FullReads

“The young man pulled out his card. La Palferine dropped it. ‘It has been carried too long in the pocket. Be good enough to give me another.’

“On the ground he received a thrust; blood was drawn; his antagonist wished to stop.

” ‘You are wounded, monsieur!’

” ‘I disallow the /botte/,’ said La Palferine, as coolly as if he had been in the fencing-saloon; then as he riposted (sending the point home this time), he added, ‘There is the right thrust, monsieur!’

“His antagonist kept his bed for six months.

“This, still following on M. Sainte-Beuve’s tracks, recalls the /raffines/, the fine-edged raillery of the best days of the monarchy. In this speech you discern an untrammeled but drifting life; a gaiety of imagination that deserts us when our first youth is past. The prime of the blossom is over, but there remains the dry compact seed with the germs of life in it, ready against the coming winter. Do you not see that these things are symptoms of something unsatisfied, of an unrest impossible to analyze, still less to describe, yet not incomprehensible; a something ready to break out if occasion calls into flying upleaping flame? It is the /accidia/ of the cloister; a trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the enforced stagnation of youthful energies, a vague, obscure melancholy.”

“That will do,” said the Marquise; “you are giving me a mental shower bath.”

“It is the early afternoon languor. If a man has nothing to do, he will sooner get into mischief than do nothing at all; this invariably happens in France. Youth at present day has two sides to it; the studious or unappreciated, and the ardent or /passionne/.”

“That will do!” repeated Mme. de Rochefide, with an authoritative gesture. “You are setting my nerves on edge.”

“To finish my portrait of La Palferine, I hasten to make the plunge into the gallant regions of his character, or you will not understand the peculiar genius of an admirable representative of a certain section of mischievous youth–youth strong enough, be it said, to laugh at the position in which it is put by those in power; shrewd enough to do no work, since work profiteth nothing; yet so full of life that it fastens upon pleasure–the one thing that cannot be taken away. And meanwhile a bourgeois, mercantile, and bigoted policy continues to cut off all the sluices through which so much aptitude and ability would find an outlet. Poets and men of science are not wanted.

“To give you an idea of the stupidity of the new court, I will tell you of something which happened to La Palferine. There is a sort of relieving officer on the civil list. This functionary one day discovered that La Palferine was in dire distress, drew up a report, no doubt, and brought the descendant of the Rusticolis fifty francs by way of alms. La Palferine received the visitor with perfect courtesy, and talked of various persons at court.

” ‘Is it true,’ he asked, ‘that Mlle. d’Orleans contributes such and such a sum to this benevolent scheme started by her nephew? If so, it is very gracious of her.’

“Now La Palferine had a servant, a little Savoyard, aged ten, who waited on him without wages. La Palferine called him Father Anchises, and used to say, ‘I have never seen such a mixture of besotted foolishness with great intelligence; he would go through fire and water for me; he understands everything–and yet he cannot grasp the fact that I can do nothing for him.’

“Anchises was despatched to a livery stable with instructions to hire a handsome brougham with a man in livery behind it. By the time the carriage arrived below, La Palferine had skilfully piloted the conversation to the subject of the functions of his visitor, whom he has since called ‘the unmitigated misery man,’ and learned the nature of his duties and his stipend.

” ‘Do they allow you a carriage to go about the town in this way?’