Respectability.



By the title of the poem is meant respectability according to
the standard of the beau monde.

The speaker is a woman, as is indicated in the third stanza.
The monologue is addressed to her lover.

Stanza 1 shows that they have disregarded the conventionalities
of the beau monde. Had they conformed to them, many precious months
and years would have passed before they found out the world
and what it fears. One cannot well judge of any state of things
while in it. It must be looked at from the outside.

Stanza 2. The idea is repeated in a more special form
in the first four verses of the stanza; and in the last four
their own non-conventional and Bohemian life is indicated.

Stanza 3, vv. 1-4. The speaker knows that this beau monde
does not proscribe love, provided it be in accordance with
the proprieties which IT has determined upon and established.
v. 5. "The world's good word!" a contemptuous exclamation:
what's the world's good word worth? "the Institute!" (the reference is,
of course, to the French Institute), the Institute! with all its
authoritative, dictatorial learnedness! v.6. Guizot and Montalembert
were both members of the Institute, and being thus in the same boat,