CHAPTER XLII
FRANCE (continued)
I beg leave to speak ill of France a little longer. The reader need have no fear of seeing my satire remain unpunished; if this essay finds readers, I shall pay for my insults with interest. Our national honour is wide awake.
France fills an important place in the plan of this book, because Paris, thanks to the superiority of its conversation and its literature, is, and will always be, the salon of Europe.
Three-quarters of the billets in Vienna, as in London, are written in French or are full of French allusions and quotations—Lord knows what French![1]
As regards great passions, France, in my opinion, is void of originality from two causes:—
1. True honour—the desire to resemble Bayard[(26)]—in order to be honoured in the world and there, every day, to see your vanity satisfied.
2. The fool's honour, or the desire to resemble the upper classes, the fashionable world of Paris. The art of entering a drawing-room, of showing aversion to a rival, of breaking with your mistress, etc.
The fool's honour is much more useful than true honour in ministering to the pleasures of our vanity, both in itself, as being intelligible to fools, and also as being applicable to the actions of every day and every hour. We see people, with only this fool's honour and without true honour, very well received in society; but the contrary is impossible.
This is the way of the fashionable world:—
1. To treat all great interests ironically. 'Tis natural enough. Formerly people, really in society, could not be profoundly affected by anything; they hadn't the time. Residence in the country has altered all this. Besides, it is contrary to a Frenchman's nature to let himself be seen in a posture of admiration,[2] that is to say, in a position of inferiority, not only in relation to the object of his admiration—that goes without saying—but also in relation to his neighbour, if his neighbour choose to mock at what he admires.