XVI
THE LADIES
Madama Récamier et Ses Amis, by Edouard Herriot.
My Portion, by Rebekah Kohut.
Noon, by Kathleen Norris.
A Woman of Fifty, by Rheta Childe Dorr.
The most famous Beauty of China, Yang Kuei-Fei, by Shu-Chiung.
Few periods of French History have tempted the pens of biographers and historians more than that of the Directoire. It was then that political and literary passions clashed and in the effort to reconcile and unite them, expression of ideas was encouraged; salons were formed where the craft of literature, art and statesmanship could be discussed; and freedom of speech ceased to be a myth. Society was no longer composed of the exclusive aristocracy; personal merit, intelligence and wit were now the passports for the man—and charm, vivacity, culture and kindness for the woman. All of them strove to be numbered among the élite of the fastidious salons. Those who succeeded have their names permanently written in the annals of the period. Many of them contributed enormously to the development and dissemination of literature among the upper middle-class in France, and their influence is still felt among critics and writers. Only two generations separate us from them, and if Madame Récamier, Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant seem like figures of another world, remote and dimmed, their younger contemporaries like Sainte-Beuve and Napoléon III belong to modern times. It is not the distance of the Directoire that makes it part of historical tradition; it is the extraordinary change that has taken place in manners, in customs and in society, since then.