EXCESSIVE GALLANTRY.
The late Marquis de Prades-Conti, ex-officer of the body-guard of Charles X., died from the effects of what might be called an excess of gallantry. He had never been ill a day, and retained all his activity in spite of his eighty-two years, but in stooping to kiss the hand of the Dowager Countess de la Rochepeon, who came to pay him a visit, he fell dead.
THE TREACHEROUS SIDE.
MADAME DE STAEL’S HYPOCRISY.
Coleridge was a man of violent prejudices, and had conceived an insuperable aversion for France, of which he was not slow to boast. “I hate,” he would say, “the hollowness of French principles; I hate the republicanism of French politics; I hate the hostility of the French people to revealed religion; I hate the artificiality of French cooking; I hate the acidity of French wines; I hate the flimsiness of the French language.” He would inveigh with equal acrimony against the unreality and immorality of the French character of both sexes, especially of the women; and in justification of his unmeasured invective, he related that he was one day sitting tête-à-tête with Madame de Staël in London, when her man-servant entered the room and asked her if she would receive Lady Davey. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders, and appeared to shudder with nausea as she turned to him and said, “Ah, ma foi! ô, mon cher ami! ayez pitié de moi! Mais quoi faire? Cette vilaine femme! Comme je la déteste! Elle est, vraiment, insupportable!” And then, on her entry, she flung her arms around her, kissed her on both cheeks, pressed her to her bosom, and told her that she was more than enchanted to behold her.
But the query arises, have the French a monopoly of such conventional duplicity? or may we find its counterpart nearer home?
A JUDAS KISS.
This time Sophronia was so much in earnest that she found it necessary to bend forward in the carriage and give Bella a kiss. A Judas order of kiss; for she thought, while she yet pressed Bella’s hand after giving it, “Upon your own showing, you vain heartless girl, puffed up by the doting folly of a dustman, I need have no relenting towards you.”