第83章

Mme.de V---- vowed to every creature she met, "She had never had a more improving conversation with a man in her life."There are three epochs in the empire of a Frenchwoman--she is coquette, then deist, then devote.The empire during these is never lost--she only changes her subjects.When thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominion of the slaves of love she repeoples it with slaves of infidelity, and, then with the slaves of the church.

Mme.de V---- was vibrating between the first of these epochs; the color of the rose was fading fast away; she ought to have been a deist five years before the time I had the honor to pay my first visit.

She placed me upon the same sofa with her for the sake of disputing the point of religion more closely.In short, Mme.de V---- told me she believed nothing.

I told Mme.de V---- it might be her principle, but I was sure it could not be her interest, to level the outworks, without which Icould not conceive how such a citadel as hers could be defended;that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world than for a beauty to be a deist; that it was a debt I owed my creed not to conceal it from her; that I had not been five minutes upon the sofa beside her before I had begun to form designs; and what is it but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had existed in her breast, which could have checked them as they rose up?

"We are not adamant," said I, taking hold of her hand, "and there is need of all restraints till age in her own time steals in and lays them on us; but, my dear lady," said I, kissing her hand, "it is too--too soon."I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Mme.de V----.She affirmed to M.D---- and the Abbe M---- that in one half hour I had said more for revealed religion than all their encyclopaedia had said against it.I was listed directly into Mme.

de V----o's coterie, and she put off the epoch of deism for two years.

I remember it was in this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me that my solitaire was pinned too strait about my neck."It should be plus badinant," said the count, looking down upon his own; "but a word, M.Yorick, to the wise--""And from the wise, M.le Comte," replied I, making him a bow, "is enough."The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardor than ever I was embraced by mortal man.

For three weeks together I was of every man's opinion I met.

"Pardi! ce M.Yorick a autant d'esprit que nous autres.""Il raisonne bien," said another.

"C'est un bon enfant," said a third.

And at this price I could have eaten and drunk and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but it was a dishonest reckoning.Igrew ashamed of it; it was the gain of a slave; every sentiment of honor revolted against it; the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system; the better the coterie, the more children of Art, I languished for those of Nature.And one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick, went to bed, and ordered horses in the morning to set out for Italy.

CONTRAST

A shoe coming loose from the forefoot of the thill horse at the beginning of the ascent of Mount Taurira, the postilion dismounted, twisted the shoe off, and put it in his pocket; as the ascent was of five or six miles, and that horse our main dependence I made a point of having the shoe fastened on again as well as we could, but the postilion had thrown away the nails, and the hammer in the chaise box being of no great use without them, I submitted to go on.

He had not mounted half a mile higher when, coming to a flinty piece of road, the poor devil lost a second shoe, and from off his other forefoot.I then got out of the chaise in good earnest, and seeing a house about a quarter of a mile to the left hand, with a great deal to do I prevailed upon the postilion to turn up to it.

The look of the house, and of everything about it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster.It was a little farmhouse surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, about as much corn, and close to the house on one side was a potagerie of an acre and a half, full of everything which could make plenty in a French peasant's house, and on the other side was a little wood which furnished wherewithal to dress it.It was about eight in the evening when I got to the house, so I left the postilion to manage his point as he could, and for mine I walked directly into the house.

The family consisted of an old gray-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and sons-in-laws, and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them.

They were all sitting down together to their lentil soup.A large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table, and a flagon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the repast--'twas a feast of love.

The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality would have me sit down at the table.My heart was sat down the moment I entered the room, so I sat down at once like a son of the family, and to invest myself in the character as speedily as Icould, I instantly borrowed the old man's knife, and taking up the loaf cut myself a hearty luncheon; and, as I did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest welcome, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed to doubt it.

Was it this, or tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so sweet, and to what magic I owe it that the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it that they remain upon my palate to this hour?

If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it was much more so.