on, and no new drawing rooms exactly replaced the old ones. Mme.
Necker still received the world that was wont to assemble in the great
salons, Mme. de Condorcet presided over a rival coterie, and there were
numerous small and intimate circles; but the element of politics was
beginning to intrude, and with it a degree of heat which disturbed the
usual harmony. The reign of esprit, the perpetual play of wit had begun
to pall upon the tastes of people who found themselves face to face
with problems so grave and issues so vital. There was a slight reaction
towards nature and simplicity. "They may be growing wiser," said
Walpole, "but the intermediate change is dullness." For nearly half a
century learned men and clever women had been amusing themselves
with utopian theories, a few through conviction, the majority through
fashion, or egotism, or the vanity of saying new things, just as the
world is doing today. The doctrines put forth by Montesquieu, vivified
by Voltaire, and carried to the popular heart by Rousseau had been
freely discussed in the salons, not only by philosophers and statesmen,
but by men of the world, poets, artists, and pretty women. The sparks
of thought with which they played so lightly filtered slowly through the
social strata. The talk of the drawing room at last reached the street.
But the torch of truth which, held aloft, serves as a beacon star to
guide the world towards some longed for ideal becomes often a deadly
explosive when it falls among the poisonous vapors of inflammable
human passions. Liberty, equality, fraternity assumed a new and fatal
significance in the minds of the hungry and restless masses who,
embittered by centuries of wrong, were ready to carry these phrases to
their immediate and living conclusions. They had found their watchwords
and their hour. The train was already laid beneath this complex social
structure, and the tragedy that followed carried to a common ruin court
and salon, philosophers and beaux esprits, innocent women and dreaming
men.

That the salons were unconscious instruments in hastening the
catastrophe, which was sooner or later inevitable, is undoubtedly true.
Their influence in the dissemination of thought was immense. The part
they played was, to a limited extent, precisely that of the modern
press, with an added personal element. They moved in the drift of their
time, directed its intelligence, and reflected its average morality. As
centers of serious con