"All that stuff you have learned," said this worthy man, "is excellent for children; but when we become men we put away childish things, as M. de Voltaire or some other scoundrel of a philosopher, I think it was, once remarked. Mark you, I say nothing against religion. Religion is a most excellent institution; but in the world, my dear Patrique, we are brought face to face with men. Religion is a fixed institution; and the nones, or complines, whatever you call it that they say to-day, were what they said two hundred years ago. But men are very shifty, and, as a matter of fact, damned rogues. It is very easy to be a saint in the College Bourdaloue; but it is very difficult to be a gentleman in the Boulevard des Italiens, especially in this bourgeois age" (he was a Royalist, with one foot in the Tuileries and the other in the Faubourg St. Germain), "when we have a what-do-you-call-it as President of the Council and a thingumbob on the throne of France."
So he went on as he sat, erect as a man of thirty, gazing at the passing streets with those blue tranquil eyes of a child, out of which youth still looked; and turning to me the pro-consular profile of which he was secretly so proud, and which was the thing, I believe, up to which this strange old gentleman lived.
To live up to your profile is not a bad rule of life, if you have a face like that possessed by the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan.
When we drew up at the Place Vendôme, I put my hand to open the door, and received my first lesson in the convenances from the Vicomte, who laid his gloved hand on my arm without a word. The footman opened the door, and the grand old gentleman descended. M. le Vicomte did not get out of a carriage—he descended. And with what a grace! He waited courteously for me on the pavement; and then, with a little wave of his clouded cane, shepherded me into the house.
At the door, Beril, the Vicomte's personal servant, a man older than his master, received us; and Joubert was in the hall with my luggage.
"And now," said the Vicomte, when I had been shown my suite of rooms, and very sumptuous they were, "déjeûner."
We got into the carriage which was waiting, the footman closed the door, and we started for the Café de Paris.
Fourteen people were invited to the repast, besides myself. It took place in the Amber Room overlooking the Boulevard; and six of the guests were ladies. Very great ladies—duchesses, in my simple eyes. Had I known more of breakfast-parties and the world, I might have wondered at the disposition of the guests; for the Duc d'Harmonville, an old gentleman with a white imperial and the exact expression of a billy-goat, sat between two of the duchesses; and the rest of the female illuminati sat, three of them altogether in one cluster, and the sixth at the right of my guardian.
There was Pélisson of the "Moniteur," the only Press man present; Carvalho of the Opéra Comique; the Duc de Cadore; Prince Metternich, with his long Dundreary whiskers now lightly streaked with grey; and, as for the rest, I did not catch their names, and I have all but forgotten their faces.