OF FRENCH SOCIETY. 69 much as a woman of an ordinary mind could have done that is, she was at once an infidel and a hypocrite. He proclaims to her glory, that, " without believing in any catechism but that of good sense, she never failed to receive the sacraments, painful as the stupid ceremony was, with the best grace imaginable, as often as decency, or the scruples of her friends, made it becom- ing." " Perhaps," adds her prophane panegyrist, there was as much great- ness in receiving them with her notion of them, as there would have been in refusing them." Is it any wonder that, with such a conformity of principles, she obtained the prize of the academy, as well as the homage of the acade- mician ? We are amused to think with what a contemptuous smile of pity these ladies, with all their allowed taste and learning, must, if theywere consistent, have beheld the pictures of those obsolete wives, Andromache and Penelope, as deline-
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