if Bohemia would endure a king. His verve is inexhaustible. To him we owe a map of the country and the names of the seven castles which Nodier could not discover.”
“The one thing wanting in one of the cleverest skits of our time,” said the Marquise.
“You can form your own opinion of La Palferine from a few characteristic touches,” continued Nathan. “He once came upon a friend of his, a fellow-Bohemian, involved in a dispute on the boulevard with a bourgeois who chose to consider himself affronted. To the modern powers that be, Bohemia is insolent in the extreme. There was talk of calling one another out.
“‘One moment,’ interposed La Palferine, as much Lauzun for the occasion as Lauzun himself could have been. ‘One moment. Monsieur was born, I suppose?’
“‘What, sir?’
“‘Yes, are you born? What is your name?’
“‘Godin.’
“‘Godin, eh!’ exclaimed La Palferine’s friend.
“‘One moment, my dear fellow,’ interrupted La Palferine. ‘There are the Trigaudins. Are you one of them?’
“Astonishment.
“‘No? Then you are one of the new dukes of Gaeta, I suppose, of imperial creation? No? Oh, well, how can you expect my friend to cross swords with you when he will be secretary of an embassy and ambassador some day, and you will owe him respect? Godin! the thing is non-existent! You are a nonentity, Godin. My friend cannot be expected to beat the air! When one is somebody, one cannot fight with a nobody! Come, my dear fellow – good-day.’
“‘My respects to madame,’ added the friend.
“Another day La Palferine was walking with a friend who flung his cigar end in the face of a passer-by. The recipient had the bad taste to resent this.
“‘You have stood your antagonist’s fire,’ said the young Count, ‘the witnesses declare that honor is satisfied.’
“La Palferine owed his tailor a thousand francs, and the man instead of going himself sent his assistant to ask for the money. The assistant found the unfortunate debtor up six pairs of stairs at the back of a yard at the further end of the Faubourg du Roule. The room was unfurnished save for a bed (such a bed!), a table, and such a table! La Palferine heard the preposterous demand – ‘A demand which I should qualify as illegal,’ he said when he told us the story, ‘made, as it was, at seven o’clock in the morning.’
“‘Go,’ he answered, with the gesture and attitude of a Mirabeau, ‘tell your master in what condition you find me.’
“The assistant apologized and withdrew. La Palferine, seeing the young man on the landing, rose in the attire celebrated in verse in Britannicus to add, ‘Remark the stairs! Pay particular attention to the stairs; do not forget to tell him about the stairs!’
“In every position into which chance has thrown La Palferine, he has never failed to rise to the occasion. All that he does is witty and never in bad taste; always and in everything he displays the genius of Rivarol, the polished subtlety of the old French noble. It was he who told that delicious anecdote of a friend of Laffitte the banker. A national fund had been started to give back to Laffitte the mansion in which the Revolution of 1830 was brewed, and this friend appeared at the offices of the fund with, ‘Here are five francs, give me a hundred sous change!’ – A caricature was made of it. – It was once La Palferine’s misfortune, in judicial style, to make a young girl a mother. The girl, not a very simple innocent, confessed all to her mother, a respectable matron, who hurried forthwith to La Palferine and asked what he meant to do.
“‘Why, madame,’ said he, ‘I am neither a surgeon nor a midwife.’
“She collapsed, but three or four years later she returned to the charge, still persisting in her inquiry, ‘What did La Palferine mean to do?’
“‘Well, madame,’ returned he, ‘when the child is seven years old, an age at which a boy ought to pass out of women’s hands’ – an indication of entire agreement on the mother’s part – ‘if the child is really mine’ – another gesture of assent – ‘if there is a striking likeness, if he bids fair to be a gentleman, if I can recognize in him my turn of mind, and more particularly the Rusticoli air; then, oh – ah!’ – a new movement from the matron – ‘on my word and honor, I will make him a cornet of – sugar-plums!’
“All this, if you will permit me to make use of the phraseology employed by M. Sainte-Beuve for his biographies of obscurities – all this, I repeat, is the playful and sprightly yet already somewhat decadent side of a strong race. It smacks rather of the Parc-aux-Cerfs than of the Hotel de Rambouillet. It is a race of the strong rather than of the sweet; I incline to lay a little debauchery to its charge, and more than I should wish in brilliant and generous natures; it is gallantry after the fashion of the Marechal de Richelieu, high spirits and frolic carried rather too far; perhaps we may see in it the outrances of another age, the Eighteenth Century pushed to extremes; it harks back to the Musketeers; it is an exploit stolen from Champcenetz; nay, such light-hearted inconstancy takes us back to the festooned and ornate period of the old court of the Valois. In an age as moral as the present, we are bound to regard audacity of this kind sternly; still, at the same time that ‘cornet of sugar-plums’ may serve to warn young girls of the perils of lingering where fancies, more charming than chastened, come thickly from the first; on the rosy flowery unguarded slopes, where trespasses ripen into errors full of equivocal effervescence, into too palpitating issues. The anecdote puts La Palferine’s genius before you in all its vivacity and completeness. He realizes Pascal’s entre-deux, he comprehends the whole scale between tenderness and pitilessness, and, like Epaminondas, he is equally great in extremes. And not merely so, his epigram stamps the epoch; the accoucheur is a modern innovation. All the refinements of modern civilization are summed up in the phrase. It is monumental.”
“Look here, my dear Nathan, what farrago of nonsense is this?” asked the Marquise in bewilderment.
“Madame la Marquise,” returned Nathan, “you do not know the value of these ‘precious’ phrases; I am talking Sainte-Beuve, the new kind of French. – I resume. Walking one day arm in arm with a friend along the boulevard, he was accosted by a ferocious creditor, who inquired:
“‘Are you thinking of me, sir?’
“‘Not the least in the world,’ answered the Count.
“Remark the difficulty of the position. Talleyrand, in similar circumstances, had already replied, ‘You are very inquisitive, my dear fellow!’ To imitate the inimitable great man was out of the question. – La Palferine, generous as Buckingham, could not bear to be caught empty-handed. One day when he had nothing to give a little Savoyard chimney-sweeper, he dipped a hand into a barrel of grapes in a grocer’s doorway and filled the child’s cap from it. The little one ate away at his grapes; the grocer began by laughing, and ended by holding out his hand.
“‘Oh, fie! monsieur,’ said La Palferine, ‘your left hand ought not to know what my right hand doth.’
“With his adventurous courage, he never refuses any odds, but there is wit in his bravado. In the Passage de l’Opera he chanced to meet a man who had spoken slightingly of him, elbowed him as he passed, and then turned and jostled him a second time.
“‘You are very clumsy!’
“‘On the contrary; I did it on purpose.’
“The
