The artisans in the towns, the villagers in the country, worthy heirs of Jacques Bonhomme—a gentleman subject to taxes and duties at discretion—counted for nothing, and were nothing.
What must have been the preferences of a society so constituted?
Three things—three, in truth, and no more: ambition, gallantry, and dissipation. Ambition, that is to say, the disposition to gain advancement from a master, to obtain favors, distinctions, eminent positions, pensions, and to obtain them by favoritism and the power of being agreeable, by intrigues and solicitations. Gallantry—the gratification of personal vanity or sensuality. Lastly, dissipation—dissipation under all forms, hunting parties and gambling parties, assemblies for pleasure or debauchery, balls, suppers, sights; dissipation as the definitive aim of existence, the final end of all means—life having apparently been given to man only for enjoyment, and time only to be squandered and killed.
We are speaking of society in general, and without forgetting the fact that these absolute verdicts, by reason of their very absoluteness, are always somewhat unjust and exaggerated.
But it is worthy of remark that in this so vain a mode of existence, in this state of living and acting, of thinking and feeling, in which vanity was so predominant, nothing was abandoned to caprice; no one affected a style of independence; on the contrary, all was done according to rule—every where was method to be observed.
Louis XIV., while changing his nobles into courtiers, reducing his Parliaments to the level of dramatic critics, despoiling the townspeople of their franchises, and, to say all in one word, while transforming the political order of the entire nation into a civil order—had nevertheless contrived in some sort to impress on the manners and habits which resulted therefrom something of dignity and formality which belonged not to their nature—far from it—but to his character.
His court was grave, although the morals of the courtiers were in no respect better on this account; his magistrates were grave without being independent; the temper of his times was grave, and yet servile.
After his reign, that imperious necessity by which man is impelled to exalt into maxims the motives, whatever they may be, which determine his conduct, and to refer his own conduct to certain principles, were it only in order that he may know what he has done and whither he is tending—which also leads him thus to regard the actions of others, were it only that he may be able to approve or condemn them—this necessity operated, if not in the same sense, yet in one analogous to that in which it had operated under Louis XIV. Thus the best method of making way in the world became a science which the old courtier taught ex cathedra to his children—a science which had its dogmas, its precepts, and its traditions.