ere in the bosom of the arts and of a calm and refined
voluptuousness; strangers and monarchs have preferred this repose, so
agreeably occupied in it and so enchanting to their own countries and
thrones. The heart there softens and melts away like aromatics slowly
dissolving in moderate heat, evaporating in delightful perfumes."
Gustavus III, beaten by the Russians, declares that he will pass his
last days in Paris in a house on the boulevards; and this is not merely
complimentary, for he sends for plans and an estimate.[2243] A supper
or an evening entertainment brings people two hundred leagues away. Some
friends of the Prince de Ligne "leave Brussels after breakfast, reach
the opera in Paris just in time to see the curtain rise, and, after
the spectacle is over, return immediately to Brussels, traveling all
night."--Of this delight, so eagerly sought, we have only imperfect
copies, and we are obliged to revive it intellectually. It consists, in
the first place, in the pleasure of living with perfectly polite people;
there is no enjoyment more subtle, more lasting, more inexhaustible.
Man's self-esteem or vanity being infinite, intelligent people are
always able to produce some refinement of attention to gratify it.
Worldly sensibility being infinite there is no imperceptible shade of it
permitting indifference. After all, Man is still the greatest source
of happiness or of misery to Man, and in those days this everflowing
fountain brought to him sweetness instead of bitterness. Not only was
it essential not to offend, but it was essential to please; one was
expected to lose sight of oneself in others, to be always cordial and
good-humored, to keep one's own vexations and grievances in one's
own breast, to spare others melancholy ideas and to supply them with
cheerful ideas.

"Was any one old in those days? It is the Revolution which brought old
age into the world, Your grandfather, my child,[2244] was handsome,
elegant, neat, gracious, perfumed, playful, amiable, affectionate, and
good-tempered to the day of his death. People then knew how to live and
how to die; there was no such thing as troublesome infirmities. If
any one had the gout, 'he walked along all the same and made no faces;
people well brought up concealed their sufferings. There was none of
that absorption in business which spoils a man inwardly and dulls his
brain. People knew how to ruin themselves without letting it appear,
like good gamblers who l