A supercilious young man, with pink cheeks, and a voice which his admirers compared to Shelley's, then came up to Henry and asked him what he thought of Mallarmé's latest sonnet; but finding Henry confessedly at sea, turned the conversation to the Empire ballet, of which, unfortunately, Henry knew as little. The conversation then languished, and the Shelley-voiced young man turned elsewhere for sympathy, with a shrug at your country bumpkins who know nothing later than Rossetti.
In the thick of the conversational turmoil, Henry's attention had from time to time been attracted by the noise proceeding from a blustering, red-headed man, with a face of fire.
"Who is that?" at last he found opportunity to ask his friend.
"That is our greatest critic," said the publisher.
"Oh!" said Henry, "I must try and hear what he is saying. It seems important from the way he is listened to."
So Henry listened, and heard how the fire-faced man said the word "damn" with great volubility and variety of cadence, and other words to the same effect, and how the little group around him hung upon his words and said to each other, "How brilliant!" "How absolute!"
Henry turned to his friend. "The only word I can catch is the word 'damn,'" he said.
"That," said the publisher, with a laugh, "is the master-word of fashionable criticism."
Presently a little talkative man came up, and said that he hoped Mr. Mesurier was an adherent of the rightful king.
"Oh, of course!" said Henry.