the pen of Saint-Just, the gloomiest
of the "Mountain," a poem as lascivious as that of Voltaire, while
Madame Roland, the noblest of the Girondins, has left us confessions as
venturesome and specific as those of Rousseau[4115].--On the other hand
there is a second box, that containing the old Gallic salt, that is
to say, humor and raillery. Its mouth is wide open in the hands of a
philosophy proclaiming the sovereignty of reason. Whatever is contrary
to Reason is to it absurd and therefore open to ridicule. The moment the
solemn hereditary mask covering up an abuse is brusquely and adroitly
torn aside, we feel a curious spasm, the corners of our mouth stretching
apart and our breast heaving violently, as at a kind of sudden relief,
an unexpected deliverance, experiencing a sense of our recovered
superiority, of our revenge being gratified and of an act of justice
having been performed. But it depends on the mode in which the mask is
struck off whether the laugh shall be in turn light or loud, suppressed
or unbridled, now amiable and cheerful, or now bitter and sardonic.
Humor (la plaisanterie) comports with all aspects, from buffoonery to
indignation; no literary seasoning affords such a variety, or so
many mixtures, nor one that so well enters into combination with that
above-mentioned. The two together, from the middle ages down, form the
principal ingredients employed by the French cuisine in the composition
of its most agreeable dainties,--fables, tales, witticisms, jovial songs
and waggeries, the eternal heritage of a good-humored, mocking
people, preserved by La Fontaine athwart the pomp and sobriety of the
seventeenth century, and, in the eighteenth, reappearing everywhere at
the philosophic banquet. Its charm is great to the brilliant company at
this table, so amply provided, whose principal occupation is pleasure
and amusement. It is all the greater because, on this occasion, the
passing disposition is in harmony with hereditary instinct, and because
the taste of the epoch is fortified by the national taste. Add to all
this the exquisite art of the cooks, their talent in commingling, in
apportioning and in concealing the condiments, in varying and arranging
the dishes, the certainty of their hand, the finesse of their palate,
their experience in processes, in the traditions and practices which,
already for a hundred years, form of French prose the most delicate
nourishment of the intellect. It is not strange to