File:The man of pleasure (1913) (14577433489).jpg

Identifier: manofpleasure01nevi (find matches)
Title: The man of pleasure
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Nevill, Ralph, 1865-1930
Subjects: Characters and characteristics
Publisher: New York, Frederick A. Stokes company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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were dead, and a sortof sinister melancholy seemed to be hovering in theair. Sainte-Beuve wrote: LEmpire est bienmalade. Then came the war, during which many a man of pleasure met his death, bravely trying tostay the advance of the triumphant Prussians.When peace was again established, France oncemore began to flourish; but the old careless life ofthe Boulevards was a thing of the past. The joyousdays and merry nights had gone for ever. Oldviveurs of the fifties and sixties sobered down intostaid old men. Their life lay not in the future, butin the past. They lamented the time when theAvenue de ITmperatrice was full of well-appointedcarriages and great landaus, so well suited to an eraof superabundant skirts. Gone were all these fine equipages, together withthe demi-dmnnont of Cora Pearl and the daumontsof her sisters in frivolity, some of whom pridedthemselves upon their horses being ridden byjockeys in gay jackets. Nevertheless, the life of Paris continued much asit had always done.
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PARISIAN BEAUTIES OF THE SIXTIES. PARIS 249 Shortly after the war a fair Hght-of-love ofthe Second Empire, meeting Arsene Houssaye,said to him: People still amuse themselves,but its no longer the same thing. His replywas : Its always the same thing! And he wasright. Paris, perhaps even more to-day than in theeighteenth century, when the noblesse alone couldgratify every desire for amusement, remains thegreat pleasure-resort of Europe. Its strange com-pound of art, intellect, and dissipation possesses apeculiar charm which no other city is able tooffer. Here no stern restrictions exist to preventthe reveller from carousing till the dawn of day :and the \Wldest extravagances (provided that theperpetrator of them has a well-filled purse) provokenothing but a smile. Nevertheless, there are timeswhen in Paris even the most thoroughgoing viveiirbecomes conscious of a strange feeling of melancholy.Pleasure and sorrow are not so very far apart, andwhen the lights ftide away and the gay music

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