wander at will in the coulisses of
the Grand Opera, picking up the latest gossip of Camargo or Sophie
Arnold, enter the foyer of the classic Theatre Francaise, or adjourn to
the Cafe Procope to hear the last joke of Piron, or the latest news from
Fernay. And better than all these, we may mount, _au cinquieme, au
sexieme_, to the lofty yet humble garret of the author or the artist,
and there find, in an age of sickening heartlessness, refreshing scenes
of household sincerity, patient endurance of hardship, showing that even
that depraved age was not utterly devoid of the heroic and the pure. M.
Houssaye is no rigid moralist, he employs no historic pillory, and often
displays the painful flippancy of the modern French school on religious
points, but he does honor to these better traits of humanity when he
meets them. And we are not sure but that the morality of the work is the
more impressive for the absence of the didactic. Here is little danger
of our falling in love with vice, seductive as she appears in the annals
of Louis XV., for we see the rotten canvas as well as the brilliant
scene. We remember with the gaudy blossoms of 1740-60, the ashen fruit
of 1789-'95. It is as hard to select extracts from M. Houssaye's volumes
on account of the _embarras des richesses_, as it would be to choose a
gem or two for our drawing-room from a gallery of Watteau and Greuze, or
a row of Laucret's _passets_. Much as the reader, we doubt not, will
enjoy those we have picked for him, he will still find equal or greater
pleasure in those we have left untouched.

Here are the first steps in the ascent of Madame de Pompadour to that
"bad eminence" she attained of virtual though virtueless Queen of
France. The entire sketch is the best life of this celebrated woman with
which we are acquainted:

"Madame de Pompadour was born in Paris, in 1720. She always
said it was 1722. It is affirmed, that Poisson, her father, at
least the husband of her mother, was a sutler in the army; some
historians state that he was the butcher of the Hospital of the
Invalides, and was condemned to be hung; according to Voltaire,
she was the daughter of a farmer of Ferte-sous-Jouarre. What
matters it, since he who was truly a father to her was the
farmer-general, Lenormant de Tourneheim. This gentleman,
thinking her worthy of his fortune, took her to his home, and
brought her up, as if she had been his own daughter