chmaker, architect, turner, painter, locksmith,
decorator, cook, poet, music-composer and he embroiders remarkably
well."[2255] In this general state of inactivity it is essential "to
know how to be pleasantly occupied in behalf of others as well as in
one's own behalf." Madame de Pompadour is a musician, an actress, a
painter and an engraver. Madame Adelaide learns watchmaking and plays
on all instruments from a horn to the jew's-harp; not very well, it is
true, but as well as a queen can sing, whose fine voice is ever only
half in tune. But they make no pretensions. The thing is to amuse
oneself and nothing more; high spirits and the amenities of the
hour cover all. Rather read this capital fact of Madame de Lauzun at
Chanteloup: "Do you know," writes the abbe, "that nobody possesses in
a higher degree one quality you would never suspect of her, that of
preparing scrambled eggs? This talent has been buried in the ground, she
cannot recall the time she acquired it; I believe that she had it at
her birth. Accident made it known, and immediately it was put to test.
Yesterday morning, an hour for ever memorable in the history of eggs,
the implements necessary for this great operation were all brought out,
a heater, some gravy, some pepper and eggs. Behold Madame de Lauzun, at
first blushing and in a tremor, soon with intrepid courage, breaking the
eggs, beating them up in the pan, turning them over, now to the right,
now to the left, now up and now down, with unexampled precision and
success! Never was a more excellent dish eaten." What laughter and
gaiety in the group comprised in this little scene. And, not long after,
what madrigals and allusions! Gaiety here resembles a dancing ray of
sunlight; it flickers over all things and reflects its grace on every
object.

VI. Gaiety.

Gaiety in the 18th Century.--Its causes and effects.--
Toleration and license.--Balls, fetes, hunts, banquets,
pleasures.--Freedom of the magistrates and prelates.

The Frenchman's characteristic," says an English traveler in 1785, "is
to be always gay;"[2256] and he remarks that he must be so because, in
France, such is the tone of society and the only mode of pleasing the
ladies, the sovereigns of society and the arbiters of good taste. Add
to this the absence of the causes which produce modern dreariness, and
which convert the sky above our heads into one of leaden gloom. There
was no laborious, forced work in those days