However, Dallington Is Very Much Against The Saltations Of Elderly
Persons.
"I remember a countriman of ours, well seene in artes and
language, well stricken in yeares, a mourner for his second wife, a
father of mariageable children, who with his other booke studies
abroade, joyned also the exercise of dancing:
It was his hap in an
honourable Bal (as they call it) to take a fall, which in mine opinion
was not so disgracefull as the dancing it selfe, to a man of his
stuffe."[234]
Dallington would have criticized Frenchmen more severely than ever had
he known that even Sully gave way in private to a passion for dancing.
At least Tallemant des Reaux says that "every evening a valet de chambre
of the King played on the lute the dances of the day, and M. de Sully
danced all alone, in some sort of extraordinary hat - such as he always
wore in his cabinet - while his cronies applauded him, although he was
the most awkward man in the world."[235]
Tennis is another courtly exercise in which Dallington urges moderation.
"This is dangerous, (if used with too much violence) for the body; and
(if followed with too much diligence,) for the purse. A maine point of
the Travellers care." He reached France when the rage for tennis was at
its height, - when there were two hundred and fifty tennis courts in
Paris,[236] - and "two tennis courts for every one Church through
France," according to his computation.[237] Everyone was at it; - nobles,
artizans, women, and children.
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