“Yes; we are all very much amused over here, and wonder if you are really in earnest about your Palace of Happiness?”
“Nothing more serious, my dear boy. It will be the crowning of all our social reforms.”
“Bah, _mon cher_! you have lost all your sense of humour! When I think of our _diners fins_, and our pleasant chats together, I cannot understand your making such fools of yourselves—especially over a mere trifle.”
“Trifle, my dear Victor! This is the most important event in our history, and the results to which this trifle will lead are colossal. But you will one day perhaps be induced to imitate us.”
“Nonsense, my dear man; we are too eclectic to return to paradisaical fashions. Rabelais, with his boisterous jovialty, and sound doctrine of good health united to good spirits, is more to the taste of a race which to this day, in some provinces, speaks his sixteenth-century vernacular, and inherits his practical views of life.”
“Ah! but we have read Carlyle, my dear Victor, and seen through the hollowness of our former social fabric.”
“_Mon cher ami_, had you carefully read Montaigne, you would know that the great essayist had hurled a stone at the tawdriness of our clothes-screens long before the Recluse of Cheyne Walk. But I forget that you take this kind of thing to heart! You are a _moral_ race—oh! a very moral one—whatever you may do.”
“I think, dear Victor, you will be impressed with our national reforms when you are thoroughly acquainted with them.”
“Well, well, what is the upshot of all this? I can quite realise the scientific import of the Seer’s discovery; though, for my own part, I should very much object to seeing the inner soul of a Loubet or the secret motives of a Combes. But I can imagine that in business dealings, or in matrimonial transactions, it might be of great advantage to be able to investigate the motives of financiers or of mothers-in-law. Still, I want to know what part _you_, the English aristocracy, are playing in this burlesque?”
“We are the leaders in this great bloodless revolution; and we have, owing to our self-abnegation, saved the masses, and rebuilt our social edifice on a stronger basis than before.”
“My poor Lionel, that’s been done long ago! Our revolution of 1789 was nothing but a noble renunciation of all prerogatives and privileges on the part of our _noblesse_; still, the outrages of 1793 very soon showed how futile were the attempts at reform—from within.”