It

ations with the idea of every day life and common use at all. They have forgotten all about use and reality and have made of mere luxury their raison d'être and supreme justification. The artificial has to them become the real. To this we return as the keynote of these later styles, and it is in this that they portray so effectively the life of the class and period to which they belong. For it is not mere luxury which is found in the French Court of the eighteenth century. Luxury has generally been a habitant of courts. is the fact that luxury has assumed control of life, that it has eaten into society's core, eaten realities and duties quite away, and become itself the only serious preoccupation of life, which stamps it, in the French society of the time, with such peculiar significance. The remarkable thing about this French society is that it is incapable of any useful function whatever. The courtiers and nobles of Louis XV's reign seem to have lost all power of taking an interest in anything save court scandals and intrigues. Those among them whose memory goes back to the manners of an earlier age, an age not destitute of courage, dignity and fortitude, deplore the falling off in virile virtue. They can scarcely credit the change which has taken place under their very eyes. There is no principle, not honor itself even, which has not succumbed to the corroding effects of frivolity. The nation is visibly drifting to destruction, the signs of an approaching catastrophe grow daily more threatening, yet society jests and titters on, incapable of realizing anything save its own dissipa tions and its own elaborate etiquette.

Let us examine this a little more closely. Let us take the formula we applied to the furniture-a decorative rather than a useful purpose-and see how it answers as applied to society. And in applying this formula to society let us note this: that it is not the dissi

pation and luxury themselves which are significant, but the fact that the dissipation and luxury have usurped the place of reality and become the one serious business of life. The significant symptoms, accordingly, will be those which show us this reality passing out of the serious and important things of life. Such facts as that the Prince de Conti used the dust of a crushed diamond to dry the ink of a billet to his mistress, or that the Queen gave the Dauphin a carriage covered with rubies and sapphires, or that Madame de Matignon paid 24,000 livres a year to have her hair brushed, or that the Comte d'Artois pulled down and rebuilt a castle to prepare a fête for the Queen, or that young de Chenonceaux lost seven hundred thousand livres in one night's gambling, or that another courtier kept forty horses for an occasional ride in the Bois de Boulogne, and another bought up and emptied the streets leading to his residence that his amours might be conducted in secret, or that Madame du Barry's bills during the time she was in favor amounted to some four million livres; such facts as these-and they might be multiplied to fill volumes-are not, after all, the kind of facts that best serve to show the character of the luxury of the age. They can be matched, more or less closely, in the histories of most aristocracies in most ages. The facts which are significant are those which testify to the insensibility of this pleasure-loving class to natural instincts and primitive duties and responsibilities; which testify, that is to say, to the ebbing of reality out of the serious things of life. When, for instance, a Comte de Tilly records that he was brought up by valets, or a Duc de Biron, observing that a lackey had the superintendence of his education, remarks, "j'étais d'ailleurs comme tous les enfans de mon âge et de ma sorte, les plus jolis habits pour sortir, nu et mourant de faim à la

maison," then we begin to realize what was being deducted from the serious things of life to pay for the frivolities. It is curious to notice that the value of children in this society was essentially a decorative one. To be trained in the etiquette of their elders, to be dressed in the mode, the little boys in ruffles and swords, the little girls in rouge and patches with false hair piled on their heads, and have their precocious gallantry and savoir-faire paraded to the laughter and applause of society, were the uses they were put to. Their infantine compliments and bons mots are recited with enthusiasm, and they are allowed to constitute a charming addition to the lapdog and negro page of their mother's suite.

In the same way, when, in turning over the memoirs of the day, we find ourselves arrested by phrase after phrase and episode after episode which record how entirely the whole meaning of marriage and married life has been swamped in a sea of intrigues and petty liaisons, the same sense of the sapping of the serious things of life is brought home to us. One almost hesitates to intrude moral considerations into the presence of anything so irresponsibly gay as the society of the French Court, for indeed there is something disarming and next door to innocent in the excesses of people who are quite unaffectedly and honestly blind to the serious side of things. At the same time, nothing can alter the fact that fathers and mothers and children and husbands and wives are among life's chief realities, and, by a normally healthy society, must be SO treated. The truth, of course, is that where great store is set on trifling things and the pursuit of them followed up with intense seriousness, this seriousness has to be paid for in the loss of a corresponding amount of interest in what is real and important. It is this loss of interest in what is real and im

portant which is the really deadly symptom of the French Court life of the period. The supreme importance attached to gaiety and dissipation and show has so sucked the strength out of all real and important functions that at last the sense for reality has become a lost sense. Children are not realities; wives and husbands are not realities; victories and defeats, as we shall see in a minute, and shame and dishonor are not realities. Nothing can exist, nothing can occur, but it is turned immediately into food for jests. The defeat of Hochstadt is deplored because the skit on it lacks humor. Rosbach is approved because its verses are excellent. Necker's attempts as Minister of Finance to stave off national bankruptcy count for nothing. His fitness for his office is proved by a particularly splendid banquet given to the fashionable world of Paris. Every event, however tragic, every crisis, however grave, is dealt with as comedy. In proportion as the unreal has become real, the real has become unreal.

But this instinct for unreality, which we come to recognize in the court party as quite unfailing, reveals itself in much more important than merely social matters. It reveals itself with just as much infallibility in matters of state policy and national government. It is important to remember in this connection that French society and the French government were, in spirit, one. Richelieu's policy, bequeathed by him to Louis Quatorze, of wrecking feudalism once and for all by depriving the great territorial nobles of their civil duties and responsibilities, was fated to have as grave an effect on the King's authority as on that of the nobles themselves. Shorn of all useful purpose, their authority and functions in their own departments usurped by crown officials, the aristocrats left their huge châteaux and estates and gravitated to Versailles. If they could not be useful

let them be ornamental. It had been decreed that the State should be nothing to them, they proceeded to make society everything. Hence was developed that purely decorative purpose which became the distinguishing note of this French society. But that purpose did not stop at society. It proceeded to corrupt the governing principle itself. Imbedded, so to speak, in the heart of this society, breathing its air, living its life, receiving its influence, cut off by it from the outer world, the monarchy became rapidly infected with its spirit. It had created a frivolous class and itself caught the disease. The government which ensued, a government of mistresses and the favorites of mistresses, was animated purely by the prevailing social frivolity. Henceforth monarchy and aristocracy advance to their doom hand in hand.

We shall not be wandering from our subject if without plunging too deeply into history we dwell just enough on one or two stages of this progress to bring out the special characteristic we have in view. Several of the chief factors which were leading up to the Revolution had their origin in the middle years of the eighteenth century, and of these the two chief, perhaps, were the war of the Austrian Alliance and the philosophic movement in literature. It is interesting to observe how thoroughly in their own manner was the handling by the Court party of these significant events.

During these middle years of the eighteenth century two distinct and opposed lines of policy were offered to France to choose between. One was a policy of concentration; an internal, exclusively European policy, leading to no national development and addressing itself merely to the adjustment of European rivalries. The other was a policy of expansion, consisting in the recognition of the larger opportunities which the newly realized East and West were

beginning to unfold to human enterprise. In this latter policy lay, of course, France's true line of progress. Her position, both in India and America, was strong. In America she laid claim to the whole basin of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and was prepared to back her claims. In 1754 Washington's expedition was forced to capitulate, and in the following year Braddock's much more important force was practically annihilated. The English Company of the Ohio was quashed, and English attempts at expansion everywhere checked and foiled. French forts and blockhouses rose on every eminence and commanded every valley. It was France's avowed object to drive the English east of the Alleghany Mountains, and she was in a fair way by 1755 to accomplish it. Similarly in India the boldness of Dupleix's schemes of French conquest and dominion seemed justified by circumstances. In the rivalry between French Pondichery and British Madras the French settlement had the best of it. Madras fell in 1746. In 1748 the combined land and sea expeditions under Major Lawrence and Admiral Boscawen against Pondichery were repulsed. It is noticeable that in these colonial wars the French leaders were usually men of remarkable energy and dash, prompt to act and ready to accept full responsibility for their actions. Such were La Gâllisonière, Du Quesne and La Corne in America, and Dupleix, La Bourdonnais, and Lally in India. They were well supported, and the vigor with which France's interests were served in these enterprises is in strong contrast to the nerveless and feeble character of her operations in Europe. The truth is that it was in the opportunities for national expansion promised by India that the hopes of French development lay, and so long as she showed a disposition to avail herself of these opportunities France drew to her service all the keen

Their designs, however, as we know, came to nothing. In a few years' time French hopes of expansion both in America and India were blighted. Not for a century was France to resume, under healthier auspices, the scheme of national development which Du Quesne and Dupleix had foreshadowed. What flung her back was the Austrian Alliance. Of the two policies she chose the retrograde one. In bucklering the cause of Austria against the progressive races of the North, France associated herself with a set of worn-out, aristocratic, and feudal traditions which were sinking into decreptitude. She championed the ideas that were going out against the ideas that were coming in. The circumstances attending the treaty and the conduct of the war that followed were all of a piece. La Pompadour, as the reader knows, was the guiding spirit throughout. It is not every day that an angry woman can make the armed strength of a nation the instrument of her jealousies and caprices; but La Pompadour enjoyed that luxury. Frederick never troubled to conceal his opinion of her, and his contemptuous "Je ne la connais pas," when Voltaire presented him her compliments, was in stinging contrast to Maria Theresa's adroit flattery. Old Kaunitz, past master in the diplomacy of courts, easily perceived the possibilities of the situation, and, while the Empress plied the mistress with compliments, made it the object of his manœuvres to secure the latter's good offices on behalf of Austria. That done, all was done. Pompadour was France's mistress as much as Louis's. Louis reigned and

La

The crisis, though the fate of nations hung on it, is purely farcical in motive and idea. La Pompadour, snubbed or noticed by the legitimate Sovereigns of Europe, suggests to our fancy a Becky Sharp, railing at the Countess of Bareacres, or fawning on the Marquis of Steyne. It was for causes such as these that the greatest colonizing chances ever laid before a nation were neglected and thrown away.

Needless to say, the whole Court party threw itself into the Pompadour quarrel with immense enthusiasm. If there was a nation, or society rather, which the French nobility could sympathize with, it was to be found in Vienna. If there was a nation repellant to them above all others, it was practical-minded, unpolished Prussia. Frederick himself might stand for all they most despised and least understood in human nature. They armed for the campaign with delight and an inconceivable frivolity. It was a new distraction. With the fatuity which attended them whenever they came in contact with realities, they conceived that their march through Germany would be a species of grand boar hunt. Encumbered with baggage trains of fine clothes, perfumes and rare wines, they advanced as far as Rosbach, where Frederick's rough troopers, in the space of a single hour, scattered them to the four winds. Between Bernis, La Pompadour's minister in Paris, and the generals in the field there ensues a correspondence which curiously brings out for us the spirit in which France was conducting this enterprise. Soubise, chosen to command, as we are carefully told, for no military qualifications, but for his ingratiating manners and popularity at court, veils the disgrace of a rout he seems scarcely to comprehend under a tissue of euphuisms, excuses and compliments. The more experienced Saint-Germain writes

The country was runaway men for He adds savagely,

bluntly that he had under him a band of thieves and assassins who were as ready to mutiny in camp as they were to run away in the field. "Never was anything like it; never was there such a rotten army. The king has about the worst infantry under the sun and the most undisciplined. How can we fight with such troops? covered with our forty miles round." what was indeed the thought of many, "Our nation has no longer any military spirit, and the sentiment of honor is dead in us." The veteran Belleisle writes in similar terms. Never would he have believed that those imperial troops, whose traditions and actions had been so splendid, could lose thus suddenly their glorious reputation and become the scorn of Europe. "We were not ready," wails poor Bernis in reply; "we had to begin without proper preparations; on s'est embarqué témérairement." The army has no food, and no shoes, half of it is without clothes and the cavalry lack boots. Saint-Germain cuts in with a few trenchant home truths about the men and officers. The army indeed appears to be a very faithful image of the nation at large. "The misery of the soldiers would make your heart bleed. They live abject and despised, like chained dogs kept for fighting." The officers meanwhile entirely neglect their military duties and devote all their energies to plundering the country through which they pass.

As the campaign progresses the rage and wonder of those conducting or watching it increases. "Mon Dieu, que notre nation est aplatie! et qu'on fait peu d'attention à la décadence du courage et de l'honneur en France!" "Dans cent régiments on ne trouverait pas six bons lieutenants-colonels. Nous ne savons plus faire la guerre. Nulle nation n'est moins militaire que la nôtre... Nous officiers ne valent rien,

ils sont indignes de servir. Tous soupirent après le repos, l'oisiveté et l'argent." The Versailles system of promotion is naturally the subject of some criticism. "Our best officers, recognizing that there is no chance of promotion for them since they are not under Court protection, can ill endure to be commanded by a lot of boobies. How should young colonels, la plupart avec des mœurs de grisette, re-inspire the army with the ideas of honor and constancy?" And for the hundredth time the lament is heard that “ignorance, frivolity, negligence, cowardice have replaced the old virile and heroic virtues."

To the actors in these scenes the general incapacity and decadence were inexplicable; and to the few who remembered earlier and better traditions the present seemed, as Bernis calls it, a horrible nightmare. To us, looking back, the obvious suggestion offers itself that the strength of France was not put forth in this war because it was not really a French war at all. Engaged in a quarrel of the king's mistress, and led by the favorites and flunkeys of Versailles, the rout of the French army at Rosbach and the disgraces of the campaigns that followed reveal to us, not the degeneration of French character and courage, but rather the total separation and divorce of the governing body from the realities of French national life. It is curious to observe how, while the pride of Choiseul and the soldierly instinct of Saint-Germain and old Belleisle prompt them to a reconstruction of the army and the continuance of the war, Bernis, weaker but much more clear-sighted, foretells the failure of such a policy and lays a finger on the real cause of mischief. "I am floored, not by our misfortunes, but by the certainty that the true remedy will never be applied. There is but one cure a better government. Give me a good government and I will go on with the war, but there is no chance of our