of leaden gloom.  There was no laborious, forced work in those days, no furious competition, no uncertain careers, no infinite perspectives.  Ranks were clearly defined, ambitions limited, there was less envy.  Man was not habitually dissatisfied, soured and preoccupied as he is nowadays.  Few free passes were allowed where there was no right to pass; we think of nothing but advancement; they thought only of amusing themselves.  An officer, instead of raging and storming over the army lists, busies himself in inventing some new disguise for a masked ball; a magistrate, instead of counting the convictions he has secured, provides a magnificent supper.  At Paris, every afternoon in the left avenue of the Palais-Royal, “fine company, very richly dressed, gather under the large trees;” and in the evening “on leaving the opera at half-past eight, they go back there and remain until two o’clock in the morning.”  They have music in the open air by moonlight, Gavat singing, and the chevalier de Saint-George playing on the violin.[57] At Moffontaine, “the Comte de Vaudreuil, Lebrun the poet, the chevalier de Coigny, so amiable and so gay, Brongniart, Robert, compose charades every night and wake each other up to repeat them.”  At Maupertuis in M. de Montesquiou’s house, at Saint-Ouen with the Marshal de Noailles, at Genevilliers with the Comte de Vandreuil, at Rainay with the Duc d’Orléans, at Chantilly with the Prince de Condé, there is nothing but festivity.  We read no biography of the day, no provincial document, no inventory, without hearing the tinkling of the universal carnival.  At Monchoix,[58] the residence of the Comte de Bédé, Châteaubriand’s uncle, “they had music, dancing and hunting, rollicking from morning to night, eating up both capital and income.”  At Aix and Marseilles, throughout the fashionable world, with the Comte de Valbelle, I find nothing but concerts, entertainment, balls, gallantries, and private theatricals with the Comtesse de Mirabeau for the leading performer.  At Chateauroux, M. Dupin de Francueil entertains “a troop of musicians, lackeys, cooks, parasites, horses and dogs, bestowing everything lavishly, in amusements and in charity, wishing to be happy himself and everybody else around him,” never casting up accounts, and going to ruin in the most delightful manner possible.  Nothing arrests this gaiety, neither old age, exile, nor misfortune ; in 1793 it still subsists in the prisons of the Republic.  A man in place is not then made uncomfortable by his official coat, puffed up by his situation, obliged to maintain a dignified and important air, constrained under that assumed gravity which democratic envy imposes on us as if a ransom.  In 1753,[59] the parliamentarians, just exiled to Bourges, get up three companies of private theatricals and perform comedies, while one of them, M. Dupré de Saint-Maur, fights a rival with the sword.  In 1787,[60] when the entire parliament is banished to Troyes the bishop, M. de Barral, returns from his