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580 BELPHEGOR

view to flattering the senses and sparing them every harsh impres- sion. Having then been led to examine the library, I conceived very clearly that the works which I found there—“sensuous”’ novels, disordered poems, vaporous philosophy—were the exact projection into the literary order of the caressing quality which I saw on the wall and in the sofas. It was plainly impossible that, in this chapel of the fused, any one should care to set his teeth on a pebble of La Bruyére.

Finally, one of the crucial reasons, we believe, for the aesthetic of modern French society being what we have seen, is that if is made entirely by women. Many a writer will tell you that he works solely for the women, that nobody else reads any more. Any one can make the following experiment: suppose people are talking about art, literary doctrines, aesthetics in a salon after dinner; if you except very young men and professionals, not a man will take part in the conversation. The man of the world who is also a great amateur and quasi-director of belles-lettres, like Luynes, Liancourt, Saint-Evremond, Bussy, Lamoignon, Hénault, is actually a lost species. One may say that, to-day, because of the economic changes that force the man of the world to kill himself in work, leaving him no time or inclination for any aesthetic activity, the supervision of the things of the spirit belongs, in good society, entirely to women. Of course, this feminine dictatorship always existed in France to some degree, and would therefore not suffice to explain the phenom- enon in question. In the seventeenth century, too, the aesthetic of the beau monde, was really the work of women; and yet it was not the same thing at all. The difference is that the women of that time respected the masculine mind, and valued themselves in rela- tion to it; whereas the women of to-day (this is a turning point in the history of custom) have decreed contempt for the mental structure of men and are belligerently established in their veneration of the feminine soul. The former esteemed their sex because it too, they said, is capable of reason; the latter prize it because it is ex empt from reason, because it is “all passion, all instinct, all intui- tion.” One can imagine that their practice differs.

It would be well to observe that these attributes of contemporary French society, in which we believe we see the cause of its aesthetic, run deep and have small chance of disappearing. No one imagines, we believe, above all with this war, that society is to become more