Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 06

								

mind that restored the balance.
The spells of Madame de Ventadour drew Maltravers into this charmed
circle of all that was highest, purest, and most gifted in the society of
Paris.  There he did not meet, as were met in the times of the old
regime, sparkling abbes intent upon intrigues; or amorous old dowagers,
eloquent on Rousseau; or powdered courtiers, uttering epigrams against
kings and religions,--straws that foretold the whirlwind.  Paul Courier
was right!  Frenchmen are Frenchmen still; they are full of fine phrases,
and their thoughts smell of the theatre; they mistake foil for diamonds,
the Grotesque for the Natural, the Exaggerated for the Sublime: but still
I say, Paul Courier was right,--there is more honesty now in a single
salon in Paris than there was in all France in the days of Voltaire.
Vast interests and solemn causes are no longer tossed about like
shuttlecocks on the battledores of empty tongues.  In the
bouleversement of Revolutions the French have fallen on their feet!
Meeting men of all parties and all classes, Maltravers was struck with
the heightened tone of public morals, the earnest sincerity of feeling
which generally pervaded all, as compared with his first recollections of
the Parisians.  He saw that true elements for national wisdom were at
work, though he saw also that there was no country in which their
operations would be more liable to disorder, more slow and irregular in
their results.  The French are like the Israelites in the Wilderness,
when, according to a Hebrew tradition, every morning they seemed on the
verge of Pisgah, and every evening they were as far from it as ever.  But
still time rolls on, the pilgrimage draws to its close, and the Canaan
must come at last!
At Valerie's house, Maltravers once more met the De Montaignes.  It was a
painful meeting, for they thought of Cesarini when they met.
It is now time to return to that unhappy man.  Cesarini had been removed
from England when Maltravers quitted it after Lady Florence's death; and
Maltravers had thought it best to acquaint De Montaigne with all the
circumstances that had led to his affliction.  The pride and the honour
of the high-spirited Frenchman were deeply shocked by the tale of fraud
and guilt, softened as it was; but the sight of the criminal, his awful
punishment, merged every other feeling in compassion.  Placed under the
care of the most skilful practitioners in Paris, great hopes of
Cesarini's recovery had been at first entertained.  Nor was it long,
indeed, before he appeared entirely restored, so far as the external and
superficial tokens of sanity could indicate a cure.  He testified
complete consciousness of the kindness of his relations, and clear
remembrance of the past: but to the incoherent ravings of delirium, an
intense melancholy, still more deplorable, succeeded.  In this state,
however, he became once more the inmate of his brother-in-law's house;
and though avoiding all society, except that of Teresa, whose