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"We have degenerated," he returned, shaking his head, which he could do to a very limited extent in his cravat. "A levelling age is not favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with some little partiality. Who the devil is he? Why don't I know him?
It had come to an evil state when the awful ceremonial of former times had degenerated into a pageant, played off by an infidel priesthood and unbelieving aristocracy; when oracles were becoming mute, because they could no longer withstand the sly wit of the initiated; when the miracles of the ancients were regarded as mere lies, and of contemporaries as feats of legerdemain.
The simple bonhomie, the absence of conventional reticence, the superficial lack of polish, noted by his early biographers, and which he had had no opportunity to acquire, the childlike vanity that transpires so innocently in his confidential home letters, and was only the weak side of his noble longing for heroic action, degenerated rapidly into loss of dignity of life, into an unseemly susceptibility to extravagant adulation, as he succumbed to surroundings, the corruptness of which none at first realized more clearly, and where one woman was the sole detaining fascination.
"Plainness and simplicity of manners are the mainsprings of happiness, and he that wishes for what he may never have or acquire, must be miserable, indeed, and worthy of pity. Alas! that this simplicity of our Acadian manners should have already degenerated into extravagance and folly!
The hotel we live in belonged to one of those great orders of knights of the Cross in the times of the Crusades, and its mailed sentinels once kept watch and ward in its massive turrets and woke the echoes of these halls and corridors with their iron heels. But Genoa's greatness has degenerated into an unostentatious commerce in velvets and silver filagree-work.
All this sentimental masquerading and exaggerated gallantry suggests the vulnerable side of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and the side which its enemies have been disposed to make very prominent. Among those who tried to imitate this salon, Spanish chivalry doubtless degenerated into a thousand absurdities, and it must be admitted that the salon itself was not free from reproach on this point.
We see in those pages instances of high-born men contented to linger round the court for life, performing some petty office which, however, required constant attendance on the court circle, and submitting, with many a groan, it must be confessed, to the miserable routine of trivial duties and meagre ceremonial, much fitter for their own footmen; while they left their own magnificent mansions to solitude, their noble estates unvisited, their tenantry uncheered, unprotected, and unencouraged by their residence in their proper sphere, and finally degenerated into feeble gossips, splenetic intriguers, and ridiculous encumbrances of the court itself.
Self-interests had held her attention from girlhood to her wreckage, and from this grew self- study, which later degenerated into self-pity. Her converse was of food and feelings and self. She bored all she met, for self alone was expressed in actions and words. Much was done here for her, in the face of her protest.
She said Handel was its blight and damnation. Each being furnished with copious arguments, the discussion degenerated into technicalities. Denis, meanwhile, was handing round tea-cakes and things, with the double object of making himself useful and of being as near as possible to Angelina, the hand-maiden of the Duchess, a bewitchingly pretty brunette, who was doing the same.
The taste of the Parisians has, I think, greatly degenerated, both in their light literature and their dramas. The desire for excitement, and not a decrease of talent, is the cause; and this morbid craving for it will, I fear, lead to injurious consequences, not only in literature, but in other and graver things.
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