be seen strutting, in periwig and red-heeled shoes, down the
glittering gallery of Versailles; the intimacy and seclusion of modern
life had not yet begun. It was an intermediate period, and the
comparatively small group formed by the elite of the rich, refined, and
intelligent classes led an existence in which the elements of publicity
and privacy were curiously combined. Never, certainly, before or since,
have any set of persons lived so absolutely and unreservedly with and
for their friends as these high ladies and gentlemen of the middle years
of the eighteenth century. The circle of one's friends was, in those
days, the framework of one's whole being; within which was to be found
all that life had to offer, and outside of which no interest, however
fruitful, no passion, however profound, no art, however soaring, was of
the slightest account. Thus while in one sense the ideal of such a
society was an eminently selfish one, it is none the less true that
there have been very few societies indeed in which the ordinary forms of
personal selfishness have played so small a part. The selfishness of the
eighteenth century was a communal selfishness. Each individual was
expected to practise, and did in fact practise to a consummate degree,
those difficult arts which make the wheels of human intercourse run
smoothly--the arts of tact and temper, of frankness and sympathy, of
delicate compliment and exquisite self-abnegation--with the result that
a condition of living was produced which, in all its superficial and
obvious qualities, was one of unparalleled amenity. Indeed, those
persons who were privileged to enjoy it showed their appreciation of it
in an unequivocal way--by the tenacity with which they clung to the
scene of such delights and graces. They refused to grow old; they almost
refused to die. Time himself seems to have joined their circle, to have
been infected with their politeness, and to have absolved them, to the
furthest possible point, from the operation of his laws. Voltaire,
d'Argental, Moncrif, Henault, Madame d'Egmont, Madame du Deffand
herself--all were born within a few years of each other, and all lived
to be well over eighty, with the full zest of their activities
unimpaired. Pont-de-Veyle, it is true, died young--at the age of
seventy-seven. Another contemporary, Richelieu, who was famous for his
adventures while Louis XIV. was still on the throne, lived till within a
year of the opening of the States-