But in so doing he saved his Most Christian Majesty from menial contamination.

Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori, Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
It has already been remarked that the term "leisure", as here used, does not connote indolence or quiescence.

What it connotes is non-productive consumption of time.

Time is consumed non-productively (1) from a sense of the unworthiness of productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a life of idleness.

But the whole of the life of the gentleman of leisure is not spent before the eyes of the spectators who are to be impressed with that spectacle of honorific leisure which in the ideal scheme makes up his life.