Note 619 — Chapter XI

The Mémoires de Grammont are known to everybody; and are almost unique in their kind, not only for the grace of their style and the vivacity of their pictures, but for the happy ignorance in which the author seems to have lived, that any one of his readers could imagine that there are such things as virtue and principle in the world. In the delirium of thoughtless voluptuousness they resemble some of the memoirs about the end of Louis XV.'s reign, and somewhat later; though I think, even in these, there is generally some effort, here and there, at moral censure, or some affectation of sensibility. They, indeed, have always an awful moral; and in the light portraits of the court of Versailles (such, sometimes, as we might otherwise almost blush to peruse) we have before us the handwriting on the wall, the winter whirlwind hushed in its grim repose, and expecting its prey, the vengeance of an oppressed people and long-forbearing Deity. No such retribution fell on the courtiers of Charles II.; but they earned in their own age, what has descended to posterity, though possibly very indifferent to themselves, the disgust and aversion of all that was respectable among mankind.