Fourier's fables are founded on fact; we are nothing without our
opposites, our fellows, our lights and shadows, colors, relations,
combinations, our _point d'appui_, and our angle of sight. An isolated
man is immensurable; he is also unpicturesque, unnatural, untrue. He is
no longer the lord of Nature, animal and vegetable,--but Nature is the
lord of him; the trees, skies, flowers, predominate, and he is in as bad
taste as green and blue, or as an oyster in a vase of roses. The race
swings naturally to clusters. It being admitted, then, that society is
our normal state, where is it to be obtained in such perfection as at
Paris? Show me the urbanity, the generosity in trifles, better than
sacrifice, the incuriousness and freedom, the grace, and wit, and honor,
that will equal such as I find here. Morality,--we were not speaking
of it,--the intrusion is unnecessary; must that word with Anglo-Saxon
pertinacity dog us round the world? A hollow mask, which Vice now and
then lifts for a breath of air, I grant you this state may be called;
but since I find the vice elsewhere, countenance my preference for the
accompanying mask. But even this is vanishing; such drawing-rooms as
Mme. de St. Cyr's are less and less frequent. Yet, though the delightful
spell of the last century daily dissipates itself, and we are not now
what we were twenty years ago, still Paris is, and will be till the end
of time, for a cosmopolitan, the pivot on which the world revolves.

It was, then, as I have said, the day of Mme. de St. Cyr's dinner.
Punctually at the hour, I presented myself,--for I have always esteemed
it the least courtesy which a guest can render, that he should not cool
his hostess's dinner.

The usual choice company waited. There was the Marquis of G., the
ambassador from home, Col. Leigh, an attaché of that embassy, the
Spanish and Belgian ministers,--all of whom, with myself, completed a