e world while its elements yet
struggle through the chaos!

Go!

CHAPTER 1.VI.

Precepteurs ignorans de ce faible univers.--Voltaire.
(Ignorant teachers of this weak world.)

Nous etions a table chez un de nos confreres a l'Academie,
Grand Seigneur et homme d'esprit.--La Harpe.
(We supped with one of our confreres of the Academy,--a great
nobleman and wit.)

One evening, at Paris, several months after the date of our last
chapter, there was a reunion of some of the most eminent wits of the
time, at the house of a personage distinguished alike by noble birth and
liberal accomplishments. Nearly all present were of the views that
were then the mode. For, as came afterwards a time when nothing was so
unpopular as the people, so that was the time when nothing was so vulgar
as aristocracy. The airiest fine gentleman and the haughtiest noble
prated of equality, and lisped enlightenment.

Among the more remarkable guests were Condorcet, then in the prime of
his reputation, the correspondent of the king of Prussia, the intimate
of Voltaire, the member of half the academies of Europe,--noble by
birth, polished in manners, republican in opinions. There, too, was the
venerable Malesherbes, "l'amour et les delices de la Nation." (The idol
and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard).) There
Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,--the aspiring politician.
It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all social
pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was
literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the
ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse--for the noblesse yet existed,
though its hours were already numbered--added to the charm of the
society; and theirs were the boldest criticisms, and often the most
liberal sentiments.

Vain labour for me--vain labour almost for the grave English
language--to do justice to the sparkling paradoxes that flew from lip
to lip. The favourite theme was the superiority of the moderns to the
ancients. Condorcet on this head was eloquent, and to some, at least, of
his audience, most convincing. That Voltaire was greater than Homer few
there were disposed to deny. Keen was the ridicule lavished on the dull
pedantry which finds everything ancient necessarily sublime.

"Yet," said the graceful Marquis de --, as the champagne danced to his
glass, "more ridiculous still is