[Footnote 2269: "Correspondance," by Métra, XIII. 97 (June 15, 1782), and V. 232 (June 24 and 25, 1777).--Mme. de Genlis "Mémoires," chap. XIV.]
[Footnote 2270: Bachaumont, November 17, 1770.--"Journal de Collé," III. 136 (April 29, 1767).--De Montlosier, "Mémoires," I. 43. "At the residence of the Commandant (at Clermont) they would have been glad to enlist me in private theatricals."]
[Footnote 2271: "Correspondance." by Métra, II. 245 (Nov. 18. 1775).]
[Footnote 2272: Julien. "Histoire du Théâtre de Madame de Pompadour." These representations last seven years and cost during the winter alone of 1749, 300,000 livres.--De Luynes, X. 45.--Mme. de Hausset, 230.]
[Footnote 2273: Mme. Campan, I. 130.--Cf. with caution, the Mémoires, are suspect, as they have been greatly modified and arranged by Fleury.-- De Goncourt, 114.
[Footnote 2274: Jules Cousin, "Le Comte de Clermont," p.21.--Mme. de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap. 3 and 11.--De Goncourt, 114.]
[Footnote 2275: Bachaumont, III. 343 (February 23, 1768) and IV. 174, III. 232.--"Journal d Collé," passim.--Collé, Laujon and Poisinet are the principal purveyors for these displays; the only one of merit is "La Verité dans le Vin." In this piece instead of "Mylord." there was at first the "bishop of Avranches," and the piece was thus performed at Villers-Cotterets in the house of the Duc d'Orléans.]
[Footnote 2276: Mme. d'Oberkirk, II. 82.--On the tone of the best society see "Correspondance" by Métra, I. 50, III. 68, and Bezenval (Ed. Barrière) 387 to 394.]
[Footnote 2277: Mme. de Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore," II. 362.]
[Footnote 2278: George Sand, I. 85. "At my grandmother's I have found boxes full of couplets, madrigals and biting satires.... I burned some of them so obscene that I would not dare read them through, and these written by abbés I had known to my infancy and by a marquis of the best blood." Among other examples, toned down, the songs on the Bird and the Shepherdess, may be read in "Correspondance," by Métra.]
CHAPTER III. DISADVANTAGES OF THIS DRAWING ROOM LIFE.
Its Barrenness and Artificiality.--Return to Nature and sentiment.
Mere pleasure, in the long run, ceases to gratify, and however agreeable this drawing room life may be, it ends in a certain hollowness. Something is lacking without any one being able to say precisely what that something is; the soul becomes restless, and slowly, aided by authors and artists, it sets about investigating the cause of its uneasiness and the object of its secret longings. Barrenness and artificiality are the two traits of this society, the more marked because it is more complete, and, in this one, pushed to extreme, because it has attained to supreme refinement. In the first place naturalness is excluded from it; everything is arranged and adjusted,--decoration, dress, attitude, tone of voice, words, ideas and even sentiments. "A genuine sentiment is so rare," said M. de V--, "that, when I leave Versailles, I sometimes stand still in the street to see a dog gnaw a bone."[2301] Man, in abandoning himself wholly to society, had withheld no portion of his personality for himself while decorum, clinging to him like so much ivy, had abstracted from him the substance of his being and subverted every principle of activity.