to extract his cart from the mud.  People no longer think about self-constraint, and self-adjustment, and of keeping up their dignity under all circumstances, and of subjecting the weaknesses of human nature to the exigencies of rank.  On the death of the first Dauphin,[17] whilst the people in the room place themselves before the king to prevent him from entering it, the queen falls at his knees, and he says to her, weeping, “Ah, my wife, our dear child is dead, since they do not wish me to see him.”  And the narrator adds with admiration; “I always seem to see a good farmer and his excellent wife a prey to the deepest despair at the loss of their beloved child.”  Tears are no longer concealed, as it is a point of honor to be a human being.  One becomes human and familiar with one’s inferiors.  A prince, on a review, says to the soldiers on presenting the princess to them, “My boys, here is my wife.”  There is a disposition to make people happy and to take great delight in their gratitude.  To be kind, to be loved is the object of the head of a government, of a man in place.  This goes so far that God is prefigured according to this model.  The “harmonies of nature” are construed into the delicate attentions of Providence; on instituting filial affection the Creator “deigned to choose for our best virtue our sweetest pleasure."[18] — The idyll which is imagined to take place in heaven corresponds with the idyll practiced on earth.  From the public up to the princes, and from the princes down to the public, in prose, in verse, in compliments at festivities, in official replies, in the style of royal edicts down to the songs of the market-women, there is a constant interchange of graces and of sympathies.  Applause bursts out in the theater at any verse containing an allusion to princes, and, a moment after, at the speech which exalts the merits of the people, the princes return the compliment by applauding in their turn.[19] — On all sides, just as this society is vanishing, a mutual deference, a spirit of kindliness arises, like a soft and balmy autumnal breeze, to dissipate whatever harshness remains of its aridity and to mingle with the radiance of its last hours the perfume of dying roses.  We now encounter acts and words of infinite grace, unique of their kind, like a lovely, exquisite little figure on old Sèvres porcelain.  One day, on the Comtesse Amélie de Boufflers speaking somewhat flippantly of her husband, her mother-in-law interposes, “You forget that you are speaking of my son.” — “True, mamma, I thought I was only speaking of your son-in-law.”  It is she again who, on playing “the boat,” and obliged to decide between this beloved mother-in-law and her own mother, whom she scarcely knew, replies, “I would save my mother and drown with my mother-in-law."[20] The Duchesse de Choiseul, the Duchesse de Lauzun, and others besides, are equally charming miniatures.  When the heart and the mind combine their considerations they produce masterpieces, and these, like the art, the refinements and the society which surrounds them, possess a charm unsurpassed by anything except their own fragility.