"You never told me!"
"You never asked me. It's one of the greatest names in France. They're very poor, I believe."
"Poor! You should see the house they live in!"
"I've been there, to dinner; and the dinner wasn't very good. They let a great part of it, and live mostly in the country. The Duke is Zouzou's brother; very unlike Zouzou; he's consumptive and unmarried, and the most respectable man in Paris. Zouzou will be the Duke some day."
"And Dodor—he's a swell, too, I suppose—he says he's de something or other!"
"Yes—Rigolot de Lafarce. I've no doubt he descends from the Crusaders, too; the name seems to favor it, anyhow; and such lots of them do in this country. His mother was English, and bore the worthy name of Brown. He was at school in England; that's why he speaks English so well—and behaves so badly, perhaps! He's got a very beautiful sister, married to a man in the 60th Rifles—Jack Reeve, a son of Lord Reevely's; a selfish sort of chap. I don't suppose he gets on very well with his brother-in-law. Poor Dodor! His sister's about the only living thing he cares for—except Zouzou."
I wonder if the bland and genial Monsieur Théodore—"notre Sieur Théodore"—now junior partner in the great haberdashery firm of "Passefil et Rigolot," on the Boulevard des Capucines, and a pillar of the English chapel in the Rue Marbœuf, is very hard on his employés and employées if they are a little late at their counters on a Monday morning?
I wonder if that stuck-up, stingy, stodgy, communard-shooting, church-going, time-serving, place-hunting, pious-eyed, pompous old prig, martinet, and philistine, Monsieur le Maréchal-Duc de la Rochemartel-Boisségur, ever tells Madame la Maréchale-Duchesse (née Hunks, of Chicago) how once upon a time Dodor and he—
We will tell no tales out of school.
The present scribe is no snob. He is a respectably brought-up old Briton of the higher middle-class—at least, he flatters himself so. And he writes for just such old philistines as himself, who date from a time when titles were not thought so cheap as to-day. Alas! all reverence for all that is high and time-honored and beautiful seems at a discount.