Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/76

dreary and monotonous fiction,—how shall we qualify them? They have all the frailty of the wicked, red-heeled, minuetting eighteenth century without any of its charm, its wit, and real intellect. For if the marquise of the old school, passed into perfumed memory, were a rake, she was not a fool, she was not a rowdy, and she had a feeling for great deeds and great thoughts. She stands on a picturesque eminence in the history of her land. We cannot say the same for the titled rake of to-day. It is the fashion to treat her as a détraquée, because she subsists mainly upon excitement. But what needs altering is her standard; what should be overthrown is the altar upon which she sacrifices her futile existence. Not that she is the only example of her class, but somehow the novelists have not thought fit to present us with any other. The strange thing about it is, that she and her mate in the game of battledore and shuttlecock with reputation and morality, the incorrigible viscount, have been brought up under a supervision and care exceeding northern conception. Neither was permitted a moment of licensed childhood. Priest and nun were at the side of each, in constant attendance upon their minds and manners and morals. The male cherub lost his wings when the abbé made his last bow and retired, leaving his charge alone on the brink of temptation, a youth with a budding moustache. The