lties find nourishment; and this quality of happiness is provided
for him only in society and in conversation. Sensitive as he is,
personal attention, consideration, cordiality, delicate flattery,
constitute his natal atmosphere, outside which he breathes with
difficulty. He would suffer almost as much in being impolite as in
encountering impoliteness in others. For his instincts of kindliness and
vanity there is an exquisite charm in the habit of being amiable, and
this is all the greater because it proves contagious. When we afford
pleasure to others there is a desire to please us, and what we bestow
in deference is returned in attentions. In company of this kind one
can talk, for to talk is to amuse another in being oneself amused, a
Frenchman finding no pleasure equal to it.[2203] Lively and sinuous,
conversation to him is like the flying of a bird; he wings his way
from idea to idea, alert, excited by the inspiration of others, darting
forward, wheeling round and unexpectedly returning, now up, now down,
now skimming the ground, now aloft on the peaks, without sinking into
quagmires, or getting entangled in the briers, and claiming nothing of
the thousands of objects he slightly grazes but the diversity and the
gaiety of their aspects.

Thus endowed, and thus disposed, he is made for a regime which, for ten
hours a day, brings men together; natural feeling in accord with the
social order of things renders the drawing room perfect. The king, at
the head of all, sets the example. Louis XIV had every qualification
for the master of a household: a taste for pomp and hospitality,
condescension accompanied with dignity, the art of playing on the
self-esteem of others and of maintaining his own position, chivalrous
gallantry, tact, and even charms of intellectual expression. "His
address was perfect;[2204] whether it was necessary to jest, or he
was in a playful humor, or deigned to tell a story, it was ever with
infinite grace, and a noble refined air which I have found only in
him." "Never was man so naturally polite,[2205] nor of such circumspect
politeness, so powerful by degrees, nor who better discriminated age,
worth, and rank, both in his replies and in his deportment. . . .
His salutations, more or less marked, but always slight, were of
incomparable grace and majesty. . . . He was admirable in the different
acknowledgments of salutes at the head of the army and at reviews. . . .
But especially toward women, ther