it may be at the end of a corridor, by the light of three or four candles; but here they circulate jests, compose madrigals, sing songs and pride themselves on being as gallant, as gay and as gracious as ever:  need people be morose and ill-behaved because accident has consigned them to a poor inn?  They preserve their dignity and their smile before their judges and on the cart; the women, especially, mount the scaffold with the ease and serenity characteristic of an evening entertainment.  It is the supreme characteristic of good-breeding, erected into an unique duty, and become to this aristocracy a second nature, which is found in its virtues as well as in its vices, in its faculties as well as in its impotencies, in its prosperity as at its fall, and which adorns it even in the death to which it conducts.

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Notes: 

[1].  Champfort, 110.

[2].  George Sand, V. 59.  “I was rebuked for everything; I never made a movement which was not criticized.”

[3].  “Paris, Versailles, et les provinces,” I. 162. — “The king of Sweden is here; be wears rosettes on his breeches; all is over; he is ridiculous, and a provincial king.” ("Le Gouvernement de Normandie,” by Hippeau, IV. 237, July 4, 1784.

[4].  Stendhal, “Rome, Naples and Florence,” 379.  Stated by an English lord.

[5] Marivaux, “La Petit-Maître corrigé. — Gresset, “Le Méchant.”  Crébillon fils, “La Nuit et le Moment,” (especially the scene between the scene between Citandre and Lucinde). — Collé, “La Verité dans le Vin,” (the part of the abbé with the with the présidente). — De Bezenval, 79. (The comte de Frise and Mme. de Blot).  “Vie privée du Maréchal de Richelieu,” (scenes with Mme. Michelin). — De Goncourt, 167 to 174.

[6].  Laclos, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”  Mme. de Merteuil was copied after a Marquise de Grenoble. — Remark the difference between Lovelace and Valmont, one being stimulated by pride and the other by vanity.

[7].  The growth of sensibility is indicated by the following dates:  Rousseau, “Sur l’influence des lettres et des arts,” 1749; “Sur l’inégalité,” 1753; “Nouvelle Héloise,” 1759.  Greuze, “Le Pére de Famille lisant la Bible,” 1755; “L’Accordée de Village,” 1761.  Diderot, “Le fils natural,” 1757; “Le Pére de Famille,” 1758.

[8].  Mme. de Genlis, “Mémoires,” chap.  XVII. — George Sand, I. 72.  The young Mme. de Francueil, on seeing Rousseaufor the first time, burst into tears.

[9].  This point has been brought out with as much skill as accuracy by Messieurs de Goncourt in “L’Art au dix-huitième siècle,” I. 433- 438.

[10].  The number for August, 1792, contains “Les Rivaux d’eux-mêmes.” — About the same time other pieces are inserted in the “Mercure,” such as “The federal union of Hymen and Cupid,” “Les Jaloux,” “A Pastoral Romance,” “Ode Anacréontique à Mlle. S. D. . . . " etc.