Conversation in the modern salon is so excessively dull that it is necessary to fill in the emptiness with singing and piano playing.

Still the symposiums of Plato were not always the order of the day in the drawing-rooms of the Renaissance, and it must be admitted that their social disputations would cause us intolerable weariness; however, tastes were different at that time.

In a circle of distinguished and gifted persons, to carry on a conversation gracefully and intelligently, and to give it a classic cast by introducing quotations from the ancients, or to engage in a discussion in dialogue on a chosen theme, afforded the keenest enjoyment.

It was the conversation of the Renaissance which attained later to such aesthetic perfection in France.

Talleyrand called this form of human intercourse man's greatest and most beautiful blessing.