We men of forty years and upwards still preserve something of the aristocratic spirit of the eighteenth century, tempered with the chivalrous spirit of the Empire.
Women had great influence over minds of that period, and supper parties were a real social factor.
By eleven o'clock at night all the cares of the day are cast aside, and one knows there are still from six to eight hours to spend at one's ease between the night ends and day comes. When one sits at a well-filled table, face to face with a pretty girl, amid the pleasurable excitement of lights and flowers, the mind lets itself be carried away into the realm of dreams, though wide awake, and at such a time it attains its highest flights of brilliancy and exaltation. It is not only that one is more brilliant at supper-time than at any other meal, and that one has more wit than at any other repast, but one's very nature seems to be different.
I am sure that the greater number of the witty sayings of the eighteenth century were said at supper-time. Let us, therefore, have more of these supper parties, and we shall not lack what made them so brilliant.
Now let us turn to the cigar. Formerly, after déjeuner, men and women would proceed to the billiard-room or to the garden; after dinner, they would adjourn to the drawing-room; and there the conversation would continue on the same lines, whether desultory or more general. Nowadays, men have scarcely risen from table before they say to one another, "Come, let us have a cigar."
Then they go out, and walk up and down the pavements smoking. There they meet women also, but not at all capable of the same type of wit as those whom they have just left in the drawing-room. Men's minds are raised to the level of the women with whom they associate; one cannot demean oneself before the most lovely half of creation. And this generalisation is proved true every day.
One does not meet the same people in the public promenades two days running, but, though the people change, the type of conversation is pretty much the same always. Imperceptibly the tone of mind becomes lower. If you add to this the influence of the narcotic contained in tobacco, you can judge what the state of society will be in half a century if the taste for the cigar goes on increasing incessantly. We shall have about as much intellectual activity in France in 1950 as there is in Holland at the present time.
The reader will see that we have travelled far from Rousseau and Romieu. We have only Rousseau now to deal with, and let us, therefore, return to him.