“seeking respect less than applause.  It no longer suffices to be affable; one has to appear amiable at any cost with one’s inferiors as with one’s equals."[6] The French princes, says again a contemporary lady, “are dying with fear of being deficient in favors."[7] Even around the throne “the style is free and playful.”  The grave and disciplined court of Louis XIV became at the end of the century, under the smiles of the youthful queen, the most seductive and gayest of drawing-rooms.  Through this universal relaxation, a worldly existence gets to be perfect.  “He who has not lived before 1789,” says Talleyrand at a later period, “knows nothing of the charm of living.”  It was too great; no other way of living was appreciated; it engrossed man wholly.  When society becomes so attractive, people live for it alone.

II.  Social life has priority.

Subordination of it to other interests and duties. — Indifference to public affairs. — They are merely a subject of jest. — Neglect of private affairs. — Disorder in the household and abuse of money.

There is neither leisure nor taste for other matters, even for things which are of most concern to man, such as public affairs, the household, and the family. — With respect to the first, I have already stated that people abstain from them, and are indifferent; the administration of things, whether local or general, is out of their hands and no longer interests them.  They only allude to it in jest; events of the most serious consequence form the subject of witticisms.  After the edict of the Abbé Terray, which half ruined the state creditors, a spectator, too much crowded in the theater, cried out, “Ah, how unfortunate that our good Abbé Terray is not here to cut us down one-half I” Everybody laughs and applauds.  All Paris the following day, is consoled for public ruin by repeating the phrase. — Alliances, battles, taxation, treaties, ministries, coups d’état, the entire history of the country, is put into epigrams and songs.  One day,[8] in an assembly of young people belonging to the court, one of them, as the current witticism was passing around, raised his hands in delight and exclaimed, “How can one help being pleased with great events, even with disturbances, when they provide us with such amusing witticisms!” Thereupon the sarcasms circulate, and every disaster in France is turned into nonsense.  A song on the battle of Hochstaedt was pronounced poor, and some one in this connection said “I am sorry that battle was lost — the song is so worthless."[9] — Even when eliminating from this trait all that belongs to the sway of impulse and the license of paradox, there remains the stamp of an age in which the State is almost nothing and society almost everything.  We may on this principle divine what order of talent was required in the ministers.  M. Necker, having given a magnificent supper with serious and comic opera, “finds that this festivity is worth more