I.
Everybody agrees that life at watering-places is very poetic, abounding in adventures of every sort, especially adventures of the heart. Read the novels L’Anneau d’Argent of Charles de Bernard, George Sand’s Lavinia, etc.
If watering-place life is a romance, it is in the books that it is so. To see great men in these places, you must carry them bound in calf in your trunk.
It is equally agreed that conversation at watering-places is extremely brilliant, that you meet only artists, superior men, people of the great world; that ideas, grace and elegance are lavished there, and that the flower of all pleasures and all thought there comes into bloom. The truth is that you use up a great many hats, eat a great many peaches, say a great many words, and, in the matter of men and of ideas, you find very much what you find elsewhere.
Here is the catalogue of a salon better made up than many another:
An old nobleman, somewhat resembling Balzac’s M. de Mortsauf, an officer previous to 1830, very brave, and capable of reasoning exactly, when he was hard pushed. He had a great long cartilaginous neck, that turned all together and with difficulty, like a rusty machine; his feet shook about in his square-toed shoes; the skirts of his frock-coat hung like flags about his legs. His body and his clothes were stiff, awkward, old-fashioned and scant, like his opinions; a dotard, moreover, fastidious, peevish, busy all day long in sifting over nothings and complaining about trifles; he pestered his servant a whole hour about a grain of dust overlooked on the skirt of his coat, explaining the method of removing dust, the danger of leaving dust, the defects of a negligent spirit, the merits of a diligent spirit, with so much monotony and tenacity and so slowly, that at last one stopped up one’s ears or went to sleep. He took snuff, rested his chin on his cane, and looked straight ahead with the torpid, dull expression of a mummy. Rustic life, the want of conversation and action, the fixedness of mechanical habits, had extinguished him.
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Beside him sat an English girl and her mother. The young woman had not succeeded in extinguishing herself, she was frozen at her birth; however, she was motionless as he. She carried a jeweller’s shop on her arms, bracelets, chains, of every form and all metals, which hung and jingled like little bells. The mother was one of those hooked stalks of asparagus, knobby, stuck into a swelling gown, such as can flourish and come to seed only amidst the fogs of London. They took tea and only talked with each other.
In the third place one remarked a very noble young man, dressed to perfection, curled every day, with soft hands, forever washed, brushed, adorned and beautified, and handsome as a doll. His was a formal and serious self-conceit. His least actions were of an admirable correctness and gravity. He weighed every word when he asked for soup. He put on his gloves with the air of a Roman emperor. He never laughed; in his calm gestures you recognized a man penetrated with self-respect, who raises conventionalities into principles. His complexion, his hands, his beard, and his mind, had been so scoured, rubbed, and perfumed by etiquette, that they seemed artificial.
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Ordinarily he gave the cues to a Moldavian lady, who kept the conversation alive. This lady had travelled all over Europe, and related her travels in such a piercing and metallic voice, that you wondered if she had not a clarion somewhere in her body. She held forth unassisted, sometimes for a quarter of an hour together, principally about rice and the degree of civilization among the Turks, on the barbarism of the Russian generals, and on the baths of Constantinople. Her well-filled memory only overflowed in tirades: it was almost as amusing as a gazetteer.
Near her was a pale, slender, meagre Spaniard, with a face like a knife-blade. We knew, by some words he let fall, that he was rich and a republican. He spent his life with a newspaper in his hand,—he read twelve or fifteen of them in a day, with little dry, jerking movements, and nervous contractions that passed over his face like a shiver. He sat habitually in a corner, and you saw gleaming in his countenance feeble desires of proclamations and professions of faith. In the very same moment his glance died away like a too sudden fire that blazes up and falls again. He only spoke in monosyllables, and to ask for tea. His wife knew no French, and sat all the evening motionless in her arm-chair.
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Must we speak of an old lady from Saumur, a frequenter of the baths, watchful of the heat, the cold, the currents of air, the seasoning, determined not to enrich her heirs any sooner than it was necessary, who trotted about all day, and played with her dog in the evening? Of an abbé and his pupil, who dined apart, to escape the contagion of worldly conversation? etc. The truth is that there is nothing to paint, and that in the next restaurant you will see the same people.
Now, in good faith, what can be the conversation in such a society? As the answer is important, I beg the reader to run over the subjoined classification of interesting conversations; he will judge for himself as to the likelihood of meeting at a watering-place with anything similar.
First sort: Circumlocutions, oratorical argumentation, exordiums full of insinuation, smiles and bows, which may be translated by the following phrase: “Monsieur, help me to make a thousand francs.” Second sort: Periphrases, metaphysical disquisitions, the voice of the soul, gestures and genuflexions, ending in this phrase: “Madame, allow me to be your very humble servant.”
Third sort: Two persons who have need of each other are together; abstract of their conversation: “You are a great man.”
“And so are you.” Fourth sort: You are seated at the fireside with an old friend; you stir up the embers and talk of—no matter what, for instance: “Would you like some tea? My cigar is out.” Or, what is better, you say nothing at all, and listen to the singing of the tea-kettle; all actions, which mean: “You are a good fellow, and would do me a service in case of need.”
Fifth sort: New general ideas and freely expressed; sort lost sight of these hundred years. It was known in the salons of the eighteenth century; genus to-day fossil.
Sixth, and last sort: Discharges of wit, fireworks of brilliant speeches, images struck out, colors displayed, profusion of animation, originality and gayety. A sort infinitely rare and diminished every day, by the fear of compromising one’s self, by the important air, by the affectation of morality.
These six sorts wanting—and they are evidently wanting—what remains? Conversation such as Henri Monnier paints, and M. Prudhomme makes. Only the manners here are better; for instance, we know that we ought to help ourselves last to soup, and first to salad; we are provided with certain proper phrases which we exchange for other proper phrases; we answer to an anticipated motion by an anticipated motion, after the fashion of the Chinese; we come to yawn inwardly and smile outwardly, in company and in state. This comedy of affectations and the commerce of ennui form the conversation at the springs and elsewhere.
Accordingly many people go to take the air in the streets.