“Hold on there a bit!” shouted out the captain to the boat's crew. “What shall I say, Señhor Condé? The Chevalier de la Boutonerie is very anxious on the subject.”
“Let this man have his passage,” said I, indolently, and lighted a cigar, as if to turn my thoughts in another direction, not even noticing the new arrival, who was hoisted up the side with his portmanteau in a very undignified fashion for an official character. He soon, however, baffled this indifference on my part, by advancing towards me, and, in a manner where considerable ease and tact were evident, thanked me for my polite consideration regarding him, and expressed a hope that he might not in any way inconvenience me during the voyage.
Now, the Chevalier was not in himself a very prepossessing personage, while his dress was of the very shabbiest, being a worn-out suit of black, covered by a coarse brown Mexican mantle; and yet his fluency, his quiet assurance, his seeming self-satisfaction, gained an ascendancy over me at once. I saw that he was a master in a walk in which I myself had so long been a student, and that he was a consummate adept in the “art of impudence.”
And how mistaken is the world at large in the meaning of that art! How prone to call the unblushing effrontery of every underbred man impudence! The rudeness that dares any speech, or adventures upon any familiarity; the soulless, heartless, selfish intrusiveness that scruples not to invade any society,—these are not impudence, or they are such specimens of the quality as men only possess in common with inferior animals. I speak of that educated, cultivated “impudence” which, never abashed by an inferiority, felt acutely, is resolved to overbear worldly prejudices by the exercise of gifts that assert a mastery over others,—a power of rising, by the expansive force of self-esteem, into something almost estimable. Ordinary mortals tell lies at intervals, per saltum, as the doctors say; but these people's whole life is a lie. The Chevalier was a fine specimen of the class, and seemed as indifferent to a hundred little adverse circumstances as though everything around him went well and pleasantly.
There was a suave dignity in the way he moved a very dubious hand over his unshaven chin, in the graceful negligence he exhibited when disposing the folds of his threadbare cloak, in the jaunty lightness with which, after saluting, he replaced his miserable hat on the favored side of his head, that conveyed the whole story of the man.
What a model for my imitation had he been, thought I, if I had seen him in the outset of life! what a study he had presented! And yet there he was, evidently in needy circumstances, pressed on by even urgent want, and I, Con Cregan, the outcast, the poor, friendless street-runner, had become a “millionnaire.”
I don't know how it was, but certainly I felt marvellously ill at ease with my new friend. A real aristocrat, with all the airs of assumption and haughtiness, would have been a blessing compared with the submissive softness of the “Chevalier.” Through all his flattery there seemed a sly consciousness that his honeyed words were a snare, and his smile a delusion; and I could never divest myself of the feeling that he saw into the very secret of my heart, and knew me thoroughly.
I must become his dupe, thought I, or it is all over with me. The fellow will detect me for a “parvenu” long before we reach Malaga!
No man born and bred to affluence could have acquired the keen insight into life that I possessed. I must mask this knowledge, then, if I would still be thought a “born gentleman.” This was a wise resolve,—at least, its effects were immediately such as I hoped for. The Chevalier's little sly sarcasms, his half-insinuated “équivoques,” were changed for a tone of wonder and admiration for all I said. How one so young could have seen and learned so much!—what natural gifts I must possess!—how remarkably just my views were!—how striking the force of my observations!—and all this while I was discoursing what certainly does not usually pass for “consummate wisdom.” I soon saw that the Chevalier set me down for a fool; and from that moment we changed places,—he became the dupe versus me. To be sure, the contrivance cost me something, as we usually spent the evenings at piquet or écarté, and the consul was the luckiest of men; to use his own phrase, applied to one he once spoke of, “savait corriger la fortune.”
Although he spoke freely of the fashionable world of Paris and London, with all whose celebrities he affected a near intimacy, he rarely touched upon his New World experiences, and blinked all allusion whatever to the republic of “Campecho.” His own history was comprised in the brief fact that he was the cadet of a great family of Provence,—all your French rogues, I remark, come from the South of France,—that he had once held a high diplomatic rank, from which, in consequence of the fall of a ministry, he was degraded, and, after many vicissitudes of fortune, he had become Consul-General at Campecho. “My friends,” continued he, “are now looking up again in the world, so that I entertain hopes of something better than perpetual banishment.”