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Updated: May 24, 2025
The prose historian may give us facts and names; he may catalogue the successions, and tell us long stories of battles, and of factions, and of political intrigues; he may draw characters for us, of the sort which figure commonly in such features of human affairs, men of the unheroic, unpoetic kind the Cleons, the Sejanuses, the Tiberiuses, a Philip the Second or a Louis Quatorze, in whom the noble element died out into selfishness and vulgarity.
Conventional animal and plant forms. Human figure. Louis Quatorze. Sparkling, glittering. Absence of color, want of symmetry. Ancient art is also known as classic, a term which, in architecture, sculpture, painting, and music, is almost synonymous with good and admirable. Taken as a whole and at its best, classic art has never been surpassed.
Men and women, drunk with brandy and exultation, shouted "Quatorze Juillet!" and amidst curses and threats demanded the opening of the gates. The people of France would have its will. Was it not the supreme lord an ruler of the land, the arbiter of the Fate of this great, beautiful, and maddened country? The National Guard was powerless; the officers in command could offer but feeble resistance.
An adequate conception of this scene will perhaps be a matter of some difficulty, but those who know something of the way in which the people in modern Paris dance upon the smooth pavements on the night of the national holiday, the Quatorze Juillet, will possess at least a faint idea of what it must have been.
There is no break with the Louis Quatorze things, not a symptom of revolt; only, after them the deluge! But out of this very condition of things, and out of this attitude of mind, arises a new art, or rather a new phase of art, essentially classic, as I said, but nevertheless imbued with a character of its own, and this character distinctly charming. Wherein does the charm consist?
It was a ring with a story, that came somehow to my great-great-grandfather, when he was in Paris. It had done itself great credit gained quite a reputation at the Court of Louis Quatorze, on the fingers I believe of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers and Louise de la Vallière.... Yes, I think both, but close particulars have always been wanting.
Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save for the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was still empty, and his reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly. "Surely," Philip thought, "the French chap was right who said words were given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world it would be if every one possessed my power.
The little prince has already shown all the Grand Monarque in his childish "Je suis Louis Quatorze," and has been carried in his bib to hold his first parliament. That parliament, heroic as its English contemporary, though less successful, has reached the point of revolution at last. Civil war is impending.
Saunderson, had indued a pair of jack-boots of large dimensions, and now invited our hero to follow him as he stalked clattering down the ample stair-case, tapping each huge balustrade as he passed with the butt of his massive horse-whip, and humming, with the air of a chasseur of Louis Quatorze, Pour la chasse ordonnee il faut preparer tout. Ho la ho! Vite! vite debout!
The faded curtains lost their look of poverty, and had only the sombre air of age; an old brass chandelier of the Louis Quatorze period, which Austin had hung in in the centre of his room, flashed and glittered in the uncertain, light; and those two figures one leaning against the mantelpiece, the other prowling restlessly to and fro as he talked, carrying a mahl-stick, which he waved ever and anon like the rod of a magician completed the picture.
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