第54章

"COMME IL FAUT"

SEVERAL times in the course of this narrative I have hinted at an idea corresponding to the above French heading, and now feel it incumbent upon me to devote a whole chapter to that idea, which was one of the most ruinous, lying notions which ever became engrafted upon my life by my upbringing and social milieu.

The human race may be divided into several categories--rich and poor, good and bad, military and civilian, clever and stupid, and so forth, and so forth.Yet each man has his own favourite, fundamental system of division which he unconsciously uses to class each new person with whom he meets.At the time of which I am speaking, my own favourite, fundamental system of division in this respect was into people "comme il faut" and people "comme il ne faut pas"--the latter subdivided, again, into people merely not "comme il faut" and the lower orders.People "comme il faut" I respected, and looked upon as worthy to consort with me as my equals; the second of the above categories I pretended merely to despise, but in reality hated, and nourished towards them a kind of feeling of offended personality; while the third category had no existence at all, so far as I was concerned, since my contempt for them was too complete.This "comme il faut"-ness of mine lay, first and foremost, in proficiency in French, especially conversational French.A person who spoke that language badly at once aroused in me a feeling of dislike."Why do you try to talk as we do when you haven't a notion how to do it?" I would seem to ask him with my most venomous and quizzing smile.The second condition of "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse;

the fourth--and a very important one--indifference to everything, and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui.Moreover, there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which he belonged.Chief among these signs (the others being the fittings of his rooms, his gloves, his handwriting, his turn-out, and so forth) were his feet.The relation of boots to trousers was sufficient to determine, in my eyes, the social status of a man.Heelless boots with angular toes, wedded to narrow, unstrapped trouser-ends--these denoted the vulgarian.Boots with narrow, round toes and heels, accompanied either by tight trousers strapped under the instep and fitting close to the leg or by wide trousers similarly strapped, but projecting in a peak over the toe--these meant the man of mauvais genre; and so on, and so on.

It was a curious thing that I who lacked all ability to become "comme il faut," should have assimilated the idea so completely as I did.Possibly it was the fact that it had cost me such enormous labour to acquire that brought about its strenuous development in my mind.I hardly like to think how much of the best and most valuable time of my first sixteen years of existence I wasted upon its acquisition.Yet every one whom I imitated--Woloda, Dubkoff, and the majority of my acquaintances--