puffed up by his situation, obliged to maintain a dignified and
important air, constrained under that assumed gravity which democratic
envy imposes on us as if a ransom. In 1753,[2259] the parliamentarians,
just exiled to Bourges, get up three companies of private theatricals
and perform comedies, while one of them, M. Dupre de Saint-Maur, fights
a rival with the sword. In 1787,[2260] when the entire parliament is
banished to Troyes the bishop, M. de Barral, returns from his chateau de
Saint-Lye expressly to receive it, presiding every evening at a dinner
of forty persons. "There was no end to the fetes and dinners in the
town; the president kept open house," a triple quantity of food being
consumed in the eating-houses and so much wood burned in the kitchens,
that the town came near being put on short allowance. Feasting and
jollity is but little less in ordinary times. A parliamentarian, like
a seignior, must do credit to his fortune. See the letters of the
President des Brosses concerning society in Dijon; it reminds us of the
abbey of Theleme; then contrast this with the same town today.[2261] In
1744, Monseigneur de Montigny, brother of the President de Bourbonne,
apropos of the king's recovery, entertains the workmen, tradesmen and
artisans in his employ to the number of eighty, another table being for
his musicians and comedians, and a third for his clerks, secretaries,
physicians, surgeons, attorneys and notaries; the crowd collects
around a triumphal car covered with shepherdesses, shepherds and rustic
divinities in theatrical costume; fountains flow with wine "as if it
were water," and after supper the confectionery is thrown out of the
windows. Each parliamentarian around him has his "little Versailles, a
grand hotel between court and garden," This town, now so silent, then
rang with the clatter of fine equipages. The profusion of the table is
astonishing, "not only on gala days, but at the suppers of each week,
and I could almost say, of each day."--Amidst all these fete-givers,
the most illustrious of all, the President des Brosses, so grave on the
magisterial bench, so intrepid in his remonstrances, so laborious,[2262]
so learned, is an extraordinary stimulator of fun (boute-entrain), a
genuine Gaul, with a sparkling, inexhaustible fund of salacious
humor: with his friends he throws off his perruque, his gown, and even
something more. Nobody dreams of being offended by it; nobody conceives
that dress is an e