The Lesser Bourgeoisie | Page 8

rule of seniority. That is how Thuillier
became sub-director. Mademoiselle Thuillier, knowing that her brother
abhorred reading, and could substitute no business for the bustle of a
public office, had wisely resolved to plunge him into the cares of
property, into the culture of a garden, in short, into all the infinitely
petty concerns and neighborhood intrigues which make up the life of
the bourgeoisie.
The transplanting of the Thuillier household from the rue d'Argenteuil
to the rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer, the business of making the
purchase, of finding a suitable porter, and then of obtaining tenants
occupied Thuillier from 1831 to 1832. When the phenomenon of the
change was accomplished, and the sister saw that Jerome had borne it
fairly well, she found him other cares and occupations (about which we
shall hear later), all based upon the character of the man himself, as to
which it will now be useful to give information.

Though the son of a ministerial porter, Thuillier was what is called a
fine man, slender in figure, above middle height, and possessing a face
that was rather agreeable if wearing his spectacles, but frightful without
them; which is frequently the case with near-sighted persons; for the
habit of looking through glasses has covered the pupils of his eyes with
a sort of film.
Between the ages of eighteen and thirty, young Thuillier had much
success among women, in a sphere which began with the lesser
bourgeois and ended in that of the heads of departments. Under the
Empire, war left Parisian society rather denuded of men of energy, who
were mostly on the battlefield; and perhaps, as a great physician has
suggested, this may account for the flabbiness of the generation which
occupies the middle of the nineteenth century.
Thuillier, forced to make himself noticeable by other charms than those
of mind, learned to dance and to waltz in a way to be cited; he was
called "that handsome Thuillier"; he played billiards to perfection; he
knew how to cut out likenesses in black paper, and his friend Colleville
coached him so well that he was able to sing all the ballads of the day.
These various small accomplishments resulted in that appearance of
success which deceives youth and befogs it about the future.
Mademoiselle Thuillier, from 1806 to 1814, believed in her brother as
Mademoiselle d'Orleans believed in Louis-Philippe. She was proud of
Jerome; she expected to see him the director-general of his department
of the ministry, thanks to his successes in certain salons, where,
undoubtedly, he would never have been admitted but for the
circumstances which made society under the Empire a medley.
But the successes of "that handsome Thuillier" were usually of short
duration; women did not care to keep his devotion any more than he
desired to make his devotion eternal. He was really an unwilling Don
Juan; the career of a "beau" wearied him to the point of aging him; his
face, covered with lines like that of an old coquette, looked a dozen
years older than the registers made him. There remained to him of all
his successes in gallantry, a habit of looking at himself in mirrors, of
buttoning his coat to define his waist, and of posing in various dancing

attitudes; all of which prolonged, beyond the period of enjoying his
advantages, the sort of lease that he held on his cognomen, "that
handsome Thuillier."
The truth of 1806 has, however, become a fable, in 1826. He retains a
few vestiges of the former costume of the beaux of the Empire, which
are not unbecoming to the dignity of a former sub-director. He still
wears the white cravat with innumerable folds, wherein his chin is
buried, and the coquettish bow, formerly tied by the hands of beauty,
the two ends of which threaten danger to the passers to right and left.
He follows the fashions of former days, adapting them to his present
needs; he tips his hat on the back of his head, and wears shoes and
thread stockings in summer; his long-tailed coats remind one of the
well-known "surtouts" of the Empire; he has not yet abandoned his
frilled shirts and his white waistcoats; he still plays with his Empire
switch, and holds himself so erect that his back bends in. No one,
seeing Thuillier promenading on the boulevards, would take him for
the son of a man who cooked the breakfasts of the clerks at a ministry
and wore the livery of Louis XVI.; he resembles an imperial
diplomatist or a sub-prefect. Now, not only did Mademoiselle Thuillier
very innocently work upon her brother's weak spot by encouraging in
him an excessive care of his person, which, in her, was simply a
continuation of her worship, but she also provided him with family joys,
by transplanting