The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-21

eighteenth century disappeared the great estates of France, the vast cha taus under the shadow of whose tall land ancient towers nestled hamlets peopled by a dependent peasantry With these reat possessions were 'also seignoiral rights the conquest Of their ancestors, the jewels Of the .ducaI curonets. In the country houses of 1890, pretentious structers belittled by the contracted space of which they were set, the grande dame of that time endeavOred to play the part of noble chaelaine. She bur lesqued the role in the exercise of a hospitality. grotesque when c0n- trasted with the princely sort eX- tended by the great ladies of ancient days. Where they were charitable without OstentatiOn, their successors of 1880 performed similar acts, which did not practically mitigate the suf- ferings of lthe indigent in blaze of publicity, with the entire nation as spectator. In justce to them, how ever, it must be said that, if they were inclined to conservatism in disburse- ments, they were prodigal of their persons as patronesses of fairs and of concerts organized to mitigate the misery of the poor. To carry this charitable spirit still farther, they acted as saleswomen at the bazars, where they harassed their acquaint- ances, rich or poor, to buy at their weight in gold the trifiing objects they were selling. Personally, they were not purchasers, but they gave of their handiwork insignificant articles that they imposed upon their friends of philanthropy.
 Mime de Longueville says of the so- ciety in France in 1880 that it was a sort of social macedoine; that gall lantry within it was dead; that women no longer aroused the interest of men absorbed in affairs; that they were merely an entr acte to their oc- | equations Surrounded with fewer temptations than was the grande dame of the eighteenth century twas she of the nineteenth more faithful to her marriage vows? Mime de Longueville doubts it. She was merely more careful of appearances; a greater mystery in intrigue was a necessity of her position, condition of its maintainance, and if, perchance detection came it was commented upon in the daily press in a manner so forcible that exposure worked in the interest of morality. Fear of journal istic comment was restraining in- fuence greater than any hitherto known in society.
 What of the men who were mar ried to these grandes danes of France in the third decade of the nineteenth century? Uusually says Mme de Longueville, they were of peasant or bourgeois extraction, successful ad~ venturers in finance or politics, either exploitfng their countrymen through chicanery or fraud or as Ministers of State impressing the power of their Icountry upon the nations of the
 world.
 What of the great gentlemen (grands gentilhomes) of those drawing rooms of intellect and wit ? Four-two of them the Dukes de Gammont and de Villeroi; the Marquis Louvre and the Count de Hautefeuille were invited to dinner by Bonnelle- Bouillon, Superintendent of Finance
 At the desert three large silver bowls filled with newly coined louis q or were placed upon the table, Bonnelle invited his guests to "ifelp them. selves" They were prompt to re- spond. They filled their pockets with the coin to the extent that they could
 barely walk. Cupidity appears to hav'
 been the universal leveler-New York Sun.