V.
Paris, March 25, 1832.
The Belgian campaign, the blockade of Lisbon, and the capture of Ancona are the three characteristic heroic deeds with which the juste milieu manifests to the world its power, its wisdom, and its grandeur; while in the Department of the Interior it gathers as glorious laurels beneath the pillars of the Palais Royal or at Lyons and Grenoble. France never stood so low before in foreign eyes, not even in the days of a Pompadour and of a Dubarry. People now perceive that there is something even more lamentable than the rule of royal-kept mistresses. There is more honour to be found in the boudoir of a femme galante than in the counting-house of a banker.[1] Even in the oratory of Charles IX. natural dignity was not so utterly lost sight of,
- ↑ A saying with little sense or truth; but Heine never lost an opportunity to compliment Venus-Lorette. He professed to regard his uncle Solomon, the banker, as the most honourable man living, while in many passages he manifests a deep conviction that all gay women are utterly unprincipled.
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