An Old Maid | Page 4

have no knowledge of each other, for one side would redden
under the process of digestion, while the other continued white. This
fact is worthy of remark at a period when physiology is so busy with
the human heart. The incandescence, so to call it, was on the left side.
Though his long slim legs, supporting a lank body, and his pallid skin,
were not indicative of health, Monsieur de Valois ate like an ogre and
declared he had a malady called in the provinces "hot liver," perhaps to
excuse his monstrous appetite. The circumstance of his singular flush
confirmed this declaration; but in a region where repasts are developed

on the line of thirty or forty dishes and last four hours, the chevalier's
stomach would seem to have been a blessing bestowed by Providence
on the good town of Alencon. According to certain doctors, heat on the
left side denotes a prodigal heart. The chevalier's gallantries confirmed
this scientific assertion, the responsibility for which does not rest,
fortunately, on the historian.
In spite of these symptoms, Monsieur de Valois' constitution was
vigorous, consequently long-lived. If his liver "heated," to use an
old-fashioned word, his heart was not less inflammable. His face was
wrinkled and his hair silvered; but an intelligent observer would have
recognized at once the stigmata of passion and the furrows of pleasure
which appeared in the crow's-feet and the marches-du-palais, so prized
at the court of Cythera. Everything about this dainty chevalier bespoke
the "ladies' man." He was so minute in his ablutions that his cheeks
were a pleasure to look upon; they seemed to have been laved in some
miraculous water. The part of his skull which his hair refused to cover
shone like ivory. His eyebrows, like his hair, affected youth by the care
and regularity with which they were combed. His skin, already white,
seemed to have been extra-whitened by some secret compound.
Without using perfumes, the chevalier exhaled a certain fragrance of
youth, that refreshed the atmosphere. His hands, which were those of a
gentleman, and were cared for like the hands of a pretty woman,
attracted the eye to their rosy, well-shaped nails. In short, had it not
been for his magisterial and stupendous nose, the chevalier might have
been thought a trifle too dainty.
We must here compel ourselves to spoil this portrait by the avowal of a
littleness. The chevalier put cotton in his ears, and wore, appended to
them, two little ear-rings representing negroes' heads in diamonds, of
admirable workmanship. He clung to these singular appendages,
explaining that since his ears had been bored he had ceased to have
headaches (he had had headaches). We do not present the chevalier as
an accomplished man; but surely we can pardon, in an old celibate
whose heart sends so much blood to his left cheek, these adorable
qualities, founded, perhaps, on some sublime secret history.

Besides, the Chevalier de Valois redeemed those negroes' heads by so
many other graces that society felt itself sufficiently compensated. He
really took such immense trouble to conceal his age and give pleasure
to his friends. In the first place, we must call attention to the extreme
care he gave to his linen, the only distinction that well- bred men can
nowadays exhibit in their clothes. The linen of the chevalier was
invariably of a fineness and whiteness that were truly aristocratic. As
for his coat, though remarkable for its cleanliness, it was always half
worn-out, but without spots or creases. The preservation of that
garment was something marvellous to those who noticed the chevalier's
high-bred indifference to its shabbiness. He did not go so far as to
scrape the seams with glass,--a refinement invented by the Prince of
Wales; but he did practice the rudiments of English elegance with a
personal satisfaction little understood by the people of Alencon. The
world owes a great deal to persons who take such pains to please it. In
this there is certainly some accomplishment of that most difficult
precept of the Gospel about rendering good for evil. This freshness of
ablution and all the other little cares harmonized charmingly with the
blue eyes, the ivory teeth, and the blond person of the old chevalier.
The only blemish was that this retired Adonis had nothing manly about
him; he seemed to be employing this toilet varnish to hide the ruins
occasioned by the military service of gallantry only. But we must
hasten to add that his voice produced what might be called an antithesis
to his blond delicacy. Unless you adopted the opinion of certain
observers of the human heart, and thought that the chevalier had the
voice of his nose, his organ of speech would have amazed you by its
full and redundant sound. Without possessing the volume of