Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 104.djvu/103

Rh imposing style of beauty was still worthily upheld, with the aid of a certain elegance derived from blood and descent, by the Duchess of Guiche, since Duchess of Grammont. A young girl was also at the same epoch much sought after in all the aristocratic salons, where she was not less admired for her rare and splendid beauty than she was for that poetic talent which made of her "la Muse de la Patrie."

Political men were at that time entertained, if not presided over, in the salons of Madame de Saint Aulaire and of the young Duchess of Broglio. There was in these two distinguished ladies a delightful harmony of intelligence and thought, and of elevated and religious sentiments not incompatible with worldly and political pursuits.

The somewhat despotic power of handsome swordsmen was put down in the boudoirs and salons. There were other things to talk about besides duels, bulletins of the grande armée, and cavalry charges. Celebrated preachers, bishops of a rather worldly turn, people of talent and of irreproachable character, and political men of a certain importance, were now the chief persons who obtained favour in these eloquent and aristocratic assemblies.

Fashionable ladies even attended the more interesting debates of the Chamber of Deputies. Each orator filled the galleries with his friends upon the days when he was to address the house. The secret of a feminine protection could be detected even in the highest political destinies of the time; every minister had his Egeria. Princess Bagration, whose beauty, graces, and wit, admired at more than one congress, have become a matter of history, encouraged and fostered, by her attendance at the tribune, the easy yet spirited eloquence of M. de Martignac.

A new era commenced with the Monarchy of July. The salons of the preceding régime continued open, but they were filled with regrets, spite, and bad humour against the government which had just been installed. Then a new and distinct race of women sprang into existence, took the impression of the day, and soon imparted a tone to all around. These young women, of a beauty which held a middle place between the beauty of the Empire and that of the Restoration, making their entrance into the world after the government of July was established and consolidated, knew only it, troubled themselves Very little with the pretensions of those who had preceded them, and who were now in no small degree faded, and launched forth in a career of their own, full of charms and delights. Paris had experienced the reign of the Faubourg Saint Germain, and afterwards that of the Faubourg Saint Honoré; it was now the turn of the Place Saint Georges. Every quarter of Paris has, in reality, its distinctive manners, the contrast between which can neither be calculated nor appreciated by distance. Young women made their appearance at this moment, and aspired to the frivolous and evanescent celebrity of fashion, who were possessed of charms, and always dressed in a style alike rich and recherché, who were intellectual but inclined to the positive, and no longer carried away by the imagination, and who were possessed of a determination of will, which was sustained without an effort in the midst of the most varied and most brilliant .dissipation. In the world of that time, fortune held as great a place as ever, and even greater than heretofore. People took a pleasure in displaying their riches, either by costly dress, by the splendour of their equipages, or by their luxurious furniture, extending itself to the fine arts and objects of vertu. These