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There is not a house where they do not play, nor is any one at all acceptable unless he does so, too, a professed gamester being the most advantageous character a man can have at Paris. The abbés and men of learning are of easy access enough, but few English that travel have knowledge enough to take any great pleasure in that company.
But while on the one side there was burning and devouring earnestness, and that power of conviction which doubles the strength of the strong, there was on the other a serene ignoring of all that was going on, worthy of a set of dignified French abbés on the eve of the Revolution.
But there were other districts in the great city now swept away and forgotten as characteristic in their way as the Quartier Latin. There was the He de Saint Louis, for instance a Campo Santo of decayed nobility lonely, silent, fallen upon evil days, and haunted here and there by ghosts of departed Marquises and Abbés of the vieille école.
"The Electors of the German Empire are nearly all of them ecclesiastics; our own history of France will show you that the sons of kings were bishops or mere abbes; the grandson of the Duc de Savoie is a cardinal and an archbishop, and King Charles X., my grandfather's paternal uncle, nearly became King of France and cardinal at one and the same time." At this moment Madame Scarron came in.
In an adjoining room two men were already waiting the arrival of the doctor, who was due in a few minutes. One, evidently a Frenchman, with a dark, dissipated face, volunteered the information that he was a chauffeur, whose master had discharged him without notice on account of an "unavoidable accident" at a small town within walking distance of Sidi-bel Abbés.
Luna lived for more than a year in the emigrants' cantonments; his classical education and the sympathy aroused by his youth smoothed his path to a certain extent; he talked Latin with the French abbés, who were delighted to hear about the war from the young theologian, and at the same time they taught him the language of the country.
Italy sent to the parties at Potsdam the ingenious and amiable Algarotti, and Bastiani, the most crafty, cautious, and servile of Abbes. But the greater part of the society which Frederic had assembled round him, was drawn from France. Maupertuis had acquired some celebrity by the journey which he had made to Lapland, for the purpose of ascertaining, by actual measurement, the shape of our planet.
M. de Besse, M. de Forcade, and others whose names I have forgotten, in short, well-dressed people of every description were seen there; except abbes and men of the long robe, not one of whom I ever met in the house, and it was agreed not to introduce men of either of these professions.
Some of our Senators have been tailors, apothecaries, merchants, chemists, quacks, physicians, barbers, bankers, soldiers, drummers, dukes, shopkeepers, mountebanks, Abbes, generals, savans, friars, Ambassadors, counsellors, or presidents of Parliament, admirals, barristers, Bishops, sailors, attorneys, authors, Barons, spies, painters, professors, Ministers, sans-culottes, atheists, stonemasons, robbers, mathematicians, philosophers, regicides, and a long et cetera.
All the prelates, the distinguished Abbes, and a considerable number of the laity, were invited during the consecration by the chief officers of M. le Duc d'Orleans to dine at the Palais Royal. The same officers did the honours of the feast, which was served with the most splendid abundance and delicacy.