"Absurd," Guy retorted. "Wasn't he a heathen, and rather an immoral one? It was of profligates with far greater advantages of education that some one said, ''Le remords nait de l'abandon, et non de la faute.' The walls of Troy were strong then, and the Destroyer-of-ships safe behind them, 'getting herself up alarmingly' for his return. No wonder Menelaüs was eager for the duel: he was staking his loneliness against Paris's nine points of the law."
Sir Henry Fallowfield smiled approvingly.
"Yes," he observed, not answering what had been said, but evidently following out a train of his own thought. "Modern exquisites have courage, and self-possession, and conceit—great elements of success with women, I own—but they have not much more. I am certain Charley, who is a favorable specimen of the class, often affects silence because he has nothing on earth to say. There is a decadence since my younger days (I hope I speak dispassionately), and how very far we fell short of the roués of the Régence! We could no more match them than a fighting-man in good training could stand up to one of the old Pict giants. Look at Richelieu: good at all points—in the battle, in the boudoir, in the Bastille—a dangerous rival at the two ages of ordinary men's first and second childhood."
"He was a great man in his way," I assented. "Do you remember his answer to the Duchesse de Maine, when she asked him, for a political purpose, if he could remain faithful for one week to an intrigue then twenty-four hours old? 'Madame, quand une fois j'embrasse un parti, je suis capable des plus grandes sacrifices pour le soutenir.' The object of that heroic constancy was the Maréchale de Villars, one of the loveliest women in France. It was the sublime of fatuity—was it not?"
"Well, I don't know," said Charley, settling himself comfortably in his cushions, and glancing almost imperceptibly at Bruce; "they seem to fancy us, notwithstanding. We have only one great obstacle—the mothers that bore us."
Be it known that "they," used simply, stood in his vocabulary for the fair sex in general.
"Nonsense," replied Fallowfield; "don't be so ungrateful. You don't know what you owe to those anxious parents. It helps you enormously, being the objects of perpetual warnings from husbands and chaperons, the first considering you mauvais sujets, the last mauvais partis; for you are 'detrimentals,' for the most part, you will own."
"Vetitum ergo cupitum," interrupted Livingstone. "A good many moralists before and since old Rabelais have discoursed on that text. The Chief of Errington was probably much more agreeable, besides being a better match than Jock of Hazeldean, who clearly was what an old Frenchman lately described to me—'un vaurien, mon cher, qui court les filles et qui n'a pas le son.' But then poor Frank was the government candidate; so, of course, in a popular election, he went to the wall."
Sir Henry's face grew more pensive and grave as he said, "It is very hard on the women, certainly, that our race should have degenerated so, for I believe in my conscience they are as clever and wicked, and appreciate temptation as much as ever." (The gusto with which he said this is indescribable.) "There is the Bellasys, for instance, with a calculating sensuality, an astuteness of stratagem, an utter contempt of truth, and a general aptitude for making fools of men, that poor Philip the Regent would have worshiped. When she had no one better to corrupt, I have seen her take in hand an older, sadder, wiser, uglier man than myself, and in three days bring him to the verge of insanity, so that he would scowl at his wife, his companion for forty years, the blameless mother of six grown-up children, with a hideous expression indicative of carving-knives and strychnine. Guy suits her best. His thews and sinews awe her a little sometimes; and he has a certain hardness of character and pitilessness of purpose, improved by my instructions, which will carry him far, but not far enough, I think. You're right not to look flattered" (Guy's face had moved no more than the marble Memnon's); "you are only a shade better than the rest. Our effete world is not worthy of that rare creature: she was born a century too late."
"I quite differ with you," Bruce said, in his harshest voice; "I am certain the great plurality of the women of our day would resist any temptation, from fear of the consequences, if not from principle."