Chapter Chapter 163 · LUC-ESPRIT

At the age of sixteen, one evening at the opera, he had had the honor

to be stared at through opera-glasses by two beauties at the same

time—ripe and celebrated beauties then, and sung by Voltaire, the

Camargo and the Sallé. Caught between two fires, he had beaten a heroic

retreat towards a little dancer, a young girl named Nahenry, who was

sixteen like himself, obscure as a cat, and with whom he was in love.

He abounded in memories. He was accustomed to exclaim: “How pretty she

was—that Guimard-Guimardini-Guimardinette, the last time I saw her at

Longchamps, her hair curled in sustained sentiments, with her

come-and-see of turquoises, her gown of the color of persons newly

arrived, and her little agitation muff!” He had worn in his young

manhood a waistcoat of Nain-Londrin, which he was fond of talking about

effusively. “I was dressed like a Turk of the Levant Levantin,” said

he. Madame de Boufflers, having seen him by chance when he was twenty,

had described him as “a charming fool.” He was horrified by all the

names which he saw in politics and in power, regarding them as vulgar

and bourgeois. He read the journals, the _newspapers, the gazettes_ as

he said, stifling outbursts of laughter the while. “Oh!” he said, “what

people these are! Corbière! Humann! Casimir Périer! There’s a minister

for you! I can imagine this in a journal: ‘M. Gillenorman, minister!’

that would be a farce. Well! They are so stupid that it would pass”; he

merrily called everything by its name, whether decent or indecent, and

did not restrain himself in the least before ladies. He uttered coarse

speeches, obscenities, and filth with a certain tranquillity and lack

of astonishment which was elegant. It was in keeping with the

unceremoniousness of his century. It is to be noted that the age of

periphrase in verse was the age of crudities in prose. His god-father

had predicted that he would turn out a man of genius, and had bestowed

on him these two significant names: Luc-Esprit.