II giovin cuore o non vede affatto i difetti

di chi li sta vicino o li vede immensi.

Error comune ai giovinetti che portano fuoco nell’

interna dell’ anima.

  LAMPUGNANI.

One day Octave learned in Paris that one of the men whom he saw most often and took most pleasure in seeing, one of his friends, as the word is used in society, owed the handsome fortune which he spent with such grace to what in Octave’s eyes was the basest of actions (legacy hunting). Mademoiselle de Zohiloff, to whom he made haste, immediately on his return to Andilly, to impart this painful discovery, felt that he bore it very well. He underwent no attack of misanthropy, shewed no desire to quarrel openly with the man.

Another day, he returned quite early from a country house in Picardy, where he was to have spent the evening. “How dull all that talk is!” he said to Armance. “Always hunting, the beauty of the country, Rossini’s music, the fine arts! Not only that, but they are lying when they pretend to be interested. These people are foolish enough to be frightened, they imagine they are living in a beleaguered city and forbid themselves to discuss the news of the siege. What a miserable race! And how angry it makes me to belong to it!” “Very well! Go and visit the besiegers,” said Armance; “their absurdities will help you to endure those of the army in which your birth has enrolled you.” “It is a serious question,” Octave went on. “Heaven knows what I feel when I hear in one of our drawing-rooms one of our friends give voice to some opinion that is absurd or cruel; still, I can remain honourably silent. My regret remains invisible. But if I let myself be taken to see the banker Martigny...” “There you are,” said Armance, “a man so refined as he is, so clever, such a slave to his vanity, will receive you with open arms.” “Doubtless; but for my part, however moderate, however modest, however silent I try to make myself, I shall end by expressing my opinion about somebody or something. A moment later, the door of the drawing-room is flung open; the butler announces Monsieur So-and-so, manufacturer at ————, who in stentorian tones shouts from the threshold: ‘Would you believe it, my dear Martigny, there are ultras, fools enough, stupid enough, idiotic enough to say that...’ Whereupon the worthy manufacturer repeats, word for word, the little scrap of opinion which I have just announced in all modesty. What am I to do?” “Pretend not to have heard him.” “That is what I should like. I was not put into this world to correct coarse manners or wrong judgments; still less do I wish to give the man, by speaking to him, the right to shake hands with me in the street when next we meet. But in that drawing-room I have the misfortune not to be just like any one else. Would to God that I might find there the equality of which all those gentlemen make so much. For instance, what would you have me do with the title that I bear when I am announced at M. de Martigny’s?” “But it is your intention to discard the title if you can manage to do so without offending your father.” “Doubtless; but to forget the title, in giving my name to M. de Martigny’s servant, might seem, might it not, an act of cowardice? Like Rousseau, who called his dog Turc instead of Duc , because there was a Duke in the room.”

[Like Rousseau, poor Octave is fighting against phantoms. He would have passed unnoticed in any drawing-room in Paris, notwithstanding the prefix to his name. There prevails, moreover, in his sketch of a section of society which he has never seen, an absurd tone of animosity which he will correct in time. Fools are to be found in every class. If there were a class which rightly or wrongly was accused of coarseness, it would very soon be distinguished by a great prudery and solemnity of manners.]

“But there is no such hatred of titles among the Liberal bankers,” said Armance. “The other day Madame de Claix, who goes everywhere, happened to go to the ball at M. Montange’s, and you remember how she made us laugh that evening by pretending that they are so fond of titles that she had heard some one announced as ‘Madame la Colonelle.’”

“Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself. If I do not reply to the thundering voice of the manufacturer who shouts from the door that what I have just said is asinine, how they will all stare at me. That is the weak point in my nature: I cannot simply twitch my ears and laugh at them, as Madame d’Aumale would suggest.

“If I intercept their stare, all my pleasure is gone for the rest of the evening. The discussion that will then begin in my mind, as to whether they meant to insult me, is capable of destroying my peace of mind for three days.”

“But are you quite certain,” said Armance, “of this alleged coarseness of manners which you so generously attribute to the other side? Did not you see the other day that Talma’s children are boarding at the same school as the sons of a Duke?” “It is the men of forty-five, who became rich during the Revolution, who hold the ball in our drawing-rooms, not the schoolfellows of Talma’s children.” “I would wager that they have more intelligence than many of us. Who is the man who shines in the House of Peers? You yourself made that painful observation the other day.”

“Oh! If I were to give my fair cousin lessons in logic, how I should tease her! What is a man’s intelligence to me? It is his manners that may make me unhappy. The most foolish of our men, M. de ———, for instance, may be highly ridiculous, but he is never offensive. The other day I was talking at the Aumales’ of my visit to Liancourt; I was talking of the latest machinery which the worthy Duke has imported from Manchester. A man who was in the room said suddenly: ‘It’s not so, that’s not true.’ I was quite sure that he did not mean to contradict me; but his rudeness kept me silent for an hour.”

“And this man was a banker?” “He was not one of us. The amusing thing is, that I wrote to the foreman of the mills at Liancourt, and it appears that my friend who contradicted me was quite wrong.” “I don’t find that M. Montange, the young banker who comes to see Madame de Claix, has rude manners.” “His are honeyed; it is a form that rude manners take, when they are frightened.”

“I think their women very pretty,” Armance went on. “I should like to know whether their conversation is marred by that note of hatred or of dignity that is afraid of being wounded, which appears at times among us. Oh, how I wish that a good judge like my cousin could tell me what goes on in those drawing-rooms! When I see the bankers’ ladies in their boxes, at the Théatre-Italien, I am dying with longing to hear what they say and to join in their conversation. If I catch sight of a pretty one, and some of them are charming, I long t............