memory, its
quintessence, the _genius loci_ incarnate. There is something frigid and
monumental about these ladies; they know exactly when to laugh and when
to shake their heads, and every now and then give out some utterance
which passes current as a witticism.

A few rich townspeople have crept into the miniature Faubourg
Saint-Germain, thanks to their money or their aristocratic leanings.
But despite their forty years, the circle still say of them, "Young
So-and-so has sound opinions," and of such do they make deputies. As a
rule, the elderly spinsters are their patronesses, not without comment.

Finally, in this exclusive little set include two or three
ecclesiastics, admitted for the sake of their cloth, or for their wit;
for these great nobles find their own society rather dull, and introduce
the bourgeois element into their drawing-rooms, as a baker puts leaven
into his dough.

The sum-total contained by all heads put together consists of a certain
quantity of antiquated notions; a few new inflections brewed in company
of an evening being added from time to time to the common stock. Like
sea-water in a little creek, the phrases which represent these ideas
surge up daily, punctually obeying the tidal laws of conversation in
their flow and ebb; you hear the hollow echo of yesterday, to-day,
to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On all things here below they
pass immutable judgments, which go to make up a body of tradition into
which no power of mortal man can infuse one drop of wit or sense. The
lives of these persons revolve with the regularity of clockwork in an
orbit of use and wont which admits of no more deviation or change than
their opinions on matters religious, political, moral, or literary.

If a stranger is admitted to the _cenacle_, every member of it in
turn will say (not without a trace of irony), "You will not find the
brilliancy of your Parisian society here," and proceed forthwith to
criticise the life led by his neighbors, as if he himself were an
exception who had striven, and vainly striven, to enlighten the rest.
But any stranger so ill advised as to concur in any of their freely
expressed criticism of each other, is pronounced at once to be an
ill-natured person, a heathen, an outlaw, a reprobate Parisian "as
Parisians mostly are."

Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little world of
strictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life is an integrant
part of a wh