A Prince of Bohemia | Page 4

that day comes, of great
distinction. They are distinguished as it is at carnival time, when their
exuberant wit, repressed for the rest of the year, finds a vent in more or
less ingenious buffoonery.
"What times we live in! What an irrational central power which allows
such tremendous energies to run to waste! There are diplomatists in
Bohemia quite capable of overturning Russia's designs, if they but felt
the power of France at their backs. There are writers, administrators,
soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty, every kind of brain is
represented there. Bohemia is a microcosm. If the Czar would buy
Bohemia for a score of millions and set its population down in
Odessa--always supposing that they consented to leave the asphalt of
the boulevards--Odessa would be Paris with the year. In Bohemia, you

find the flower doomed to wither and come to nothing; the flower of
the wonderful young manhood of France, so sought after by Napoleon
and Louis XIV., so neglected for the last thirty years by the modern
Gerontocracy that is blighting everything else--that splendid young
manhood of whom a witness so little prejudiced as Professor Tissot
wrote, 'On all sides the Emperor employed a younger generation in
every way worthy of him; in his councils, in the general administration,
in negotiations bristling with difficulties or full of danger, in the
government of conquered countries; and in all places Youth responded
to his demands upon it. Young men were for Napoleon the /missi
hominici/ of Charlemagne.'
"The word Bohemia tells you everything. Bohemia has nothing and
lives upon what it has. Hope is its religion; faith (in oneself) its creed;
and charity is supposed to be its budget. All these young men are
greater than their misfortune; they are under the feet of Fortune, yet
more than equal to Fate. Always ready to mount and ride an /if/, witty
as a /feuilleton/, blithe as only those can be that are deep in debt and
drink deep to match, and finally--for here I come to my point--hot
lovers and what lovers! Picture to yourself Lovelace, and Henri Quatre,
and the Regent, and Werther, and Saint-Preux, and Rene, and the
Marechal de Richelieu--think of all these in a single man, and you will
have some idea of their way of love. What lovers! Eclectic of all things
in love, they will serve up a passion to a woman's order; their hearts are
like a bill of fare in a restaurant. Perhaps they have never read
Stendhal's /De l'Amour/, but unconsciously they put it in practice. They
have by heart their chapters--Love-Taste, Love-Passion, Love-Caprice,
Love-Crystalized, and more than all, Love-Transient. All is good in
their eyes. They invented the burlesque axiom, 'In the sight of man, all
women are equal.' The actual text is more vigorously worded, but as in
my opinion the spirit is false, I do not stand nice upon the letter.
"My friend, madame, is named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor Benjamin
George Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli, Comte de la Palferine.
The Rusticolis came to France with Catherine de Medici, having been
ousted about that time from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty.
They are distantly related to the house of Este, and connected by
marriage to the Guises. On the day of Saint-Bartholomew they slew a
goodly number of Protestants, and Charles IX. bestowed the hand of

the heiress of the Comte de la Palferine upon the Rusticoli of that time.
The Comte, however, being a part of the confiscated lands of the Duke
of Savoy, was repurchased by Henri IV. when that great king so far
blundered as to restore the fief; and in exchange, the Rusticoli--who
had borne arms long before the Medici bore them to-wit, /argent/ a
cross flory /azure/ (the cross flower-de-luced by letters patent granted
by Charles IX.), and a count's coronet, with two peasants for supporters
with the motto IN HOC SIGNO VINCIMUS--the Rusticoli, I repeat,
retained their title, and received a couple of offices under the crown
with the government of a province.
"From the time of the Valois till the reign of Richelieu, as it may be
called, the Rusticoli played a most illustrious part; under Louis XIV.
their glory waned somewhat, under Louis XV. it went out altogether.
My friend's grandfather wasted all that was left to the once brilliant
house with Mlle. Laguerre, whom he first discovered, and brought into
fashion before Bouret's time. Charles Edward's own father was an
officer without any fortune in 1789. The Revolution came to his
assistance; he had the sense to drop his title, and became plain Rusticoli.
Among other deeds, M. Rusticoli married a wife during the war in Italy,
a Capponi, a goddaughter of the Countess of Albany (hence La
Palferine's final names). Rusticoli was one of the best colonels in