NO ENTRY! *slam*

This is a hilarious excerpt from "Painters and Public Life" written in the 18th century.
The narrator was just refused early entry into the Louvre gallery, and found himself stranded in a courtyard of other-equally rejected- hopefuls as this happened...


"... a grand carriage, flying more than rolling thanks to the dashing speed of the chargers that drew it, pulled up to the desolate portal. The luxury of the vehicle and its lackeys told me what I was about to see emerge from the compartment.

The first to appear was a young man made more out of costume than he was out of flesh. It would have been more accurate to call him a richly dressed phantom. The color of his diaphanous visage was almost the same shade as the powder that weighed down his hair. His arms and legs had the appearance of belonging more to a skeleton than to a living body... I believe he only lived by an artifice of vanity.

There then appeared a lady about forty years in age. Her bearing was haughty, her speech sour-sweet, and although already obese, she seemed to gorge herself further on the glory she extracted from the carriage and retinue. The sight of this crowd of people waiting on the good humor of the Swiss guard inflated still more the volume of her self-regard, which triumphed completely when, realizing that entry had been forbidden these onlookers, she imagined that she would thus be exercising an EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGE on entering, one that would command the deference of all eyes kept to a strict ration.

A younger woman, of pleasing proportions but whose looks were more flashy than refined, was barely twenty. Her glance might have seemed modest but was really only guilty. She only half opened her eyes, but did not for that see any less: she turned them on you only in secret, but it was easy to recognize in this suspicious reserve that she was the willing pupil of her fat companion, whose jaded glances said no more than hers... She attracted all eyes to her by the vivacity, not to say the dizziness, of her speech and manners, managing it so well that whatever happened she could count on shooting sparks into the art of any man around her.

I do not speak to you of their complexions. You know wonderfully well that the women of Paris pride themselves on never having any. Lotions, ointments, white lead rouge: these are everything. Each one manipulates these drugs to her own fantasy, how then can one discern the skin underneath?

The face of the older one carried a violent hue, and one could not have accused her of trying to deceive anyone by the art with which she deployed her rouge. Her cheeks were two placards, more painted than any mask, and I was astonished to see anyone so made-up so early in the morning.

The younger one had not received the same treatment, and when taken on her own seemed to be in excellent health. But when one contemplated her at the same time as her companion, one perceived in her a languished quality, a kind of listlessness, and on final examination, she could be seen to have just been patched up with white plaster.

They were both, moreover, in a state of undress as indecent as if they had never left home, but rich enough to rival the finery of much more illustrious ladies.

Their escort knocked on the door, with the assurance of a man to whom no door is closed. But he did not find there even the pleasure of a response. Vainly, after a long monologue worthy of the character I have painted for you, he humiliated himself to the point of pleading, of begging. All was deaf and dumb to his entreaties He found there an incorruptible integrity.

The ladies were not silent during all this: they complained bitterly of the lack of consideration being shown them. the gaiety they had brought at the gallop suddenly deserted them and let collapse the graces it had sustained. My God, but mortified pride cuts a sorry figure.

There are other vices that adversity chastens. This one is just the most ridiculous and the most unjust. He who had wanted to bestow this gift ended up swallowing it, and taking the blame as well. the fat women quarreled nastily with him as he re-entered the carriage, whose horses, less intelligent than those of HIppolytus. Instead of having 'a mournful eye and downcast head' better 'to conform to' their 'sad sentiment,' left as smartly as they had arrived, taking this humiliated trio off to parts unknown." -Narrator


It's wonderful to see the collapse of social barriers of art. :)