.
Monsieur Minard was always impatiently expected, for he was certain to
know the truth of important circumstances. The women of the Thuillier
salon held by the Jesuits; the men defended the University; and, as a
general thing, the women listened. A man of intelligence (could he have
borne the dulness of these evenings) would have laughed, as he would at
a comedy of Moliere, on hearing, amid endless discussion, such remarks
as the following:--

"How could the Revolution of 1789 have been avoided? The loans of Louis
XIV. prepared the way for it. Louis XV., an egotist, a man of narrow
mind (didn't he say, 'If I were lieutenant of police I would suppress
cabriolets'?), that dissolute king--you remember his Parc aux
Cerfs?--did much to open the abyss of revolution. Monsieur de Necker,
an evil-minded Genovese, set the thing a-going. Foreigners have always
tried to injure France. The maximum did great harm to the Revolution.
Legally Louis XVI. should never have been condemned; a jury would have
acquitted him. Why did Charles X. fall? Napoleon was a great man, and
the facts that prove his genius are anecdotal: he took five pinches of
snuff a minute out of a pocket lined with leather made in his waistcoat.
He looked into all his tradesmen's accounts; he went to Saint-Denis
to judge for himself the prices of things. Talma was his friend; Talma
taught him his gestures; nevertheless, he always refused to give Talma
the Legion of honor! The emperor mounted guard for a sentinel who went
to sleep, to save him from being shot. Those were the things that made
his soldiers adore him. Louis XVIII., who certainly had some sense, was
very unjust in calling him Monsieur de Buonaparte. The defect of the
present government is in letting itself be led instead of leading. It
holds itself too low. It is afraid of men of energy. It ought to have
torn up all the treaties of 1815 and demanded the Rhine. They keep the
same men too long in the ministry"; etc., etc.

"Come, you've exerted your minds long enough," said Mademoiselle
Thuillier, interrupting one of these luminous talks; "the altar is
dressed; begin your little game."

If these anterior facts and all these generalities were not placed here
as the frame of the present Scene, to give an idea of the spirit of
this society, the following drama would certainly have suffered greatly.
Moreover, this sketch is historically faithful; it shows a social
stratum of importance in any portrayal of ma