(8.) A gentleman of the legal profession is not like the same man in the city and at court; when he has returned home he resumes his natural manners, look, and gestures, which he left behind, and is no longer so embarrassed nor so polite.
(9.) The Crispins join and club together to drive out with six horses to their carriage, and with a swarm of men in livery, to which each has furnished his share; they figure at the Cours or at Vincennes[332] as brilliantly as a newly-married couple, or as Jason who is ruining himself, or as Thraso who wishes to get married, and who has deposited the money to buy an important place.[333]
(10.) I hear a good deal of talk about the Sannions; about “the same name, the same arms, the elder branch, the younger branch, the younger sons of the second branch; about the first bearing their arms plain, the second with a label, and the third with a bordure indented.” Their colour and metal are the same as those of the Bourbons, and, like them, they bear two and one;[334] it is true these are not “fleurs de lis,” but they are satisfied; perhaps, in their inmost hearts, they believe their bearings as noble; at least, they are the same as those of lords of the highest rank who are quite content with them. We see them on their mourning hangings,[335] and on the windows of their chapels, on the gates of their castle, on their justiciary pillar, where many a man is condemned to be hanged who only deserved banishment; they are visible anywhere, on their furniture and their locks, while their carriages are covered with them, and the liveries of their servants do not disgrace their escutcheon. I should like to tell the Sannions that their ostentation is too precipitate; that they should have waited at least until their race had existed a century; that those persons who knew and conversed with their grandfather are old and cannot live long, and that, after their death, no one will be able to say where he kept his shop, and what a very dear one it was.
The Sannions and the Crispins[336] had rather be thought extravagant than covetous; they tell you a long story of a feast or a collation they gave, of their losses at play, and express aloud their regrets they have not lost more. They mention in their peculiar language certain ladies of their acquaintance; they have ever many pleasant things to tell each other, are always making new discoveries, and confide to one another their successes with the fair. One of them, coming lately to his country-house, hastens to bed, and rises with the dawn, then puts on his gaiters and a linen suit, and fastens on his belt and his powder-horn, ties back his hair, takes his gun, and is a sportsman, if he did but shoot well. He returns at night, wet and weary, without any game, but goes shooting again on the morrow, and spends the whole day in missing thrushes and partridges.
Another man[337] speaks of some wretched dogs he has as “his pack of hounds;” he knows where the meet is held, and goes there; he is at the starting,[338] and enters the thicket with the huntsmen, with his horn by his side; he does not ask, like Menalippus, “Do I enjoy myself?”[339] but he thinks he does; he forgets the law and all lawsuits, and would be thought an Hippolytus.[340] Menander, who yesterday was engaged in a lawsuit, paid him a visit, but to-day would not know again his judge. To-morrow you may see him at court, where a weighty and capital case is going to be tried; he gets his learned brethren about him, and informs them that he did not lose the stag, but that he is quite hoarse with hallooing after the hounds which lost the scent, or after those sportsmen who were at fault, and that, with half a dozen hounds, he was in at the death; but the clock strikes, and he has no more time to talk of the stag being at bay, or of the quarry: he must take his seat with the other magistrates and administer justice.
(11.) How great is the infatuation of certain men, who, being possessed of the wealth their fathers acquired by trade, which they have just inherited, imitate princes in their dress and retinue, and by excessive expenditure and ridiculous pomp provoke the remarks and sneers of the whole town they think to dazzle, and thus ruin themselves to be laughed at!
Some have not even the sorry advantage of having their follies talked about beyond their immediate neighbourhood, and the only spot where their vanity is displayed. They do not know in the Ile that André makes a figure and squanders his patrimony in the Marais.[341] If he were only better known in town and in the suburbs, perhaps, amongst so large a number of citizens, who are not all able to judge sensibly of everything, possibly one of them might declare André has a magnificent spirit, and give him credit for his banquets to Xanthe and Ariston, and for his entertainments to Elamire; but he ruins himself obscurely, and hastens to become poor only for the sake of two or three persons, who do not esteem him in the least, and though at present he rides in his coach, in six months he will hardly be able to go on foot.[342]
(12.) Narcissus[343] rises in the morning to lie down at night; he spends as many hours in dressing as a woman; he goes every day to mass at the Feuillants or the Minims;[344] is very agreeable in company, and in his parish they reckon on him to make a third man at ombre or reversis.[345] He sits for hours together at