A Prince of Bohemia | Page 8

her civil list, to return to a less exclusive system; and La
Palferine, discovering a certain lack of sincerity in her dealings with
him, sent Madame Antonia a note which made her famous.
" 'MADAME,--Your conduct causes me much surprise and no less
distress. Not content with rending my heart with your disdain, you have
been so little thoughtful as to retain a toothbrush, which my means will
not permit me to replace, my estates being mortgaged beyond their
value.
" 'Adieu, too fair and too ungrateful friend! May we meet again in a
better world.
" 'CHARLES EDWARD.'
"Assuredly (to avail ourselves yet further of Sainte-Beuve's Babylonish
dialect), this far outpasses the raillery of Sterne's /Sentimental Journey/;
it might be Scarron without his grossness. Nay, I do not know but that

Moliere in his lighter mood would not have said of it, as of Cyrano de
Bergerac's best--'This is mine.' Richelieu himself was not more
complete when he wrote to the princess waiting for him in the Palais
Royal--'Stay there, my queen, to charm the scullion lads.' At the same
time, Charles Edward's humor is less biting. I am not sure that this kind
of wit was known among the Greeks and Romans. Plato, possibly, upon
a closer inspection approaches it, but from the austere and musical
side--"
"No more of that jargon," the Marquise broke in, "in print it may be
endurable; but to have it grating upon my ears is a punishment which I
do not in the least deserve."
"He first met Claudine on this wise," continued Nathan. "It was one of
the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to itself; days when youth,
reduced by the overweening presumption of Age to a condition of
potential energy and dejection, emerges therefrom (like Blondet under
the Restoration), either to get into mischief or to set about some
colossal piece of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its
conception. La Palferine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and down the
pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the Rue de Richelieu,
when in the distance he descried a woman too elegantly dressed,
covered, as he phrased it, with a great deal of portable property, too
expensive and too carelessly worn for its owner to be other than a
princess of the court or of the stage, it was not easy at first to say which.
But after July 1830, in his opinion, there is no mistaking the indications
--the princess can only be a princess of the stage.
"The Count came up and walked by her side as if she had given him an
assignation. He followed her with a courteous persistence, a persistence
in good taste, giving the lady from time to time, and always at the right
moment, an authoritative glance, which compelled her to submit to his
escort. Anybody but La Palferine would have been frozen by his
reception, and disconcerted by the lady's first efforts to rid herself of
her cavalier, by her chilly air, her curt speeches; but no gravity, with all
the will in the world, could hold out long against La Palferine's jesting
replies. The fair stranger went into her milliner's shop. Charles Edward
followed, took a seat, and gave his opinions and advice like a man that
meant to pay. This coolness disturbed the lady. She went out.
"On the stairs she spoke to her persecutor.

" 'Monsieur, I am about to call upon one of my husband's relatives, an
elderly lady, Mme. de Bonfalot--'
" 'Ah! Mme. de Bonfalot, charmed, I am sure. I am going there.'
"The pair accordingly went. Charles Edward came in with the lady,
every one believed that she had brought him with her. He took part in
the conversation, was lavish of his polished and brilliant wit. The visit
lengthened out. That was not what he wanted.
" 'Madame,' he said, addressing the fair stranger, 'do not forget that
your husband is waiting for us, and only allowed us a quarter of an
hour.'
"Taken aback by such boldness (which, as you know, is never
displeasing to you women), led captive by the conqueror's glance, by
the astute yet candid air which Charles Edward can assume when he
chooses, the lady rose, took the arm of her self-constituted escort, and
went downstairs, but on the threshold she stopped to speak to him.
" 'Monsieur, I like a joke----'
" 'And so do I.'
"She laughed.
" 'But this may turn to earnest,' he added; 'it only rests with you. I am
the Comte de la Palferine, and I am delighted that it is in my power to
lay my heart and my fortune at your feet.'
"La Palferine was at that time twenty-two years old. (This happened in
1834.) Luckily for him, he