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The embodiment of self-government fills dungeons, suppresses personal liberty, opens letters, and in the reckless saturnalias of despotism it rivals many from among the European despots. Europe, which does not see well the causes, shudders at this delirium tremens of despotism in America. Certainly, treason being in ebullition, the holders of power could not stand by and look.
"Eat, drink, and be vicious; but above all, drink and be vicious; for this is the end of England!" That was their watchword. I have no wish to repeat Blackburn's terrible stories of rapine and bestiality, of the frenzy of intoxication, and the blind savagery of these Saturnalias.
Calvin cut off the head of Jacques Gruet "for having written impious letters, libertine verses, and for working to overthrow ecclesiastical ordinances." Reflect upon that sentence, and ask yourselves if the worst tyrants in their saturnalias ever gave more horribly burlesque reasons for their cruelties.
In that house secret saturnalias of literature and art, politics and finance were carried on; there, desire reigned a sovereign; there, caprice and fancy were as sacred as honor and virtue to a bourgeoise; thither came Blondet, Finot, Etienne Lousteau, Vernou the feuilletonist, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac in his earlier days, Claude Vignon the critic, Nucingen the banker, du Tillet, Conti the composer, in short, that whole devil-may-care legion of selfish materialists of all kinds; friends of Florine and of the singers, actresses and "danseuses" collected about her.
We inherit to-day the saturnalias of the Revolution transferred to the domain, apparently peaceful, of the mind, of industry, of politics; it now seems that reputations won by toil, by services rendered, by talent, are privileges granted at the expense of the masses. Agrarian law will spread to the field of glory.
Taillefer, our amphitryon, has undertaken to surpass the circumscribed saturnalias of the petty modern Lucullus. He is rich enough to infuse pomp into trifles, and style and charm into dissipation... Are you listening, Raphael?" asked the orator, interrupting himself.
Du Bousquier was depicted as a species of celibate Pere Gigogne, a monster, who for the last fifteen years had kept the Foundling Hospital supplied. His immoral habits were at last revealed! these Parisian saturnalias were the result of them, etc., etc. Conducted by the Chevalier de Valois, a most able leader of an orchestra of this kind, the opening of the /cancan/ was magnificent.
Flore, born in 1787, grew up in the midst of the saturnalias of 1793 and 1798, whose lurid gleams penetrated these country regions, then deprived of priests and faith and altars and religious ceremonies; where marriage was nothing more than legal coupling, and revolutionary maxims left a deep impression.
We insist, however, upon treating this matter tail foremost. We insist that the ascetics were pessimists because they gave up threescore years and ten for an eternity of happiness. We forget that the bare proposition of an eternity of happiness is by its very nature ten thousand times more optimistic than ten thousand pagan saturnalias.
Wooster told his fashionable acquaintance that in winter the villa was a howling wilderness by reason of damp and rats; but there were those of his Bohemian friends who could have told of jovial parties assembled there in November, and saturnalias celebrated there in January; for Mr. Wooster was a bachelor of very liberal opinions, and had two sets of visitors.
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