e everywhere. "Joking is as much out of
fashion as jumping jacks and tumblers. Our good folks have no time to
laugh! There is God and the king to be hauled down first; and men and
women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. They think
me quite profane for having any belief left. . . . Do you know who the
philosophers are, or what the term means here? In the first place it
comprehends almost everybody; and in the next, means men, who, avowing
war against popery, take aim, many of them, at a subversion of
all religion. . . . These savants,--I beg their pardons, these
philosophers--are insupportable, superficial, overbearing and fanatic:
they preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is atheism; you would
not believe how openly. Voltaire himself does not satisfy them. One of
their lady devotees said of him, 'He is a bigot, a deist!'"

This is very strong, and yet we have not come to the end of it; for,
thus far, impiety is less a conviction than the fashion. Walpole, a
careful observer, is not deluded by it. "By what I have said of their
religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their
people of quality atheists--at least not the men. Happily for them, poor
souls! they are not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent
to a great deal because it is the fashion, and because they don't know
how to contradict." Now that "dandies are outmoded" and everybody is "a
philosopher," "they are philosophers." It is essential to be like all
the rest of the world. But that which they best appreciate in the
new materialism is the pungency of paradox and the freedom given to
pleasure. They are like the boys of good families, fond of playing
tricks on their ecclesiastical preceptor. They take out of learned
theories just what is wanted to make a dunce-cap, and derive the more
amusement from the fun if it is seasoned with impiety. A seignior of
the court having seen Doyen's picture of "St. Genevieve and the
plague-stricken," sends to a painter the following day to come to him at
his mistress's domicile: "I would like," he says to him, "to have Madame
painted in a swing put in motion by a bishop; you may place me in such a
way that I may see the ankles of that handsome woman, and even more, if
you want to enliven your picture."[4219] The licentious song "Marotte"
"spreads like wildfire;" "a fortnight after its publication," says
Colle, "I met no one without a copy; and it is the vaudeville, or