Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 | Page 3

the evening of his days,
like an old French diplomatist, he takes it into his head to write his
memoirs. To this end he has lured poor Theodore to his gruesome side,
to mend his pens for him. He has been a great scribbler, says Theodore,
all his days, and he proposes to incorporate a large amount of
promiscuous literary matter into these souvenirs intimes. Theodore's
principal function seems to be to get him to leave things out. In fact, the
poor youth seems troubled in conscience. His patron's lucubrations
have taken the turn of many other memoirs, and have ceased to address
themselves virginibus puerisque. On the whole, he declares they are a
very odd mixture--a medley of gold and tinsel, of bad taste and good
sense. I can readily understand it. The old man bores me, puzzles me,
and amuses me.
He was in waiting to receive me. We found him in his library--which,
by the way, is simply the most delightful apartment that I ever smoked
a cigar in--a room arranged for a lifetime. At one end stands a great
fireplace, with a florid, fantastic mantelpiece in carved white
marble--an importation, of course, and, as one may say, an
interpolation; the groundwork of the house, the "fixtures," being
throughout plain, solid and domestic. Over the mantel-shelf is a large
landscape, a fine Gainsborough, full of the complicated harmonies of
an English summer. Beneath it stands a row of bronzes of the
Renaissance and potteries of the Orient. Facing the door, as you enter,
is an immense window set in a recess, with cushioned seats and large
clear panes, stationed as it were at the very apex of the lake (which

forms an almost perfect oval) and commanding a view of its whole
extent. At the other end, opposite the fireplace, the wall is studded,
from floor to ceiling, with choice foreign paintings, placed in relief
against the orthodox crimson screen. Elsewhere the walls are covered
with books, arranged neither in formal regularity nor quite
helter-skelter, but in a sort of genial incongruity, which tells that sooner
or later each volume feels sure of leaving the ranks and returning into
different company. Mr. Sloane makes use of his books. His two
passions, according to Theodore, are reading and talking; but to talk he
must have a book in his hand. The charm of the room lies in the
absence of certain pedantic tones--the browns, blacks and grays--which
distinguish most libraries. The apartment is of the feminine gender.
There are half a dozen light colors scattered about--pink in the carpet,
tender blue in the curtains, yellow in the chairs. The result is a general
look of brightness and lightness; it expresses even a certain cynicism.
You perceive the place to be the home, not of a man of learning, but of
a man of fancy.
He rose from his chair--the man of fancy, to greet me--the man of fact.
As I looked at him, in the lamplight, it seemed to me, for the first five
minutes, that I had seldom seen an uglier little person. It took me five
minutes to get the point of view; then I began to admire. He is
diminutive, or at best of my own moderate stature, and bent and
contracted with his seventy years; lean and delicate, moreover, and
very highly finished. He is curiously pale, with a kind of opaque yellow
pallor. Literally, it's a magnificent yellow. His skin is of just the hue
and apparent texture of some old crumpled Oriental scroll. I know a
dozen painters who would give more than they have to arrive at the
exact "tone" of his thick-veined, bloodless hands, his polished ivory
knuckles. His eyes are circled with red, but in the battered little setting
of their orbits they have the lustre of old sapphires. His nose, owing to
the falling away of other portions of his face, has assumed a grotesque,
unnatural prominence; it describes an immense arch, gleaming like a
piece of parchment stretched on ivory. He has, apparently, all his teeth,
but has muffled his cranium in a dead black wig; of course he's clean
shaven. In his dress he has a muffled, wadded look and an apparent
aversion to linen, inasmuch as none is visible on his person. He seems
neat enough, but not fastidious. At first, as I say, I fancied him

monstrously ugly; but on further acquaintance I perceived that what I
had taken for ugliness is nothing but the incomplete remains of
remarkable good looks. The line of his features is pure; his nose,
_caeteris paribus_, would be extremely handsome; his eyes are the
oldest eyes I ever saw, and yet they are wonderfully living. He has
something remarkably insinuating.
He offered his two hands, as Theodore introduced me; I