The Jealousies of a Country Town | Page 5

he had lost a hope
long cherished to which he had made many sacrifices.
Madame Lardot leased to the chevalier two rooms on the second floor
of her house, for the modest sum of one hundred francs a year. The
worthy gentleman dined out every day, returning only in time to go to
bed. His sole expense therefore was for breakfast, invariably composed
of a cup of chocolate, with bread and butter and fruits in their season.
He made no fire except in the coldest winter, and then only enough to
get up by. Between eleven and four o'clock he walked about, went to
read the papers, and paid visits. From the time of his settling in
Alencon he had nobly admitted his poverty, saying that his whole
fortune consisted in an annuity of six hundred francs a year, the sole
remains of his former opulence,--a property which obliged him to see
his man of business (who held the annuity papers) quarterly. In truth,
one of the Alencon bankers paid him every three months one hundred
and fifty francs, sent down by Monsieur Bordin of Paris, the last of the
procureurs du Chatelet. Every one knew these details because the
chevalier exacted the utmost secrecy from the persons to whom he first
confided them.
Monsieur de Valois gathered the fruit of his misfortunes. His place at

table was laid in all the most distinguished houses in Alencon, and he
was bidden to all soirees. His talents as a card-player, a narrator, an
amiable man of the highest breeding, were so well known and
appreciated that parties would have seemed a failure if the dainty
connoisseur was absent. Masters of houses and their wives felt the need
of his approving grimace. When a young woman heard the chevalier
say at a ball, "You are delightfully well-dressed!" she was more pleased
at such praise than she would have been at mortifying a rival. Monsieur
de Valois was the only man who could perfectly pronounce certain
phrases of the olden time. The words, "my heart," "my jewel," "my
little pet," "my queen," and the amorous diminutives of 1770, had a
grace that was quite irresistible when they came from his lips. In short,
the chevalier had the privilege of superlatives. His compliments, of
which he was stingy, won the good graces of all the old women; he
made himself agreeable to every one, even to the officials of the
government, from whom he wanted nothing. His behavior at cards had
a lofty distinction which everybody noticed: he never complained; he
praised his adversaries when they lost; he did not rebuke or teach his
partners by showing them how they ought to have played. When, in the
course of a deal, those sickening dissertations on the game would take
place, the chevalier invariably drew out his snuff-box with a gesture
that was worthy of Mole, looked at the Princess Goritza, raised the
cover with dignity, shook, sifted, massed the snuff, and gathered his
pinch, so that by the time the cards were dealt he had decorated both
nostrils and replaced the princess in his waistcoat pocket,--always on
his left side. A gentleman of the "good" century (in distinction from the
"grand" century) could alone have invented that compromise between
contemptuous silence and a sarcasm which might not have been
understood. He accepted poor players and knew how to make the best
of them. His delightful equability of temper made many persons say,--
"I do admire the Chevalier de Valois!"
His conversation, his manners, seemed bland, like his person. He
endeavored to shock neither man nor woman. Indulgent to defects both
physical and mental, he listened patiently (by the help of the Princess
Goritza) to the many dull people who related to him the petty miseries

of provincial life,--an egg ill-boiled for breakfast, coffee with feathered
cream, burlesque details about health, disturbed sleep, dreams, visits.
The chevalier could call up a languishing look, he could take on a
classic attitude to feign compassion, which made him a most valuable
listener; he could put in an "Ah!" and a "Bah!" and a "What DID you
do?" with charming appropriateness. He died without any one
suspecting him of even an allusion to the tender passages of his
romance with the Princess Goritza. Has any one ever reflected on the
service a dead sentiment can do to society; how love may become both
social and useful? This will serve to explain why, in spite of his
constant winning at play (he never left a salon without carrying off with
him about six francs), the old chevalier remained the spoilt darling of
the town. His losses--which, by the bye, he always proclaimed, were
very rare.
All who know him declare that they have never met, not even in the
Egyptian museum