was
mad; that Lamartine lived and died a pauper; that Scipio took the
treasury moneys; that Thucydides and Phidias stole; that Heloise and
Hypatia were but loose women after all--so the gamut runs over twice a
thousand years; and Rousseau is at heart the favourite of the world
because he was such a beast, with all his talent.

When the world is driven to tears and prayers by Schiller, it hugs
itself to remember that he could not write a line without the smell of
rotten apples near, and that when he died there was not enough money in
his desk to pay his burial. They make him smaller, closer, less
divine--the apples and the pauper's coffin.

* * *

"Get a great cook; give three big balls a winter, and drive English
horses; you need never consider Society then, it will never find fault
with you, _ma tres-chere_."

She did not quite understand, but she obeyed; and Society never did.
Society says to the members of it as the Spanish monk to the tree that
he pruned, and that cried out under his hook:

"It is not beauty that is wanted of you, nor shade, but olives."

Moral loveliness or mental depth, charm of feeling or nobleness of
instinct, beauty, or shade, it does not ask for, but it does ask for
olives--olives that shall round off its dessert, and flavour its dishes,
and tickle its sated palate; olives that it shall pick up without
trouble, and never be asked to pay for; these are what it likes.

Now it is precisely in olives that the woman who has one foot in Society
and one foot out of it will be profuse.

She must please, or perish.

She must content, or how will she be countenanced?

The very perilousness of her position renders her solicitous to attract
and to appease.

Society follows a natural selfishness in its condonation of her; she is
afraid of it, therefore she must bend all her efforts to be agreeable to
it! it can reject her at any given moment, so that her court of it must
be continual and expansive. No woman will take so much pains, give so
much entertainment, be so willing to conciliate, be so lavish in
hospitality, be so elastic in willingness, as the woman who adores
Society, and knows that any black Saturday it may turn her out with a
bundle of rods, and a peremptory dismissal.

Between her and Society there is a tacit bond.

"Amuse me, and I will receive you."

"Receive me, and I will amuse you."

* * *

Of all lay figures there is none on ear