M. Louvier had his set evenings for popular assemblies. At these were entertained the Liberals of every shade, from tricolor to rouge, with the artists and writers most in vogue, pele-mele with decorated diplomatists, ex-ministers, Orleanists, and Republicans, distinguished foreigners, plutocrats of the Bourse, and lions male and female from the arid nurse of that race, the Chaussee d’Antin. Of his more select reunions something will be said later.
“And how does this poor Paris metamorphosed please Monsieur Vane?” asked a Frenchman with a handsome, intelligent countenance, very carefully dressed though in a somewhat bygone fashion, and carrying off his tenth lustrum with an air too sprightly to evince any sense of the weight. This gentleman, the Vicomte de Breze, was of good birth, and had a legitimate right to his title of Vicomte,—which is more than can be said of many vicomtes one meets at Paris. He had no other property, however, than a principal share in an influential journal, to which he was a lively and sparkling contributor. In his youth, under the reign of Louis Philippe, he had been a chief among literary exquisites; and Balzac was said to have taken him more than once as his model for those brilliant young vauriens who figure in the great novelist’s comedy of Human Life. The Vicomte’s fashion expired with the Orleanist dynasty.
“Is it possible, my dear Vicomte,” answered Graham, “not to be pleased with a capital so marvellously embellished?”
“Embellished it may be to foreign eyes,” said the Vicomte, sighing, “but not improved to the taste of a Parisian like me. I miss the dear Paris of old,—the streets associated with my beaux jours are no more. Is there not something drearily monotonous in those interminable perspectives? How frightfully the way lengthens before one’s eyes! In the twists and curves of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain of seeing how far one had to go from one spot to another,—each tortuous street had a separate idiosyncrasy; what picturesque diversities, what interesting recollections,—all swept away! Mon Dieu! and what for,—miles of florid facades staring and glaring at one with goggle-eyed pitiless windows; house-rents trebled, and the consciousness that if you venture to grumble underground railways, like concealed volcanoes, can burst forth on you at any moment with an eruption of bayonets and muskets. This maudit empire seeks to keep its hold on France much as a grand seigneur seeks to enchain a nymph of the ballet,—tricks her out in finery and baubles, and insures her infidelity the moment he fails to satisfy her whims.”
“Vicomte,” answered Graham, “I have had the honour to know you since I was a small boy at a preparatory school home for the holidays, and you were a guest at my father’s country-house. You were then fete as one of the most promising writers among the young men of the day, especially favoured by the princes of the reigning family. I shall never forget the impression made on me by your brilliant appearance and your no less brilliant talk.”
“Ah! ces beaux jours! ce bon Louis Philippe, ce cher petit Joinville,” sighed the Vicomte.
“But at that day you compared le bon Louis Philippe to Robert Macaire. You described all his sons, including, no doubt, ce cher petit Joinville, in terms of resentful contempt, as so many plausible gamins whom Robert Macaire was training to cheat the public in the interest of the family firm. I remember my father saying to you in answer, ‘No royal house in Europe has more sought to develop the literature of an epoch and to signalize its representatives by social respect and official honours than that of the Orleans dynasty. You, Monsieur de Breze, do but imitate your elders in seeking to destroy the dynasty under which you flourish; should you succeed, you hommes de plume will be the first sufferers and the loudest complainers.’”
“Cher Monsieur Vane,” said the Vicomte, smiling complacently, “your father did me great honour in classing me with Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and the other stars of the Orleanist galaxy, including our friend here, M. Savarin. A very superior man was your father.”
“And,” said Savarin, who, being an Orleanist, had listened to Graham’s speech with an approving smile,—“and if I remember right, my dear De Breze, no one was more brilliantly severe than yourself on poor De Lamartine and the Republic that succeeded Louis Philippe; no one more emphatically expressed the yearning desire for another Napoleon to restore order at home and renown abroad. Now you have got another Napoleon.”
“And I want change for my Napoleon,” said De Breze, laughing.