The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud
disregard of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden
time in their wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the
tardy virtues by which they expiated their sins and shed so
bright a glory about their names. There was nothing either very
frivolous or very serious about the woman of the Restoration.
She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and compounded, so
to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led the domestic
life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was
exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or
three kept up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer
women with something like disgust. The great lady of the new
school exercised no influence at all over the manners of the
time; and yet she might have done much. She might, at worst,
have presented as dignified a spectacle as English-women of the
same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old precedents, became
a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed nothing of herself
to appear, not even her better qualities.
Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to
create a salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take
lessons in taste and elegance. Their voices, which once laid
down the law to literature, that living expression of a time, now
counted absolutely for nought. Now when a literature lacks a
general system, it fails to shape a body for itself, and dies out
with its period.
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