"L'amour! l'amour!
La nuit comme le jour!"
he lounged down the stairs and drove to a sale in the Faubourg St. Germain, where one of his Paris chums, a virtuoso and connoisseur, had left endless meubles to be sold by his duns and knocked down to his friends.
Vaughan was quite right; he had lived, and at a pretty good pace, too. When he came of age a tolerably good fortune awaited him, but it had not been long in his hands before he contrived to let it slip through them. He'd been brought up at Sainte Barbe, after being expelled from Rugby, knew all the best of the "jeunesse dorée," and could not endure any place after Paris, where his life was as sparkling and brilliant as the foam off a glass of champagne. Wild and careless, high spirited, and lavish in his Opera suppers, his cabaret dinners, his Trois Frères banquets, his lansquenet parties, his bouquets for baronnes, and his bracelets for ballerinas, Ernest gained his reputation as a Lion, and—ruined himself, too, poor old fellow!
His place down in Surrey had mortgages thick on every inch of its lands, and the money that kept him going was borrowed from those modern Satans, money lenders, at the usually ruinous interest. "But still," Ernest was wont to say, with great philosophy, "I've had ten years' swing of pleasure. Does every man get as much as that? And should I have been any happier if I'd been a good boy, and a country squire, sat on the bench, amused my mind with turnips, and married some bishop's daughter, who'd have marched me to church, forbidden cigars, and buried me in family boots?"
Certainly that would not have been his line, and so, in natural horror at it, he dashed into a diametrically opposite one, and after the favor he had shown him from every handsome woman that drove through Longchamp, wore diamonds at the Tuileries, and supped with dominos noirs at bals d'Opéra, and the favor he showed to cards, the courses, and the coulisses, few bishops would have imperilled their daughters' souls by setting them to hunt down this wicked Lion, especially as the poor Lion now wasn't worth the trapping. If he had been, there would have been hue and cry enough after him I don't doubt; but the Gordon Cummings of the beau sexe rarely hunt unless it's worth their while, and they can bring home splendid spoils to make their bosom friends mad with envy; and Ernest, despite his handsome face, his fashionable reputation, and the aroma of conquest that hung about him (they used to say he never wooed ever so negligently but he won), was assuredly neither an "eligible speculation" nor a "marrying man," and was an object rather of terror to English mammas steering budding young ladies through the dangerous vortex of French society with a fierce chevaux de frise of British prejudices and a keen British eye to business. If Ernest was of no other use, however, he was invaluable to his uncles, aunts, and male cousins, as a sort of scapegoat and épouvantail, to be held up on high to show the unwary what they would come to if they followed his steps. It was so pleasant to them to exult over his backslidings, and, cutting him mercilessly up into little bits, hold condemnatory sermons over every one of the pieces. "Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplait pas;" and Vaughan's friends, like the rest of us pharisees, dearly loved to glance at the publican (especially if he was handsomer, cleverer, or any way better than themselves), and thank God loudly that they were not such men as he. Ernest was a hardened sinner, however; he laughed, put the Channel between him and them, and went on his ways without thinking or caring for their animadversions.
"By Jove! Emile," said he as they sat dining together at Leiter's, "I should like to find out my golden-haired sylphide. She was English, by her fair skin, and though I'm not very fond of my compatriotes, especially when they're abroad (I think touring John Bull detestable wrapped up in his treble plaid of reserve), still I should like to find her out just for simple curiosity. I assure you she'd the prettiest foot and ankle I ever saw, not excepting even Bluette's."
"Ma foi! that's a good deal from you. She must be found, then. Voyons! shall we advertise in the Moniteur, employ the secret police, or call at all the hotels in person to say that you're quite ready to act out Soulié's 'Lion Amoureux,' if you can only discover the petite bourgeoise to play it with you?"
Vaughan laughed as he drank his demi-tasse.
"Lion amoureux! that's an anomaly; we're only in love just enough pour nous amuser; and of us Albin says, very rightly,
Si vous connaissiez quelques meilleurs,
Vous porteriez bientôt cette âme ailleurs."