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The Proposal of Marriage and
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The Garter with something of that frivolity which later came into fashion through Baudouin. That, however, was only for a very short time. Life was beginning to be in earnest--that is rather the impression one receives much earlier, from turning over the engravings of those years. Amongst the elders of the actual _rococo_ age, contentment and gaiety still rule. As the heirs of an old civilisation, the aristocracy understood, with a refined and unique understanding, how to turn life into a feast. Silk trains rustle over the parquet, silk shoes trip, eyes gleam, diamonds flash, white bosoms heave. Tall cavaliers advance to their sprightly partners, gossip and smiles fly around, Knights of Malta and abbés hang over the chairs and pay their court. Yes, this autumn of the old French culture was of a marvellous beauty for the fortunate, and those fortunate ones knew, as no other generation has ever done, how to enjoy life with serenity, in a fairy glamour of rooms gleaming with Venetian chandeliers, where rosy Cupidons laughed down bewitchingly from their light, gold moulded panels. Under Louis XVI the French salon acquired another aspect. Its walls, its whole architecture, were more sombre. The Cupidons still sported on the ceiling, but they were forgotten, like ghosts of the past; their shafts were already impotent. The vivacious, dancing couples have disappeared. Festivity has been banished from the big rooms: here and there is seen an earnest conversational party; gentlemen playing cards or ladies reading philosophical books. Social and political interests have sprung up with which people of education prefer to occupy themselves. Numerous works on commerce and constitutional methods have appeared during the last fifty years. In place of scandal there crop up arguments, for and against the Parliament, for and against the Jesuits. Enlightenment had won its victory. Henceforth development is no longer compatible with sensuous delight. It is still the same society as before, but without pleasure. One almost breathes the air of 1789. Gaming is only a struggle against ennui; the foreheads of women are furrowed with reading. Society has grown serious and sombre, as it were, with a presentiment of what is to come, as though destiny might thus be set aside. The writings of Diderot afford the clearest instance of this changed spirit of the age, and art too must become virtuous, and work for the amelioration of the world. Thus Diderot upheld the sentimental and emotional subject against the _fêtes galantes_ of the _rococo_ painter. Boucher derived his inspiration from the slough of prostitution; only a moral upheaval could tend to a high style. With Boucher the idea of honour, of innocence, has become something strange; the new age requires virtue, _bonnes moeurs_. But where are the virtues to be found? Naturally, there alone, where Rousseau had discovered them. Rousseau taught that man by nature was good, that he was noble, conscious of his moral obligations, self-sacrificing and uncorrupted when he came from the hands of his Maker, and that it was civilisation which first corrupted him. It followed that the most civilised are the most corrupt, and virtues are to be met with, if anywhere, amongst the lower orders, who are the least affected by culture. Not beneath an embroidered waistcoat, only beneath a woollen smock, can a noble heart beat. The happy ignorance of the young Savoyard, eating his cheese or his oranges in a church porch, lies nearer to the original perfection of mankind than the most subtle erudition of the most ingenious of the encyclopædists. Amongst nature's noblemen one must seek for the secret of virtue, which has been lost by the aristocracy in the stream of civilisation. Thus beneath the ægis of Rousseau's philosophy the Third Estate makes its entry into French salons. From the man of the people society wanted to learn how to become once more simple, unassuming, and virtuous; and it was a gruesome irony of fate that this