tells us that in a fit of absence he did so literally. His affection
for Madame de Hautcastel is certainly not a very passionate kind of
affection, for all his elaborately counted and described heartbeats as
he is dusting her portrait. Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves us
in no doubt about the matter. "La froide raison," he says, "reprit
bientot son empire." Of course it did; the intelligent, and in the other
sense sensible, person who wishes to preserve his repose must take care
of that. We do not even believe that he really dropped a tear of
repentance on his left shoe when he had unreasonably rated his servant;
it is out of keeping with his own part. He borrowed that tear, either
ironically or by oversight, from Sterne, just as he did "Ma chere
Jenny." He is much more in his element when he proves that a lover is to
his mistress, when she is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of a
lover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of man; or when, in the
_Expedition_, he meditates on a lady's slipper in the balcony fathoms
below his garret.

[Sidenote: A sign of decadence.]

All this illustrates what may be called the attempt to get rid of
Sensibility by the humorist gate of escape. Supposing no such attempt
consciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an approaching
downfall of Sensibility, of a feeling, on the part of those who have to
do with it, that it is an edged tool, and an awkward one to handle. In
comparing Xavier de Maistre with his master Sterne, it is very
noticeable that while the one in disposition is thoroughly insincere,
and the other thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a true
believer in Sensibility, and the sincere one evidently a semi-heretic.
How far Sterne consciously simulated his droppings of warm tears, and
how far he really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. But he was
quite sincere in believing that they were very creditable things, and
very admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does not seem by any means so
well convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretending
and making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and making
believe. He still thinks Sensibility a _gratissimus error_, a very
pretty game for persons of refinement to play at, and he plays at it
with a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But the
spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his _sensibilite_ (in real life, if
not in literature) as sincerely as Sterne