The baron looked greatly amazed at his unexpected visitor; but he got up, handed a chair to my Lord with a low bow. "This is an honour," said he.
"You have a charming abode here," said Lord L'Estrange, looking round. "Very fine bronzes,—excellent taste. Your reception-rooms above are, doubtless, a model to all decorators?"
"Would your Lordship condescend to see them?" said Levy, wondering, but flattered.
"With the greatest pleasure."
"Lights!" cried Levy, to the servant who answered his bell. "Lights in the drawing-rooms,—it is growing dark." Lord L'Estrange followed the usurer upstairs; admired everything,—pictures, draperies, Sevres china, to the very shape of the downy fauteuils, to the very pattern of the Tournay carpets. Reclining then on one of the voluptuous sofas, Lord L'Estrange said smilingly, "You are a wise man: there is no advantage in being rich, unless one enjoys one's riches."
"My own maxim, Lord L'Estrange."
"And it is something, too, to have a taste for good society. Small pride would you have, my dear baron, in these rooms, luxurious though they are, if filled with guests of vulgar exterior and plebeian manners. It is only in the world in which we move that we find persons who harmonize, as it were, with the porcelain of Sevres, and these sofas that might have come from Versailles."
"I own," said Levy, "that I have what some may call a weakness in a /parvenu/ like myself. I have a love for the /beau monde/. It is indeed a pleasure to me when I receive men like your Lordship."
"But why call yourself a /parvenu/? Though you are contented to honour the name of Levy, we, in society, all know that you are the son of a long-descended English peer. Child of love, it is true; but the Graces smile on those over whose birth Venus presided. Pardon my old-fashioned mythological similes,—they go so well with these rooms—Louis Quinze."
"Since you have touched on my birth," said Levy, his colour rather heightening, not with shame, but with pride, "I don't deny that it has had some effect on my habits and tastes in life. In fact—"