In Piranesi’s Antiquities of Rome there is a series of engravings which the artist entitles his Dreams, and which are a memory of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. These engravings represent huge Gothic rooms: on the floor are all sorts of engines and machines, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc.—the expression of enormous power set in action, and of formidable resistance. Along the walls you see a staircase, and on that staircase, climbing, not without difficulty, Piranesi himself. Follow the steps a little higher, they stop suddenly before an abyss. Whatever might happen to poor Piranesi, you think him at least at the end of his labour, for he cannot take another step without falling: but raise your eyes, and you see a second staircase, and on this staircase again, Piranesi on the edge of another precipice. Look up still higher, and another staircase still more aerial rises before you, and again poor Piranesi continuing his ascent, and so on, up to the eternal staircase, and Piranesi disappearing with it into the clouds, that is, into the border of the engraving.

This feverish allegory represents fairly exactly the weariness of a useless labour, and the kind of giddiness which impatience produces. The chevalier, journeying for ever from drawing-room to drawing-room, and from gallery to gallery, was seized by a kind of rage.

‘By Jove,’ said he, ‘this is cruelty. After having been so charmed, so ravished, so enthusiastic about finding myself alone in this wretched palace (it was no longer the palace of the fairies) I won’t be able to get out of it. Plague on the idiocy which this idea of coming in here like Prince Fanfarinet with his boots of massive gold inspired me with; instead of telling the first lackey I met to conduct me without more ado to the auditorium!’

When he was experiencing these tardy regrets, the chevalier was, like Piranesi, half up a staircase on a landing, between three doors. Behind the centre door he seemed to hear a murmur so slight, so voluptuous, so to speak, that he could not refrain from listening. At the very moment he walked on, trembling lest he should be lending an indiscreet ear, the two swing-doors opened. A rush of air, scented by a thousand perfumes, a torrent of light, bright enough to dim the Gallery of Mirrors itself, struck him so suddenly that he recoiled a few paces.

‘My lord marquis desires to enter?’ asked the usher who had opened the door.

‘I want to go to the play,’ answered the chevalier.

‘It has just finished at this very minute.’

As he spoke extremely beautiful ladies, delicately enamelled in white and carmine, giving, not the arm, nor even the hand, but the tips of their fingers to old noblemen and young noblemen, began to come out of the auditorium, taking great care to walk sideways so as not to spoil their hoop petticoats. All this brilliant company were speaking in hushed voices with a half gaiety, an admixture of fear and respect.

‘What’s this?’ said the chevalier, not guessing that chance had led him precisely to the little lobby.

‘The king is going to pass,’ answered the usher.

There is a sort of audacity which feels no qualms, it is only too much at home; it is the courage of those who are ill-bred. Our young provincial, though he was reasonably brave, did not possess this accomplishment. At the very sound of those words: ‘The king is going to pass’, he stopped motionless and almost terrified.

King Louis XV, who rode on horseback at the hunt a dozen leagues without noticing them, was, as is well known, royally listless. He boasted, not without reason, of being the first gentleman in France, and his mistresses said of him, not without cause, that he was the best built and the most handsome. It was an important business to see him leave his chair and deign to walk in person. When he crossed the lobby, with one arm placed, or rather stretched, on the shoulder of Monsieur d’Argenson, while his red heel slid along the floor (he had made this form of laziness fashionable), all the whisperings ceased: the courtiers inclined their heads, not daring to bow completely; and the fair ladies bending gently back on