That mode of treating elegant manners put them out of fashion; they
were speedily abandoned, and the barbarity of their successors still so
lingers amongst us, that every day you see put into the lumber-room an
elegant Grecian chair which has broken your arm, and canopies which
smell of the stable, because they are stuffed with hay.
At that time, (1801,) the habits of good company were not yet extinct in
Paris; of the _old_ company of France, and not of what is _now_ termed
good company, and which prevailed 30 years ago only among postilions and
stable-boys. At that period, men of good birth _did not smoke in the
apartments of their wives_, because they felt it to be a dirty and
disgusting practice; they _generally washed their hands_; when they went
out to dine, or to pass the evening in a house of their acquaintance,
they _bowed to the lady at its head in entering and retiring_, and did
not appear so abstracted in their thoughts as to behave as they would
have done in an hotel. They were then careful _not to turn their back on
those with whom they conversed_, so as to show only an ear or the point
of a nose to those whom they addressed. They spoke of something else,
besides those eternal politics on which no two can ever agree, and which
give occasion only to the interchange of bitter expressions. There has
sprung from these endless disputes, disunion in families, the
dissolution of the oldest friendships, and the growth of hatred which
will continue till the grave.
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