholy, the thought of a matured woman whose youth of the soul neither sorrow nor experience could destroy. We may divine the direction of her sympathies, and the fountain of her inspiration, in her letters on Rousseau, written at twenty, and foreshadowing her own attitude towards the theories which appealed so powerfully to the generous spirits of the century. We may follow the active and scholarly workings of her versatile intellect in her pregnant thoughts on literature, on the passions, on the Revolution; or measure the clearness of her insight, the depth of her penetration, the catholicity of her sympathies, and the breadth of her intelligence in her profound and masterly, if not always accurate, studies of Germany. The consideration of all this pertains to a critical estimate of her character and genius which cannot be attempted here.

It has grown to be somewhat the fashion to depreciate the literary work of Mme. de Stael. Measured by present standards she leaves something to be desired in logical precision; she had not the exactness of the critical scholar, nor the simplicity of the careful artist; the luxuriance of her language often obscures her thought. She is talking still, and her written words have the rapid, tumultuous flow of conversation, together with its occasional negligences, its careless periods, its sudden turns, its encumbered phrases. Misguided she sometimes was, and carried away by the resistless rush of ideas that, like the mountain torrent, gathered much debris along their course. But her rapid judgments, which have the force of inspiration, are in advance of her time, though in the main correct from her own point of view, while her flaws in workmanship are more than counterbalanced by that inward illumination which is Heaven's richest and rarest gift. But who cares to dwell upon the shadows that scarcely dim the brilliancy of a genius so rare and so commanding? They are but spots on the sun that are only discovered by looking through a glass that veils its radiance. It is just to weigh her by the standards of her own age. Born at its highest level, she soared far above her generation. She carried within herself the vision of a statesman, the penetration of a critic, the insight of a philosopher, the soul of a poet, and the heart of a woman. If she was not without faults, she had rare virtues. No woman has ever exercised a wider or more varied influence. With one or two exceptions, none stands on so high a pinnacle. George Sand was a more finished artist; George Eliot was a greater novelist, a more accurate scholar, and a more logical thinker; but in versatility, in intellectual spontaneity, in brilliancy of conversation and natural eloquence of thought she is without a rival. Her moral standards, too, were above the average of her time. Her ideals were high and pure. The wealth of her emotions and the rich coloring of sentiment in which her thoughts and feelings were often clothed left her open to possible misconceptions. It was her fate to be grossly misunderstood, to miss the domestic happiness she craved, to be the victim of a sleepless persecution, to pass her best years in a dreary exile from the life she most loved, to be maligned by her enemies and betrayed by her friends. Her very virtues were construed into faults and turned against her. Though we may not lift the veil from her intimate life, we may fairly judge her by her own ideals and her dominant traits. The world, which is rarely indulgent, has been in the main just to her motives and her character. "I have been ever the same, intense and sad," were among her last words. "I have loved God, my father, and liberty." But she was a victim to the contradictory elements in her own nature, and walked always among storms. This nature, so complex, so rich, so ardent, so passionate, could it ever have found permanent repose?



CHAPTER XIX. THE SALONS OF THE EMPIRE AND RESTORATION—MADAME RECAMIER

A Transition Period—Mme. de Montesson—Mme. de Genlis—Revival of the Literary Spirit—Mme. de Beaumont—Mme. de Remusat—Mme. de Souza—Mme. de Duras—Mme. de Krudener—Fascination of Mme. Recamier—Her Friends—Her Convent Salon— Chateaubriand—Decline of the Salon

In the best sense, society is born, not made. A crowd of well-dressed people is not necessarily a society. They may meet and disperse with no other bond of union than a fine house and lavish hospitality can give. It may be an assembly without unity, flavor, or influence. In the social chaos that followed the Revolution, this truth found a practical illustration. The old circles were scattered. The old distinctions were virtually destroyed, so far as edicts can destroy that which lies in the essence of things. A few who held honored names were left, or had returned from a long exile, to find themselves bereft of rank, fortune, and friends; but these had small disposition to form new associations, and few points of contact with the parvenus who had mounted upon the ruins of their order. The new society was composed largely of these parvenus, who were ambitious for a position and a life of which they had neither the spirit, the taste, the habits, nor the mellowing traditions. Naturally they mistook the gilded frame for the picture. Unfamiliar with the gentle manners, the delicate sense of honor, and the chivalrous instincts which underlie the best social life, though not always illustrated by its individual members, they were absorbed in matters of etiquette of which they were uncertain, and exacting of non-essentials. They regarded society upon its commercial side, contended over questions of precedence, and, as one of the most observing of their contemporaries has expressed it, "bargained for a courtesy and counted visits." "I have seen quarrels in the imperial court," she adds, "over a visit more or less long, more or less deferred." Perhaps it is to be considered that in a new order which has many aggressive elements, this balancing of courtesies is not without a certain raison d'etre as a protection against serious inroads upon time and hospitality; but the fault lies behind all this, in the lack of that subtle social sense which makes the discussion of these things superfluous, not to say impossible.

It was the wish of Napoleon to reconstruct a society that should rival in brilliancy the old courts. With this view he called to his aid a few women whose names, position, education, and reputation for esprit and fine manners he thought a sufficient guarantee of success. But he soon learned that it could not be commanded at will. The reply of the Duchesse d'Brantes, who has left us so many pleasant reminiscences of this period, in which she was an actor as well as an observer, was very apt.

"You can do all that I wish," he said to her; "you are all young, and almost all pretty; ah, well! A young and pretty woman can do anything she likes."

"Sire, what your Majesty says may be true," she replied, "but only to a certain point. If the Emperor, instead of his guard and his good soldiers, had only conscripts who would recoil under fire, he could not win great battles like that of Austerlitz. Nevertheless, he is the first general in the world."

But this social life was to serve a personal end. It was to furnish an added instrument of power to the autocrat who ruled, to reflect always and everywhere the glory of Napoleon. The period which saw its cleverest woman in hopeless exile, and its most beautiful one under a similar ban for the crime of being her friend, was not one which favored intellectual supremacy. The empire did not encourage literature, it silenced philosophy, and oppressed the talent that did not glorify itself. Its blighting touch rested upon the whole social fabric. The finer elements which, to some extent, entered into it were lost in the glitter of display and pretension. The true spirit of conversation was limited to private coteries that kept themselves in the shade, and were too small to be noted.

The salon which represented the best side of the new regime was that of Mme. de Montesson, wife of the Duc d'Orleans, a woman of brilliant talents, finished manners, great knowledge of the world, fine gifts of conversation, and, what was equally essential, great discrimination and perfect tact. If her niece, Mme. de Genlis, is to be trusted, she had more ambition that originality, her reputation was superior to her abilities, and her beauty covered many imperfections. But she had experience, finesse, and prestige. Napoleon was quick to see the value of such a woman in reorganizing a court, and treated her with the greatest consideration, even asking her to instruct Josephine in the old customs and usages. Her salon, however, united many elements which it was impossible to fuse. There were people of all parties and all conditions, a few of the nobles and returned emigres, the numerous members of the Bonaparte family, the new military circle, together with many people of influence "not to the manner born." Mme. de Montesson revived the old amusements, wrote plays for the entertainment of her guests gave grand dinners and brilliant fetes. But the accustomed links were wanting. Her salon simply illustrates a social life in a state of transition.

Mme. de Genlis had lived much in the world before the Revolution, and her position in the family of the Duc d'Orleans, together with her great versatility of talent, had given her a certain vogue. Author, musician, teacher, moralist, critic, poser, egotist, femme d'esprit, and friend of princes, her romantic life would fill a volume and cannot be even touched upon in a few lines. After ten years of exile she returned to Paris, and her salon at the Arsenal was a center for a few celebrities. Many of these names have small significance today. A few men like Talleyrand, LaHarpe, Fontanes, and Cardinal Maury were among her friends, and she was neutral enough, or diplomatic enough, not to give offense to the new government. But she was a woman of many affectations, and in spite of her numerous accomplishments, her cleverness, and her literary fame, the circle she gathered about her was never noted for its brilliancy or its influence. As a historic figure, she is more remarkable for the variety of her voluminous work, her educational theories, and her observations upon the world in which she lived, than for talents of a purely social order.

One is little inclined to dwell upon the ruling society of this period. It had neither the dignity of past traditions nor freedom of intellectual expression. Its finer shades were drowned in loud and glaring colors. The luxury that could be commanded counted for more than the wit and intelligence that could not.

As the social elements readjusted themselves on a more natural basis, there were a few salons out of the main drift of the time in which the literary spirit flourished once more, blended with the refined tastes, the elegant manners, and the amiable courtesy that had distinguished the old regime. But the interval in which history was made so rapidly, and the startling events of a century were condensed into a decade, had wrought many vital changes. It was no longer the spirit of the eighteenth century that reappeared under its revived and attractive forms. We note a tone of seriousness that had no permanent place in that world of esprit and skepticism, of fine manners and lax morals, which divided its allegiance between fashion and philosophy. The survivors of so many heart-breaking tragedies, with their weary weight of dead hopes and sad memories, found no healing balm in the cold speculation and scathing wit of Diderot or Voltaire. Even the devotees of philosophy gave it but a half-hearted reverence. It was at this moment that Chateaubriand, saturated with the sorrows of his age, and penetrated with the hopelessness of its philosophy, offered anew the truths that had sustained the suffering and broken-hearted for eighteen centuries, in a form so sympathetic, so fascinating, that it thrilled the sensitive spirits of his time, and passed like an inspiration into the literature of the next fifty years. The melancholy of "Rene" found its divine consolation in the "Genius of Christianity." It was this spirit that lent a new and softer coloring to the intimate social life that blended in some degree the tastes and manners of the old noblesse with a refined and tempered form of modern thought. It recalls, in many points, the best spirit of the seventeenth century. There is a flavor of the same seriousness, the same sentiment. It is the sentiment that sent so many beautiful women to the solitude of the cloister, when youth had faded and the air of approaching age began to grow chilly. But it is not to the cloister that these women turn. They weave romantic tales out of the texture of their own lives, they repeat their experiences, their illusions, their triumphs, and their disenchantments. As the day grows more somber and the evening shadows begin to fall, they meditate, they moralize, they substitute prayers for dreams. But they think also. The drama of the late years had left no thoughtful soul without earnest convictions. There were numerous shades of opinion, many finely drawn issues. In a few salons these elements were delicately blended, and if they did not repeat the brilliant triumphs of the past, if they focused with less power the intellectual light which was dispersed in many new channels, they have left behind them many fragrant memories. One is tempted to linger in these temples of a goddess half-dethroned. One would like to study these women who added to the social gifts of their race a character that had risen superior to many storms, hearts that were mellowed and purified by premature sorrow, and intellects that had taken a deeper and more serious tone from long brooding over the great problems of their time. But only a glance is permitted us here. Most of them have been drawn in living colors by Saint-Beuve, from whom I gather here and there a salient trait.

Who that is familiar with the fine and exquisite thought of Joubert can fail to be interested in the delicate and fragile woman whom he met in her supreme hour of suffering, to find in her a rare and permanent friend, a literary confidante, and an inspiration? Mme. de Beaumont—the daughter of Montmorin, who had been a colleague of Necker in the ministry—had been forsaken by a worthless husband, had seen father, mother, brother, perish by the guillotine, and her sister escape it only by losing her reason, and then her life, before the fatal day. She, too, had been arrested with the others, but was so ill and weak that she was left to die by the roadside en route to Paris—a fate from which she was saved by the kindness of a peasant. It was at this moment that Joubert befriended her. These numerous and crushing sorrows had shattered her health, which was never strong, but during the few brief years that remained to her she was the center of a coterie more distinguished for quality than numbers. Joubert and Chateaubriand were its leading spirits, but it included also Fontanes, Pasquier, Mme. de Vintimille, Mme. de Pastoret, and other friends who had survived the days in which she presided with such youthful dignity over her father's salon. The fascination of her fine and elevated intellect, her gentle sympathy, her keen appreciation of talent, and her graces of manner lent a singular charm to her presence. Her character was aptly expressed by this device which Rulhiere had suggested for her seal: "Un souffle m'agite et rien ne m'ebrante." Chateaubriand was enchanted with a nature so pure, so poetic, and so ardent. He visited her daily, read to her "Atala" and "Rene," and finished the "Genius of Christianity" under her influence. He was young then, and that she loved him is hardly doubtful, though the friendship of Joubert was far truer and more loyal than the passing devotion of this capricious man of genius, who seems to have cared only for his own reflection in another soul. But this sheltered nook of thoughtful repose, this conversational oasis in a chaotic period had a short duration. Mme. de Beaumont died at Rome, where she had gone in the faint hope of reviving her drooping health, in 1803. Chateaubriand was there, watched over her last hours with Bertin, and wrote eloquently of her death. Joubert mourned deeply and silently over the light that had gone out of his life.

We have pleasant reminiscences of the amiable, thoughtful, and spirituelle Mme. de Remusat, who has left us such vivid records of the social and intimate life of the imperial court. A studious and secluded childhood, prematurely saddened by the untimely fate of her father in the terrible days of 1794, an early and congenial marriage, together with her own wise penetration and clear intellect, enabled her to traverse this period without losing her delicate tone or serious tastes. She had her quiet retreat into which the noise and glare did not intrude, where a few men of letters and thoughtful men of the world revived the old conversational spirit. She amused her idle hours by writing graceful tales, and, after the close of her court life and the weakening of her health, she turned her thoughts towards the education and improvement of her sex. Blended with her wide knowledge of the world, there is always a note of earnestness, a tender coloring of sentiment, which culminates towards the end in a lofty Christian resignation.

We meet again at this time a woman known to an earlier generation as Mme. de Flahaut, and made familiar to us through the pens of Talleyrand and Gouverneur Morris. She saw her husband fall by the guillotine, and, after wandering over Europe for years as an exile, became the wife of M. de Souza, and, returning to Paris, took her place in a quiet corner of the unaccustomed world, writing softly colored romances after the manner of Mme. de La Fayette, wearing with grace the honors her literary fame brought her, and preserving the tastes, the fine courtesies, the gentle manners, the social charms, and the delicate vivacity of the old regime.

One recalls, too, Mme. de Duras, whose father, the noble and fearless Kersaint, was the companion of Mme. Roland at the scaffold; who drifted to our own shores until the storms had passed, and, after saving her large fortune in Martinique, returned matured and saddened to France. As the wife of the Duc de Duras, she gathered around her a circle of rank, talent, and distinction. Chateaubriand, Humboldt, Curier, de Montmorency were among her friends. What treasures of thought and conversation do these names suggest! What memories of the past, what prophecies for the future! Mme. de Duras, too, wore gracefully the mantle of authorship with which she united pleasant household cares. She, too, put something of the sad experiences of her own life into romances which reflect the melancholy of this age of restlessness and lost illusions. She, too, like many of the women of her time whose youth had been blighted by suffering, passed into an exalted Christian strain. The friend of Mme. de Stael, the literary CONFIDANTE of Chateaubriand, the woman of many talents, many virtues, and many sorrows, died with words of faith and hope and divine consolation on her lips.

The devotion of Mme. de Cantal, the mysticism of Mme. Guyon, find a nineteenth-century counterpart in the spiritual illumination of Mme. de Krudener. Passing from a life of luxury and pleasure to a life of penitence and asceticism, singularly blending worldliness and piety, opening her salon with prayer, and adding a new sensation to the gay life of Paris, this adviser of Alexander I, and friend of Benjamin Constant, who put her best life into the charming romances which ranked next to "Corinne" and "Delphine" in their time; this beautiful woman, novelist, prophetess, mystic, illuminee, fanatic, with the passion of the South and the superstitious vein of the far North, disappeared from the world she had graced, and gave up her life in an ecstasy of sacrifice in the wilderness of the Crimea.

It is only to indicate the altered drift of the social life that flowed in quiet undercurrents during the Empire and came to the surface again after the Restoration; to trace lightly the slow reaction towards the finer shades of modern thought and modern morality, that I touch—so briefly and so inadequately—upon these women who represent the best side of their age, leaving altogether untouched many of equal gifts and equal note.

There is one, however, whose salon gathered into itself the last rays of the old glory, and whose fame as a social leader has eclipsed that of all her contemporaries. Mme. Recamier, "the last flower of the salons," is the woman of the century who has been, perhaps, most admired, most loved, and most written about. It has been so much the fashion to dwell upon her marvelous beauty, her kindness, and her irresistible fascination, that she has become, to some extent, an ideal figure invested with a subtle and poetic grace that folds itself about her like the invisible mantle of an enchantress. Her actual relations to the world in which she lived extended over a long period, terminating only on the threshold of our own generation. Without strong opinions or pronounced color, loyal to her friends rather than to her convictions, of a calm and happy temperament, gentle in character, keenly appreciative of all that was intellectually fine and rare, but without exceptional gifts herself, fascinating in manner, perfect in tact, with the beauty of an angel and the heart of a woman—she presents a fitting close to the long reign of the salons.

We hear of her first in the bizarre circles of the Consulate, as the wife of a man who was rather father than husband, young, fresh, lovely, accomplished, surrounded by the luxuries of wealth, and captivating all hearts by that indefinable charm of manner which she carried with her to the end of her life. Both at Paris and at her country house at Clichy she was the center of a company in which the old was discreetly mingled with the new, in which enmities were tempered, antagonisms softened, and the most discordant elements brought into harmonious rapport, for the moment, at least, by her gracious word or her winning smile. Here we find Adrien and Mathieu de Montmorency, who already testified the rare friendship that was to outlive years and misfortunes; Mme. de Stael before her exile; Narbonne, Barrere, Bernadotte, Moreau, and many distinguished foreigners. Lucien Bonaparte was at her feet; LaHarpe was devoted to her interests; Napoleon was trying in vain to draw her into his court, and treasuring up his failure to another. The salon of Mme. Recamie was not in any sense philosophical or political, but after the cruel persecution of LaHarpe, the banishment or Mme. de Stael, and the similar misfortunes of other friends, her sympathies were too strong for her diplomacy, and it gradually fell into the ranks of the opposition. It was well known that the emperor regarded all who went there as his enemies, and this young and innocent woman was destined to feel the full bitterness of his petty displeasure. We cannot trace here the incidents of her varied career, the misfortunes of the father to whom she was a ministering angel, the loss of her husband's fortune and her own, the years of wandering and exile, the second period of brief and illusive prosperity, and the swift reverses which led to her final retreat. She was at the height of her beauty and her fame in the early days of the Restoration, when her salon revived its old brilliancy, and was a center in which all parties met on neutral ground. Her intimate relations with those in power gave it a strong political influence, but this was never a marked feature, as it was mainly personal.

But the position in which one is most inclined to recall Mme. Recamier is in the convent of Abbaye-aux-Bois, where, divested of fortune and living in the simplest manner, she preserved for nearly thirty years the fading traditions of the old salons. Through all the changes which tried her fortitude and revealed the latent heroism of her character, she seems to have kept her sweet serenity unbroken, bending to the passing storms with the grace of a facile nature, but never murmuring at the inevitable. One may find in this inflexible strength and gentleness of temper a clue to the subtle fascination which held the devoted friendship of so many gifted men and women, long after the fresh charm of youth was gone.

The intellectual gifts of Mme. Recamier, as has been said before, were not of a high or brilliant order. She was neither profound nor original, nor given to definite thought. Her letters were few, and she has left no written records by which she can be measured. She read much, was familiar with current literature, also with religious works. But the world is slow to accord a twofold superiority, and it is quite possible that the fame of her beauty has prevented full justice to her mental abilities. Mme. de Genlis tells us that she has a great deal of esprit. It is certain that no woman could have held her place as the center of a distinguished literary circle and the confidante and adviser of the first literary men of her time, without a fine intellectual appreciation. "To love what is great," said Mme. Necker "is almost to be great one's self." Ballanche advised her to translate Petrarch, and she even began the work, but it was never finished. "Believe me," he writes, "you have at your command the genius of music, flowers, imagination, and elegance. ... Do not fear to try your hand on the golden lyre of the poets." He may have been too much blinded by a friendship that verged closely upon a more passionate sentiment to be an altogether impartial critic, but it was a high tribute to her gifts that a man of such conspicuous talents thought her capable of work so exacting. Her qualities were those of taste and a delicate imagination rather than of reason. Her musical accomplishments were always a resource. She sang, played the harp and piano, and we hear of her during a summer at Albano playing the organ at vespers and high mass. She danced exquisitely, and it was her ravishing grace that suggested the shawl dance of "Corinne" to Mme. de Stael and of "Valerie" to Mme. de Krudener. One can fancy her, too, at Coppet, playing the role of the angel to Mme. de Stael's Hagar—a spirit of love and consolation to the stormy and despairing soul of her friend.

But her real power lay in the wonderful harmony of her nature, in the subtle penetration that divined the chagrins and weaknesses of others, only to administer a healing balm; in the delicate tact that put people always on the best terms with themselves, and gave the finest play to whatever talents they possessed. Add to this a quality of beauty which cannot be caught by pen or pencil, and one can understand the singular sway she held over men and women alike. Mme. de Krudener, whose salon so curiously united fashion and piety, worldliness and mysticism, was troubled by the distraction which the entrance of Mme. Recamier was sure to cause, and begged Benjamin Constant to write and entreat her to make herself as little charming as possible. His note is certainly unique, though it loses much of its piquancy in translation:

"I acquit myself with a little embarrassment of a commission which Mme. de Krudener has just given me. She begs you to come as little beautiful as you can. She says that you dazzle all the world, and that consequently every soul is troubled and attention is impossible. You cannot lay aside your charms, but do not add to them."

In her youth she dressed with great simplicity and was fond of wearing white with pearls, which accorded well with the dazzling purity of her complexion.

Mme. Recamier was not without vanity, and this is the reverse side of her peculiar gifts. She would have been more than mortal if she had been quite unconscious of attractions so rare that even the children in the street paid tribute to them. But one finds small trace of the petty jealousies and exactions that are so apt to accompany them. She liked to please, she wished to be loved, and this inevitably implies a shade of coquetry in a young and beautiful woman. There is an element of fascination in this very coquetry, with its delicate subtleties and its shifting tints of sentiment. That she carried it too far is no doubt true; that she did so wittingly is not so certain. Her victims were many, and if they quietly subsided into friends, as they usually did, it was after many struggles and heart burnings. But if she did not exercise her power with invariable discretion, it seems to have been less the result of vanity than a lack of decision and an amiable unwillingness to give immediate pain, or to lose the friend with the lover. With all her fine qualities of heart and soul, she had a temperament that saved her from much of the suffering she thoughtlessly inflicted upon others. The many violent passions she roused do not seem to have disturbed at all her own serenity. The delicate and chivalrous nature of Mathieu de Montmorency, added to his years, gave his relations to her a half-paternal character, but that he loved her always with the profound tenderness of a loyal and steadfast soul is apparent through all the singularly disinterested phases of a friendship that ended only with his life.

Prince Augustus, whom she met at Coppet, called up a passing ripple on the surface of her heart, sufficiently strong to lead her to suggest a divorce to her husband, whose relations to her, though always friendly, were only nominal. But he appealed to her generosity, and she thought of it no more. Why she permitted her princely suitor to cherish so long the illusions that time and distance do not readily destroy is one of the mysteries that are not easy to solve. Perhaps she thought it more kind to let absence wear out a passion than to break it too rudely. At all events, he cherished no permanent bitterness, and never forgot her. At his death, nearly forty years later he ordered her portrait by Gerard to be returned, but her ring was buried with him.

The various phases of the well-known infatuation of Benjamin Constant, which led him to violate his political principles and belie his own words rather than take a course that must result in separation from her, suggest a page of highly colored romance. The letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse scarcely furnish us with a more ardent episode in the literature of hopeless passion. The worshipful devotion of Ampere and Ballanche would form a chapter no less interesting, though less intense and stormy.

But the name most inseparably connected with Mme. Recamier is that of Chateaubriand. The friendship of an unquestioned sort that seems to have gone quite out of the world, had all the phases of a more tender sentiment, and goes far towards disproving the charge of coldness that has often been brought against her. It was begun after she had reached the dreaded forties, by the death bed of Mme. de Stael, and lasted more than thirty years. It seems to have been the single sentiment that mastered her. One may trace in the letters of Chateaubriand the restless undercurrents of this life that was outwardly so serene. He writes to her from Berlin, from England, from Rome. He confides to her his ambitions, tells her his anxieties, asks her counsel as to his plans, chides her little jealousies, and commends his wife to her care and attention. This recalls a remarkable side of her relations with the world. Women are not apt to love formidable rivals, but the wives of her friends apparently shared the admiration with which their husbands regarded her. If they did not love her, they exchanged friendly notes, and courtesies that were often more than cordial. She consoles Mme. de Montmorency in her sorrow, and Mme. de Chateaubriand asks her to cheer her husband's gloomy moods. Indeed, she roused little of that bitter jealousy which is usually the penalty of exceptional beauty or exceptional gifts of any sort. The sharp tongue of Mme. de Genlis lost its sting in writing of her. She idealized her as Athenais, in the novel of that name, which has for its background the beauties of Coppet, and vaguely reproduces much of its life. The pious and austere Mme. Swetchine, whose prejudices against her were so strong that for a long time she did not wish to meet her, confessed herself at once a captive to her "penetrating and indefinable charm." Though she did not always escape the shafts of malice, no better tribute could be offered to the graces of her character than the indulgence with which she was regarded by the most severely judging of her own sex.

But she has her days of depression. Chateaubriand is absorbed in his ambitions and sometimes indifferent; his antagonistic attitude towards Montmorency, who is far the nobler character of the two, is a source of grief to her. She tries in vain to reconcile her rival friends. Once she feels compelled to tear herself from an influence which is destroying her happiness, and goes to Italy. But she carries within her own heart the seeds of unrest. She still follows the movements of the man who occupies so large a space in her horizon, sympathizes from afar with his disappointments, and cares for his literary interest, ordering from Tenerani, a bas-relief of a scene from "The Martyrs."

After her return her life settles into more quiet channels. Chateaubriand, embittered by the chagrins of political life, welcomed her with the old enthusiasm. From this time he devoted himself exclusively to letters, and sought his diversion in the convent-salon which has left so wide a fame, and of which he was always the central figure. The petted man of genius was moody and capricious. His colossal egotism found its best solace in the gentle presence of the woman who flattered his restless vanity, anticipated his wishes, studied his tastes, and watched every shadow that flitted across his face. He was in the habit of writing her a few lines in the morning; at three o'clock he visited her, and they chatted over their tea until four, when favored visitors began to arrive. In the evening it was a little world that met there. The names of Ampere, Tocqueville, Montalembert, Merimee, Thierry, and Sainte-Beuve suggest the literary quality of this circle, in which were seen from time to time such foreign celebrities as Sir Humphry and Lady Darcy, Maria Edgeworth, Humboldt, the Duke of Hamilton, the gifted Duchess of Devonshire, and Miss Berry. Lamartine read his "Meditations" and Delphine Gay her first poems. Rachel recited, and Pauline Viardot, Garcia, Rubini, and Lablache sang. Delacroix, David, and Gerard represented the world of art, and the visitors from the grand monde were too numerous to mention. In this brilliant and cosmopolitan company, what resources of wit and knowledge, what charms of beauty and elegance, what splendors of rank and distinction were laid upon the altar of the lovely and adored woman, who recognized all values, and never forgot the kindly word or the delicate courtesy that put the most modest guests at ease and brought out the best there was in them!

One day in 1847 there was a vacant place, and the faithful Ballanche came no more from his rooms across the street. A year later Chateaubriand died. After the death of his wife he had wished to marry Mme. Recamier, but she thought it best to change nothing, believing that age and blindness had given her the right to devote herself to his last days. To her friends she said that if she married him, he would miss the pleasure and variety of his daily visits.

Old, blind, broken in health and spirit, but retaining always the charm which had given her the empire over so many hearts, she followed him in a few months.

Mme. Recamier represents better than any woman of her time the peculiar talents that distinguished the leaders of some of the most famous salons. She had tact, grace, intelligence, appreciation, and the gift of inspiring others. The cleverest men and women of the age were to be met in her drawing room. One found there genius, beauty, esprit, elegance, courtesy, and the brilliant conversation which is the Gallic heritage. But not even her surpassing fascination added to all these attractions could revive the old power of the salon. Her coterie was charming, as a choice circle gathered about a beautiful, refined, accomplished woman, and illuminated by the wit and intelligence of thoughtful men, will always be; but its influence was limited and largely personal, and it has left no perceptible traces. Nor has it had any noted successor. It is no longer coteries presided over by clever women that guide the age and mold its tastes or its political destinies. The old conditions have ceased to exist, and the prestige of the salon is gone.

The causes that led to its decline have been already more or less indicated. Among them, the decay of aristocratic institutions played only a small part. The salons were au fond democratic in the sense that all forms of distinction were recognized so far as they were amenable to the laws of taste, which form the ultimate tribunal of social fitness in France. But it cannot be denied that the code of etiquette which ruled them had its foundation in the traditions of the noblesse. The genteel manners, the absence of egotism and self-assertion, as of disturbing passions, the fine and uniform courtesy which is the poetry of life, are the product of ease and assured conditions. It is struggle that destroys harmony and repose, whatever stronger qualities it may develop, and the greater mingling of classes which inevitably resulted in this took something from the exquisite flavor of the old society. The increase of wealth, too, created new standards that were fatal to a life in which the resources of wit, learning, and education in its highest sense were the chief attractions. The greater perfection of all forms of public amusement was not without its influence. Men drifted, also, more and more into the one-sided life of the club. Considered as a social phase, no single thing has been more disastrous to the unity of modern society than this. But the most formidable enemy of the salon has been the press. Intelligence has become too universal to be focused in a few drawing rooms. Genius and ambition have found a broader arena. When interest no longer led men to seek the stimulus and approval of a powerful coterie, it ceased to be more than an elegant form of recreation, a theater of small talents, the diversion of an idle hour. When the press assumed the sovereignty, the salon was dethroned.

THE END