c 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 Abbe Terray, which half ruined the state creditors, a spectator, too
much crowded in the theater, cried out, "Ah, how unfortunate that our
good Abbe Terray is not here to cut us down one-half!" 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'etat, the entire history of the country, is put
into epigrams and songs. One day,[2208] 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."[2209]--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 to him in credit, favor, and stability than all his financial
schemes put together. . . . His last arrangement concerning the
vingtieme was only talked about for one day, while everybody is
still talking about his fete; at Paris, as well as in Versailles, its
attractions are dwelt on in detail, people emphatically declaring that
Monsieur and Mme. Necker are a grace to society."[2210] Good society
devoted to pleasure imposes on those in office the obligation of
providing pleasures for it. It might also say, in a half-serious,
half-ironical tone, with Voltaire, "that the gods created kings only to
give fetes every day, provided they varied; that life is too short to
make any other us