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Updated: May 7, 2025
When the work first appeared, it was considered by some as made up of fictions and extravagances, and Vossius assures us that even after the death of Marco Polo he continued to be a subject of ridicule among the light and unthinking, insomuch that he was frequently personated at masquerades by some wit or droll, who, in his feigned character, related all kinds of extravagant fables and adventures.
I shouldn't wonder if he wasn't a trull's bully from Lewknor's Lane or Whetstone Park. The rascals pass themselves off as sparks of fashion at ridottos, masquerades and what not and live by robbery and blood money. I warrant I'll soon run your fine gentleman to earth. He talks about telling his father. Pooh! That was but to bait the trap and you walked into it nicely."
And yet these Memoirs are perhaps the most valuable document which we possess on the society of the eighteenth century; they are the history of a unique life, a unique personality, one of the greatest of autobiographies; as a record of adventures, they are more entertaining than Gil Blas, or Monte Cristo, or any of the imaginary travels, and escapes, and masquerades in life, which have been written in imitation of them.
As neither of them seemed now to take any delight in balls, plays, operas, masquerades, cards, or any of the town diversions, they passed all their evenings together, and, for the most part, alone, as I before observed; their conversation was chiefly on serious topics, and such as might have been improving to the hearers, had any been permitted; and when they fell on matters which required a more gay and sprightly turn, their good humour never went beyond an innocent chearfulness, nor in the least transgressed the bounds of the strictest morality and modesty.
These two tendencies we may describe as the deathward and the lifeward respectively. The words are not very satisfactory because the deathward tendency masquerades as the lifeward tendency, and the lifeward tendency, before fruition, looks like the deathward one. In nature, as Romans viii. tells us, "We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."
Let us then make him understand that he has nothing to fear from us and little by little, if our patience does not fail, he will grow more gentle and become a friend instead of an enemy. Therefore to-day, as well as in the past, I carefully avoid warlike preparations, brigandish masquerades or any escort of a prepotent or menacing appearance.
His majesty had no liking for the anniversaries of the Republic; some of which had always seemed to him odious and cruel, others ridiculous; and I have heard him express his indignation that they should have dared to make an annual festival of the anniversary of the 21st of January, and smile with pity at the recollection of what he called the masquerades of the theo-philanthropists, who, he said, "would have no Jesus Christ, and yet made saints of Fenelon and Las Casas Catholic prelates."
Introductions are of course unnecessary at private masquerades, as well as impracticable at all such festivals; so when the ghastly mask "Death" came up and offered his skeleton arm to Sybil for the promenade, she unhesitatingly accepted it, supposing him all the while to be one of her invited guests.
He identified Hébert, not Robespierre, with the unceasing bloodshed, and he was willing to act with the latter, his real rival, against the raging exterminators. From the end of September he was absent in his own house at Arcis. At his return he and Robespierre denounced the irreligious masquerades, and spoke for the clergy, who had as good a right to toleration as their opponents.
The little boy who ran back and forth to school down Paradise Row little thought of the person who to-day masquerades as his elder self. Heigho! I wish I could tell you a lot of things that I'm not allowed to. This letter would be much more interesting then. In seventeen days the boys will also have left you so this will arrive when you're horribly lonely.
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