neither men nor women have friends who are friendly enough to warn them of the moment when the fragrance of their modesty grows stale, when the caressing glance is but an echo of the stage, when the expression of the face changes from sentiment to sentimentality, and the artifices of the mind show their rusty edges. Genius alone renews its skin like a snake; and in the matter of charm, as in everything else, it is only the heart that never grows old. People who have hearts are ****** in all their ways. Now Canalis, as we know, had a shrivelled heart. He misused the beauty of his glance by giving it, without adequate reason, the fixity that comes to the eyes in meditation. In short, applause was to him a business, in which he was perpetually on the lookout for gain. His style of paying compliments, charming to superficial people, seemed insulting to others of more delicacy, by its triteness and the cool assurance of its cut-and-
dried flattery. As a matter of fact, Melchior lied like a courtier. He remarked without blushing to the Duc de Chaulieu, who made no impression whatever when he was obliged to address the Chamber as minister of foreign affairs, "Your excellency was truly sublime!" Many men like Canalis are purged of their affectations by the administration of non-success in little doses.
These defects, slight in the gilded salons of the faubourg Saint-
Germain, where every one contributes his or her quota of absurdity, and where these particular forms of exaggerated speech and affected diction--magniloquence, if you please to call it so--are surrounded by excessive luxury and sumptuous toilettes, which are to some extent their excuse, were certain to be far more noticed in the provinces, whose own absurdities are of a totally different type. Canalis, by nature over-strained and artificial, could not change his form; in fact, he had had time to grow stiff in the mould into which the duchess had poured him; moreover, he was thoroughly Parisian, or, if you prefer it, truly French. The Parisian is amazed that everything everywhere is not as it in Paris; the Frenchman, as it is in France.
Good taste, on the contrary, demands that we adapt ourselves to the customs of foreigners without losing too much of our own character,--
as did Alcibiades, that model of a gentleman. True grace is elastic;
it lends itself to circumstances; it is in harmony with all social centres; it wears a robe of ****** material in the streets, noticeable only by its cut, in preference to the feathers and flounces of middle-
class vulgarity. Now Canalis, instigated by a woman who loved herself much more than she loved him, wished to lay down the law and be, everywhere, such as he himself might see fit to be. He believed he carried his own public with him wherever he went,--an error shared by several of the great men of Paris.
While the poet made a studied and effective entrance into the salon of the Chalet, La Briere slipped in behind him like a person of no account.
"Ha! do I see my soldier?" said Canalis, perceiving Dumay, after addressing a compliment to Madame Mignon, and bowing to the other women. "Your anxieties are relieved, are they not?" he said, offering his hand effusively; "I comprehend them to their fullest extent after seeing mademoiselle. I spoke to you of terrestrial creatures, not of angels."
All present seemed by their attitudes to ask the meaning of this speech.
"I shall always consider it a triumph," resumed the poet, observing that everybody wished for an explanation, "to have stirred to mention on of those men of iron whom Napoleon had the eye to find and make the supporting piles on which he tried to build an empire, too colossal to be lasting: for such structures time alone is the cement. But this triumph--why should I be proud of it?--I count for nothing. It was the triumph of ideas over facts. Your battles, my dear Monsieur Dumay, your heroic charges, Monsieur le comte, nay, war itself was the form in which Napoleon's idea clothed itself. Of all of these things, what remains? The sod that covers them knows nothing; harvests come and go without revealing their resting-place; were it not for the historian, the writer, futurity would have no knowledge of those heroic days.
Therefore your fifteen years of war are now ideas and nothing more;
that which preserves the Empire forever is the poem that the poets make of them. A nation that can win such battles must know how to sing them."
Canalis paused, to gather by a glance that ran round the circle the tribute of amazement which he expected of provincials.
"You must be aware, monsieur, of the regret I feel at not seeing you,"
said Madame Mignon, "since you compensate me with the pleasure of hearing you."
Modeste, determined to think Canalis sublime, sat motionless with amazement; the embroidery slipped from her fingers, which held it only by the needleful of thread.
"Modeste, this is Monsieur Ernest de La Briere. Monsieur Ernest, my daughter," said the count, thinking the secretary too much in the background.
The young girl bowed coldly, giving Ernest a glance that was meant to prove to every one present that she saw him for the first time.
"Pardon me, monsieur," she said without blushing; "the great admiration I feel for the greatest of our poets is, in the eyes of my friends, a sufficient excuse for seeing only him."
The pure, fresh voice, with accents like that of Mademoiselle Mars, charmed the poor secretary, already dazzled by Modeste's beauty, and in his sudden surprise he answered by a phrase that would have been sublime, had it been true.
"He is my friend," he said.
"Ah, then you do pardon me," she replied.
"He is more than a friend," cried Canalis taking Ernest by the shoulder and leaning upon it like Alexander on Hephaestion, "we love each other as though we were brothers--"
Madame Latournelle cut short the poet's speech by pointing to Ernest and saying aloud to her husband, "Surely that is the gentleman we saw at church."