It is not a pleasant picture, but it is not exaggerated.
There was, however, another side to the so-called ``Ancien
Regime'' which we must keep in mind.
A wealthy middle class, closely connected with the nobility
(by the usual process of the rich banker's daughter marrying
the poor baron's son) and a court composed of all the most
entertaining people of France, had brought the polite art of
graceful living to its highest development. As the best brains
of the country were not allowed to occupy themselves with
questions of political economics, they spent their idle hours
upon the discussion of abstract ideas.
As fashions in modes of thought and personal behaviour
are quite as likely to run to extremes as fashion in dress, it
was natural that the most artificial society of that day should
take a tremendous interest in what they considered ``the simple
life.'' The king and the queen, the absolute and unquestioned
proprietors of this country galled France, together with all its
colonies and dependencies, went to live in funny little country
houses all dressed up as milk-maids and stable-boys and played
at being shepherds in a happy vale of ancient Hellas. Around
them, their courtiers danced attendance, their court-musicians
composed lovely minuets, their court barbers devised more
and more elaborate and costly headgear, until from sheer boredom
and lack of real jobs, this whole artificial world of Versailles
(the great show place which Louis XIV had built far
away from his noisy and restless city) talked of nothing but
those subjects which were furthest removed from their own
lives, just as a man who is starving will talk of nothing except
food.
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