Helvetius, Friday with Mme. Necker, Sunday and Thursday with Mme. d'Holbach, and have ample time to drop into other salons afterward, passing an hour or so, perhaps, before going to the theater, in the brilliant company that surrounded Mlle. de Lespinasse, and, very likely, supping elsewhere later. At many of these gatherings he would be certain to find readings, recitations, comedies, music, games, or some other form of extemporized amusement. The popular mania for esprit, for literary lions, for intellectual diversions ran through the social world, as the craze for clubs and culture, poets and parlor readings, musicales and amateur theatricals, runs through the society of today. It had numberless shades and gradations, with the usual train of pretentious follies which in every age furnish ample material for the pen of the satirist, but it was a spontaneous expression of the marvelously quickened taste for things of the intellect. The woman who improvised a witty verse, invented a proverb, narrated a story, sang a popular air, or acted a part in a comedy entered with the same easy grace into the discussion of the last political problem, or listened with the subtlest flattery to the new poem, essay, or tale of the aspiring young author, whose fame and fortune perhaps hung upon her smile. In the musical and artistic salon of Mme. de la Popeliniere the succession of fetes, concerts, and receptions seems to have been continuous. On Sunday there was a mass in the morning, afterward a grand dinner, at five o'clock a light repast, at nine a supper, and later a musicale. One is inclined to wonder if there was ever any retirement, any domesticity in this life so full of movement and variety.
But it was really the freedom, wit, and brilliancy of the conversation that constituted the chief attraction of the salons.
Men were in the habit of making the daily round of certain drawing rooms, just as they drop into clubs in our time, sure of more or less pleasant discussion on whatever subject was uppermost at the moment, whether it was literature, philosophy, art, politics, music, the last play, or the latest word of their friends. The talk was simple, natural, without heat, without aggressive egotism, animated with wit and repartee, glancing upon the surface of many things, and treating all topics, grave or gay, with the lightness of touch, the quick responsiveness that make the charm of social intercourse.
The unwritten laws that governed this brilliant world were drawn from the old ideas of chivalry, upon which the etiquette of the early salons was founded. The fine morality and gentle virtues which were the bases of these laws had lost their force in the eighteenth century, but the manners which grew out of them had passed into a tradition. If morals were in reality not pure, nor principles severe, there was at least the vanity of posing as models of good breeding. Honor was a religion; politeness and courtesy were the current, though by no means always genuine, coin of unselfishness and amiability; the amenities stood in the place of an ethical code. Egotism, ill temper, disloyalty, ingratitude, and scandal were sins against taste, and spoiled the general harmony. Evil passions might exist, but it was agreeable to hide them, and enmities slept under a gracious smile. noblesse OBLIGE was the motto of these censors of manners; and as it is perhaps a Gallic trait to attach greater importance to reputation than to character, this sentiment was far more potent than conscience. Vice in many veiled forms might be tolerated, but that which called itself good society barred its doors against those who violated the canons of good taste, which recognize at least the outward semblance of many amiable virtues.
