I am at present initiated into the more secret mysteries of visiting: being intreated to private suppers, where the door is shut against all strolling and chance guests, and every one is upon an agreeable footing, if not with each other, at least with the provider of the entertainment. Here it is that the women are less reserved, and their real characters more easily discovered. The conversation is in these parties carried on with more decorum, and is more refined and satirical: instead of talking of the public news, plays, promotions, births, deaths, and marriages, which were the topics of the morning, they here take a review of the several anecdotes of Paris, divulge the secret articles of the scandalous chronicle, turn the good and bad alike into ridicule, and, in artfully describing the characters of others, undesignedly display their own. It is in these companies that the little circumspection which remains has invented a peculiar kind of language, under which they affect to render their satire more obscure, while it only makes it more severe. It is here, in a word, that they carefully sharpen the poignard, under pretence of making it less hurtful; but, in fact, only to make it wound the deeper. To judge, however, of this conversation according to our notions of things, we should be in the wrong to call it satirical; for it consists more of raillery than censure, and turns less upon the vicious than the ridiculous. Satire in general is not common in large cities, where that which is downright wicked is too simple to be worth talking about. What can they condemn where virtue is in no esteem? and what should they revile where nothing is held to be villainous? At Paris, more particularly, where every thing is seen in an agreeable light, the representation of things that ought to raise our indignation is well received, if it be but wrapt up in a song or an epigram. The fine ladies of this country do not like to be displeased; and are therefore displeased at nothing: they love to laugh, but woe be to him who happens to be the butt of their ridicule; the fears this caustic leaves are never to be effaced; they not only defame good manners and virtue, but exaggerate even vice itself. We now return to our company.
What strikes me most in these select meetings, is to see that half a dozen people, expressly chosen to entertain one another agreeably, and between whom there generally subsist very intimate connections, cannot converse an hour together without introducing the affairs of half the people in Paris; just as if their hearts had nothing to say to each other, or that there was no person in company of merit enough to engage their attention. You know, Eloisa, how far otherwise it was with us, when we supped together at your cousin’s, or your own apartment; how we could find means, in spite of constraint and secrecy, to turn the discourse on subjects that related to ourselves; how at every moving reflection, at every subtle allusion, a look more swift than lightening, a sigh rather imagined than perceived, conveyed the pleasing sensation from one heart to the other.
If the discourse here turn by accident on any of the company, it is commonly carried on in a jargon known only to the persons concerned, and which one had need of a vocabulary to understand. Thus by talking as it were in cypher, they are enabled to banter each other with insipid raillery, in which the greatest blockhead does not always shine the least. In the mean time, perhaps, a third part of the company, incapable of taking the jest, are either reduced to a disagreeable silence, or to laugh at what they do not understand. Of this kind, Eloisa, is all the tenderness and affection I have observed in the intimacies of this country: those of a more private nature, with only a second person, I have not, nor ever shall have experienced.
In the midst of all this, however, if a man of any weight and consequence should enter on a grave discourse, or begin to discuss a serious question, a general attention would be immediately fixed on this new object: men and women, old and young, every one would be ready to enter into its examination; and it is astonishing how much good sense and precision would, as it were, through emulation, sally out of their extravagant heads. [24] A point of morality could not be better determined in a society of philosophers, than in that of a fine lady at Paris: their conclusions would even be less precise and severe: for the philosopher, who thinks himself obliged to act as he speaks, will be less rigid in his principles; but, where morality is nothing more than a topic of discourse, the severity of it is of no consequence: and no one is displeased at an opportunity of checking philosophical pride, by placing virtue out of its reach.
Besides this, influenced by a knowledge of the world and of their own hearts, all agree in thinking human nature as depraved as possible: hence their philosophy is always of the gloomy cast; they are ever indulging their own vanity by depreciating the virtues of humanity; always accounting for good actions from vicious motives, and attributing to mankind in general the depravity of their own minds.
And yet, notwithstanding their adopting this abject doctrine, one of the favourite topics of these societies is _sentiment_; a word by which we are not to understand the sensation of a heart susceptible of love or friendship: this would be thought vulgar and disgusting. No, sentiment consists in great and general maxims, heightened by the most sublime subtilties of metaphysics. I can safely say that in my life, I have never heard so much talk of sentiment, nor ever comprehended so little what was meant by it; so inconceivable are these French refinements! our simple hearts, Eloisa, never were governed by any of these fine maxims; and I am afraid it is with sentiment in the polite world, as it is with Homer among the pedants, who discover in him a thousand imaginary beauties, for want of taste to point out his real ones. So much sentiment is here laid out in wit, and evaporated in conversation, that none is left to influence their actions. Happily politeness supplies its place, and people act from custom nearly as they would from sensibility: at least so long as it costs them only a few compliments, and such trifling restraints, as they willingly lay themselves under in order to be respected; but, if any considerable sacrifice of their ease or interest is required, adieu to sentiment: politeness does not proceed so far; so far as it goes, however, you can hardly believe how nicely every article of behaviour is weighed, measured, and estimated. What is not regulated by sentiment, is subjected to custom, by which indeed every thing here is governed. These people are all professed copyists; and, tho’ they abound in originals, nobody knows any thing of them, or presumes to be so himself. _To do like other people_, is a maxim of the greatest weight in this country: _and this is the mode----that is not the mode_, are decisions from which there is no appeal.
This apparent regularity gives to the common, and even the most serious transactions of life, the most comical air in the world. They have settled even the very moment when it is proper to send cards to their acquaintance; when to visit with a card, that is, to visit without visiting at all; when to do it in person; when it is proper to be at home; when to be denied; what advances it is proper to make, or reject on every occasion; what degree of sorrow should be affected at the death of such, or such a one; [25] how long to mourn in the country; when they may come to console themselves in town; the very day, and even the minute, when the afflicted is permitted to give a ball, or go to the play. Every body in the same circumstances does the same thing: they keep time, and their motions are made all together, like the evolutions of a regiment in battalia; so that you would think them so many puppets, nailed to the same board, or danced by the same wire.
Now, as it is morally impossible that all these people, tho’ they act in the same manner, should be at once equally affected, it is plain, their peculiar characters are not to be known by their actions; it is plain their discourse is only a formal jargon, which assists us less to form a judgment of the French manners in general, than the peculiar mode of conversing in Paris. In like manner, we learn only here their terms of conversation, but nothing by which we can judge of their estimation in the conduct of life. I say the same of most of their writings; and even of their theatrical representations. The stage, since the time of Moliere, being a place where they rather repeat agreeable dialogues, than give a representation of life and manners. There are here three theatres; on two of which they only introduce imaginary characters; such as Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Scaramouch, on the one; and, on the other, gods, devils, and conjurers. On the third, they represent those immortal dramas, which give us so much pleasure in reading, and other new pieces, which are from time to time written for the stage; many of which are tragical, but not affecting. And, tho’ the sentiments contained in them are sometimes natural, and well enough adapted to the human heart, they give us not the least light into the peculiar manners of the people to whom they afford entertainment.