Chapter 22 - Page 2

first to abandon a new fashion. Accused of nothing worse
than spending too much time at his toilet and wearing a corset, he
presented the type of those persons who displease no one by adopting
incessantly the ideas and the follies of everbody, and who, astride of
circumstance, never grow old.

As a husband, he was pitied; people thought Beatrix inexcusable for
deserting the best fellow on earth, and social jeers only touched the
woman. A member of all clubs, subscriber to all the absurdities
generated by patriotism or party spirit ill-understood (a compliance
which put him in the front rank /a propos/ of all such matters), this
loyal, brave, and very silly nobleman, whom unfortunately so many rich
men resemble, would naturally desire to distinguish himself by
adopting some fashionable mania. Consequently, he glorified his name
principally in being the sultan of a four-footed harem, governed by an
old English groom, which cost him monthly from four to five thousand
francs. His specialty was /running horses;/ he protected the equine
race and supported a magazine devoted to hippic questions; but, for
all that, he knew very little of the animals, and from shoes to
bridles he depended wholly on his groom,--all of which will
sufficiently explain to you that this semi-bachelor had nothing
actually of his own, neither mind, taste, position, or absurdity; even
his fortune came from his fathers. After having tasted the
displeasures of marriage he was so content to find himself once more a
bachelor that he said among his friends, "I was born with a caul"
(that is, to good luck).

Pleased above all things to be able to live without the costs of
making an appearance, to which husbands are constrained, his house, in
which since the death of his father nothing had been changed,
resembled those of masters who are travelling; he lived there little,
never dined, and seldom slept there. Here follows the reason for such
indifference.

After various amorous adventures, bored by women of fashion of the
kind who are truly bores, and who plant too many thorny hedges around
happiness, he had married after a fashion, as we shall see, a certain
Madame Schontz, celebrated in the world of Fanny Beaupre, Susanne du
Val-Noble, Florine, Mariette, Jenny Cadine, etc. This world,--of which
one of our artists wittily remarked at the frantic moment of an opera
/galop/, "When one thinks that all /that/ is lodged and clothed and
lives well, what a fine idea it gives us of mankind!"--this world has
already irrupted elsewhere into this history of French manners and
customs of the nineteenth century; but to paint it with fidelity, the
historian should proportion the number of such personages to the
diverse