CHAPTER V.
A MEETING OF WITS.—CONVERSATION GONE OUT TO SUPPER IN HER DRESS OF VELVET AND JEWELS.
BOULAINVILLIERS! Comte de St. Saire! What will our great-grandchildren think of that name? Fame is indeed a riddle! At the time I refer to, wit, learning, grace—all things that charm and enlighten—were supposed to centre in one word,-Boulainvilliers! The good Count had many rivals, it is true, but he had that exquisite tact peculiar to his countrymen, of making the very reputations of those rivals contribute to his own. And while he assembled them around him, the lustre of their bons mots, though it emanated from themselves, was reflected upon him.
It was a pleasant though not a costly apartment in which we found our host. The room was sufficiently full of people to allow scope and variety to one group of talkers, without being full enough to permit those little knots and coteries which are the destruction of literary society. An old man of about seventy, of a sharp, shrewd, yet polished and courtly expression of countenance, of a great gayety of manner, which was now and then rather displeasingly contrasted by an abrupt affectation of dignity, that, however, rarely lasted above a minute, and never withstood the shock of a bon mot, was the first person who accosted us. This old man was the wreck of the once celebrated Anthony Count Hamilton!
“Well, my Lord,” said he to Bolingbroke, “how do you like the weather at Paris? It is a little better than the merciless air of London; is it not? ‘Slife!—even in June one could not go open breasted in those regions of cold and catarrh,—a very great misfortune, let me tell you, my Lord, if one’s cambric happened to be of a very delicate and brilliant texture, and one wished to penetrate the inward folds of a lady’s heart, by developing to the best advantage the exterior folds that covered his own.”
“It is the first time,” answered Bolingbroke, “that I ever heard so accomplished a courtier as Count Hamilton repine, with sincerity, that he could not bare his bosom to inspection.”
“Ah!” cried Boulainvilliers, “but vanity makes a man show much that discretion would conceal.”
“Au diable with your discretion!” said Hamilton, “‘tis a vulgar virtue. Vanity is a truly aristocratic quality, and every way fitted to a gentleman. Should I ever have been renowned for my exquisite lace and web-like cambric, if I had not been vain? Never, mon cher! I should have gone into a convent and worn sackcloth, and from Count Antoine I should have thickened into Saint Anthony.”
“Nay,” cried Lord Bolingbroke, “there is as much scope for vanity in sackcloth as there is in cambric; for vanity is like the Irish ogling master in the ‘Spectator,’ and if it teaches the play-house to ogle by candle-light, it also teaches the church to ogle by day! But, pardon me, Monsieur Chaulieu, how well you look! I see that the myrtle sheds its verdure, not only over your poetry, but the poet. And it is right that, to the modern Anacreon, who has bequeathed to Time a treasure it will never forego, Time itself should be gentle in return.”