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1Monseigneur in Town Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his
2grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the
3crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could
4swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France;
5but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men
6besides the Cook. Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist
7with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct
8the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second,
9milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured
10napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense
11with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been
12the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.
13Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly
14represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible
15was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state
16affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all
17countries similarly favoured!--always was for England (by way of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who
18sold it. Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own
19way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way--tend to his
20own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the
21world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran:
22"The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur." Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar
23embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied
24himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of
25them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were
26rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his
27sister from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and
28had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an
29appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated
30before by mankind--always excepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked
31down upon him with the loftiest contempt. A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables,
32twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but
33plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General--howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social
34morality--was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day. For,
35the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of
36the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the
37rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equidistant
38from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business--if that could
39have been anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval
40officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world
41worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying
42horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted
43on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score.
44People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or
45with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made
46great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in
47the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the
48State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting
49babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were
50remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving
51Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur.
52Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time--and has been since--to be known by its
53fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at
54the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that
55the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur--forming a goodly half of the polite company--would have found it
56hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a
57Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world--which does not go far
58towards the realisation of the name of mother--there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the
59unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty. The
60leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a
61dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going
62rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of
63Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn
64cataleptic on the spot--thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance.
65Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about
66"the Centre of Truth:" holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth--which did not need much demonstration--but
67had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to
68be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with
69spirits went on--and it did a world of good which never became manifest. But, the comfort was, that all the company at
70the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress
71day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such
72delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the
73sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore
74little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and
75what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that
76fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away.
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