THE

ANCIENT RÉGIM E.

"

A TALE.

BY

G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF

," "THE ROBBER," "THE GENTLEMAN OF THE

THE GIPSY,"

OLD SCHOOL," ETC., ETC., ETC.

IN TWO VOLUME S.

VOL. II.

NEW-YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-STREET.

1841.

26X370

THE

ANCIENT RÉGIME.

CHAPTER I

We must now quit the cool outer air for a short time, and enter into an abode of revelry and merriment, within which, ever since darkness had set in, a party of five men and three women had been eating and drinking, and laughing and singing, and holding a conversation which, though the language and the absolute terms might be something more refined than they would have been in a cabaret of the common people, was in substance and meaning of a more gross, disgusting, and degrading kind than might have been expected, in any ordinary circumstances, in the poorest auberge in France.

Those members of the lower orders that ape the vices of the higher classes are sure to become even more disgustingly depraved than when they remain satisfied with the coarser vices more common in their own rank. The men and women here assembled were the lowest grade of the vicious followers of a vicious court; and there was mixed with the libertine slang, which they had acquired in their base services to those above them, a vulgarity which left their profligacy naked in its most horrible form. There was, withal, a merriment, too, and a levity, and an affectation of wit and smartness, which rendered the caricature of that abandoned court complete.

But it is forbidden to me in these pages to draw the minute traits of a picture so revolting; and, contenting myself with this general description, I must leave the whole preceding part of the conversation that was there going on unsaid, up to the moment when one of the party, with a foaming glass of rich wine in his hand and a licentious jest upon his lips, suddenly started and set down the glass, exclaiming, "Ventre Saint Gris!