The Parisians | Page 3

nevertheless, thy noisiest philosophers ever pretend to make the goal of
their desires: of all communities on which shines the sun and descend
the rains of heaven, fertilizing alike wisdom and folly, virtue and vice;
in every city men have yet built on this earth,--mayest thou, O Paris, be
the last to brave the wands of the Coming Race and be reduced into
cinders for the sake of the common good! TISH.

PARIS, August 28, 1872.

THE PARISIANS.
BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.
It was a bright day in the early spring of 1869. All Paris seemed to have
turned out to enjoy itself. The Tuileries, the Champs Elysees, the Bois
de Boulogne, swarmed with idlers. A stranger might have wondered
where Toil was at work, and in what nook Poverty lurked concealed. A
millionaire from the London Exchange, as he looked round on the
magasins, the equipages, the dresses of the women; as he inquired the
prices in the shops and the rent of apartments,--might have asked
himself, in envious wonder, How on earth do those gay Parisians live?
What is their fortune? Where does it come from?
As the day declined, many of the scattered loungers crowded into the
Boulevards; the cafes and restaurants began to light up.
About this time a young man, who might be some five or six and
twenty, was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, heeding little the
throng through which he glided his solitary way: there was that in his
aspect and bearing which caught attention. He looked a somebody; but
though unmistakably a Frenchman, not a Parisian. His dress was not in
the prevailing mode: to a practised eye it betrayed the taste and the cut
of a provincial tailor. His gait was not that of the Parisian,--less
lounging, more stately; and, unlike the Parisian, he seemed indifferent
to the gaze of others.
Nevertheless there was about him that air of dignity or distinction
which those who are reared from their cradle in the pride of birth
acquire so unconsciously that it seems hereditary and inborn. It must
also be confessed that the young man himself was endowed with a
considerable share of that nobility which Nature capriciously
distributes among her favourites with little respect for their pedigree
and blazon, the nobility of form and face. He was tall and well shaped,

with graceful length of limb and fall of shoulders; his face was
handsome, of the purest type of French masculine beauty,--the nose
inclined to be aquiline, and delicately thin, with finely-cut open nostrils;
the complexion clear,--the eyes large, of a light hazel, with dark lashes,
--the hair of a chestnut brown, with no tint of auburn,--the beard and
mustache a shade darker, clipped short, not disguising the outline of
lips, which were now compressed, as if smiles had of late been
unfamiliar to them; yet such compression did not seem in harmony
with the physiognomical character of their formation, which was that
assigned by Lavater to temperaments easily moved to gayety and
pleasure.
Another man, about his own age, coming quickly out of one of the
streets of the Chausee d'Antin, brushed close by the stately pedestrian
above described, caught sight of his countenance, stopped short, and
exclaimed, "Alain!" The person thus abruptly accosted turned his eye
tranquilly on the eager face, of which all the lower part was enveloped
in black beard; and slightly lifting his hat, with a gesture of the head
that implied, "Sir, you are mistaken; I have not the honour to know
you," continued his slow indifferent way. The would-be acquaintance
was not so easily rebuffed. "Peste," he said, between his teeth, "I am
certainly right. He is not much altered: of course I AM; ten years of
Paris would improve an orang-outang." Quickening his step, and
regaining the side of the man he had called "Alain," he said, with a
well-bred mixture of boldness and courtesy in his tone and
countenance,
"Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong. Put surely I accost Alain de
Kerouec, son of the Marquis de Rochebriant."
"True, sir; but--"
"But you do not remember me, your old college friend, Frederic
Lemercier?"
"Is it possibly?" cried Alain, cordially, and with an animation which
charged the whole character of his countenance. "My dear Frederic, my
dear friend, this is indeed good fortune! So you, too, are at Paris?"

"Of course; and you? Just come, I perceive," he added, somewhat
satirically, as, linking his arm in his new-found friend's, he glanced at
the cut of that friend's coat-collar.
"I have been herd a fortnight," replied Alain.
"Hem! I suppose you lodge in the old Hotel de Rochebriant. I passed it
yesterday, admiring its vast facade, little thinking you were its inmate."
"Neither am I; the hotel does not belong to me; it was