Quite an unfearful person; old, and rather shuffling, easy-going, and putting you at your ease, rather dreamy, and speaking with a slightly nasal voice, rolling an armchair for you to sit in with his own august hands, offering cigarettes with a little shake of the box to loosen them and make your acceptance of one more easy, searching for a matchbox amidst the papers on the desk: a true gentleman, though an unfortunate Emperor.
Though I was eighteen, I was still very much of a child, and that is perhaps why I felt an affection for the old gentleman at almost first sight. He remembered my father perfectly well; and, with a shade of sadness and wreathed in his cigarette smoke, he fell into a little reverie. We talked—he, my guardian, and I. My lameness was explained and commiserated, and, when our audience was ended and M. Ollivier was announced as waiting, he pushed us out of his cabinet, holding our hands affectionately, patting my shoulder, and all with such a grace and goodness of heart as to make me for ever his admirer and friend.
Ah, that was a good man lost in an Emperor!
CHAPTER XVIII MY FIRST NIGHT IN PARIS
"I am due to dine at the Duc de Bassano's," said my guardian as I parted with him outside the Tuileries. "So, if we do not see one another till to-morrow morning, au revoir. You have plenty of money in your pocket, Paris is before you, you are young: amuse yourself."
Then the old gentleman marched off, and left me standing on the pavement.
I could not help recalling my father's words in the room of the Duc de Morny, years ago, when he dismissed me:
"Go and play."