À M. Gaston, Paris
de l’Institut de France
A PAGE OF PHILOSOPHY
THERE was a break in the soft stream of Rameau’s eloquence when somebody spoke of Krowtosky. The interruption came from Louis Gaston, a brilliant young journalist, whose air of sanctified rake and residence in the Rue du Bac, in front of a well-known shop, earned him the nickname of Le Petit Saint Thomas.
Krowtosky’s name diverted the channel of the murmurous, half-abstracted discourse to which we had lent an attentive ear, physically lulled, and though charmed, not boisterously amused by Rameau’s sly anecdotal humour and complaisant lightness of tone. Rameau always talked delightfully, without any apparent consciousness of the fact; above all, without any apparent effort. He never raised his voice, gesticulated slightly, accentuated no point, and left much to his listener’s discretion; and his calm drollery was all the more delicious because of the sedate and equable expression of his handsome face.
‘Krowtosky,’ he repeated, as he turned his picturesque grey head in Gaston’s direction; with a deliberate air he removed his glasses, slowly polished them, and interjected, ‘Ah!’
‘You must remember that queer Russian who used to hold forth here some years ago,’ Louis Gaston continued, in an explanatory tone; ‘a heavy, unemotional fellow, with desperate views. He began by amusing us, and ended by nearly driving us mad with his eternal Nirvana.’
‘Oh, yes,’ somebody else cried, suddenly spurred to furnish further reminiscences. ‘His trousers were preternaturally wide, and his coat-sleeves preternaturally short. You always imagined that he carried dynamite in his pockets, and apprehended an explosion if you accidentally threw a lighted match or a half-smoked cigarette in his neighbourhood.’
‘He had small eyes, and a big nose, the head of an early Gaul, and a hollow voice,’ I remarked.
‘A monster to convince the Tartars themselves of their superior ugliness, if they entertained any doubt of it,’ half lisped a Frenchman recently crowned by the Academy, and as unconscious of his own ill-looks as only a man, and above all a Frenchman, can be.
‘The good-nature of your remarks and your keen remembrance of Krowtosky prove that he must be a personage in his way,’ said Rameau mockingly.