est. The lovers in "La Nouvelle Heloise" interchange
passages of fine style through four volumes, whereupon a person "not
merely methodical but prudent," the Comtesse de Blot, exclaims, at a
social gathering at the Duchesse de Chartres', "a woman truly sensitive,
unless of extraordinary virtue, could refuse nothing to the passion
of Rousseau."[2308] People collect in a dense crowd in the Exhibition
around "L'Accordee de Village," "La Cruche Cassee," and the "Retour
de nourrice," with other rural and domestic idylls by Greuze; the
voluptuous element, the tempting undercurrent of sensuality made
perceptible in the fragile simplicity of his artless maidens, is a
dainty bit for the libertine tastes which are kept alive beneath
moral aspirations.[2309] After these, Ducis, Thomas, Parny, Colardeau,
Boucher, Delille, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Marmontel, Florian, the mass
of orators, authors and politicians, the misanthrope Champfort, the
logician La Harpe, the minister Necker, the versifiers and the imitators
of Gessner and Young, the Berquins, the Bitaubes, nicely combed and
bedizened, holding embroidered handkerchiefs to wipe away tears, are to
marshal forth the universal eclogue down to the acme of the Revolution.
Marmontel's "Moral Tales" appear in the columns of the "Mercure"
for 1791 and 1792,[2310] while the number following the massacres of
September opens with verses "to the manes of my canary-bird."

Consequently, in all the details of private life, sensibility displays
its magniloquence. A small temple to Friendship is erected in a park. A
little altar to Benevolence is set up in a private closet. Dresses a
la Jean-Jacques-Rousseau are worn "analogous to the principles of that
author." Head-dresses are selected with "puffs au sentiment" in which
one may place the portrait of one's daughter, mother, canary or dog,
the whole "garnished with the hair of one's father or intimate
friend."[2311] People keep intimate friends for whom "they experience
something so warm and so tender that it nearly amounts to a passion" and
whom they cannot go three hours a day without seeing. "Every time female
companions interchange tender ideas the voice suddenly changes into
a pure and languishing tone, each fondly regarding the other with
approaching heads and frequently embracing," and suppressing a yawn a
quarter of an hour after, with a nap in concert, because they have no
more to say. Enthusiasm becomes an obligation. On the revival o