Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/164

Rh musical world, and wielded, the one the most intense, the other its broadest power. The civilized world then looked to Paris for the precious traditions of good taste, and the city deserved this deference as it does not now.

The sense of security which then prevailed in the French capital was indeed illusory. The stable basis of things was already undermined by the dangerous action of theories and of thinkers. Louis Philippe was unconsciously nearing the abrupt close of his reign. A new chaos was imminent, and one out of which was to come, first a heroic uprising, and then a despotism so monstrous and mischievous as to foredoom itself, a caricature of military empire which for a time cheated Europe, and in the end died of the emptiness of its own corruption.

Into this Paris Margaret came, not unannounced. Her essay on American Literature, which had recently appeared in her volume entitled Papers on Literature and Art, had already been translated into French, and printed in the Revue Indépendante. The same periodical 8000 after published a notice of Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Margaret enjoyed the comfortable aspect of the apartment which she occupied with her travelling-companions at Hôtel Rougemont, Boulevard Poissoniére. She mentions the clock, mirror, curtained bed, and small wood-fire, which were then, and are to-day, so costly to the transient occupant.

Though at first not familiar with the sound of the French language, she soon had some pleasant acquaintances, and was not long in finding her way to the literary and social eminences who were prepared to receive her as their peer.

First among these she mentions George Sand, to