A Prince of Bohemia | Page 6

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 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