General. More typical still of this
singular and fortunate generation was Fontenelle, who, one morning in
his hundredth year, quietly observed that he felt a difficulty in
existing, and forthwith, even more quietly, ceased to do so.

Yet, though the wheels of life rolled round with such an alluring
smoothness, they did not roll of themselves; the skill and care of
trained mechanicians were needed to keep them going; and the task was no
light one. Even Fontenelle himself, fitted as he was for it by being
blessed (as one of his friends observed) with two brains and no heart,
realised to the full the hard conditions of social happiness. 'Il y a
peu de choses,' he wrote, 'aussi difficiles et aussi dangereuses que le
commerce des hommes.' The sentence, true for all ages, was particularly
true for his own. The graceful, easy motions of that gay company were
those of dancers balanced on skates, gliding, twirling, interlacing,
over the thinnest ice. Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so
charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the
rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion--the kind that
lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. They required in
their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious
orders--the willing sacrifice of the entire life. The intimacy of
personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour--these things must be
left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow
sanctuary. Friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised
as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself
should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and
absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. Politics were to be
tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew serious
and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. As for
literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for
recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat
such trifles as if they had a value of their own? Only one thing; and
that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the
inward ardours of the soul. Indeed, the scepticism of that generation
was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not
even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. It presented a blank wall of
perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the
soluti