Note 4 — Chapter XLI · OF NATIONS WITH REGARD TO LOVE. FRANCE

I admire the manners of the time of Lewis XIV: many a man might pass in three days from the salons of Marly to the battlefield of Senet or Ramillies. Wives, mothers, sweethearts, were all in a continual state of apprehension. See the Letters of Madame de Sévigné. The presence of danger had kept in the language an energy and a freshness that we would not dare to hazard nowadays; and yet M. de Lameth killed his wife's lover. If a Walter Scott were to write a novel of the times of Lewis XIV, we should be a good deal surprised.