over the thinnest ice. Those drawing-rooms, those little circles, so
charming with the familiarity of their privacy, were themselves the
rigorous abodes of the deadliest kind of public opinion--the kind that
lives and glitters in a score of penetrating eyes. They required in
their votaries the absolute submission that reigns in religious
orders--the willing sacrifice of the entire life. The intimacy of
personal passion, the intensity of high endeavour--these things must be
left behind and utterly cast away by all who would enter that narrow
sanctuary. Friendship might be allowed there, and flirtation disguised
as love; but the overweening and devouring influence of love itself
should never be admitted to destroy the calm of daily intercourse and
absorb into a single channel attentions due to all. Politics were to be
tolerated, so long as they remained a game; so soon as they grew serious
and envisaged the public good, they became insufferable. As for
literature and art, though they might be excellent as subjects for
recreation and good talk, what could be more preposterous than to treat
such trifles as if they had a value of their own? Only one thing; and
that was to indulge, in the day-dreams of religion or philosophy, the
inward ardours of the soul. Indeed, the scepticism of that generation
was the most uncompromising that the world has known; for it did not
even trouble to deny: it simply ignored. It presented a blank wall of
perfect indifference alike to the mysteries of the universe and to the
solutions of them. Madame du Deffand gave early proof that she shared to
the full this propensity of her age. While still a young girl in a
convent school, she had shrugged her shoulders when the nuns began to
instruct her in the articles of their faith. The matter was considered
serious, and the great Massillon, then at the height of his fame as a
preacher and a healer of souls, was sent for to deal with the youthful
heretic. She was not impressed by his arguments. In his person the
generous fervour and the massive piety of an age that could still