The Temptation of Eve
stormy lake, ducks swimming on the lake, a sportsman shooting at the clucks, a mill which rose from the crown of her head, a miller's wife courted by an abbé, and a miller placidly driving his donkey down the steep incline over the lady's left ear.
It sounds like a Christmas pantomime; but when we remember that the French court, that model of patrician pride, was playing with democracy, with republicanism, with the simple life, as presented by Rousseau to its consideration, we see plainly enough how the real self-sufficiency of caste and the purely artificial sentiment of the day found expression in absurdities of costume. Women dared to wear such things, because, being aristocrats, they felt sure of themselves: and they professed to admire them, because, being engulfed in sentiment, they had lost all sense of proportion. A miller and his donkey were rustic (Marie Antoinette adored rusticity); an abbé flirt-
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