People of
rank; and they were to present me to others, and so on.
I had got master of my SECRET just in time to turn these honours to
some little account; otherwise, as is commonly the case, I should
have dined or supp'd a single time or two round, and then, by
TRANSLATING French looks and attitudes into plain English, I should
presently have seen, that I had hold of the couvert {3} of some
more entertaining guest; and in course should have resigned all my
places one after another, merely upon the principle that I could
not keep them. - As it was, things did not go much amiss.
I had the honour of being introduced to the old Marquis de B-: in
days of yore he had signalized himself by some small feats of
chivalry in the Cour d'Amour, and had dress'd himself out to the
idea of tilts and tournaments ever since. - The Marquis de B- wish'd
to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain.
"He could like to take a trip to England," and asked much of the
English ladies. - Stay where you are, I beseech you, Monsieur le
Marquis, said I. - Les Messieurs Anglois can scarce get a kind look
from them as it is. - The Marquis invited me to supper.
Monsieur P-, the farmer-general, was just as inquisitive about our
taxes. They were very considerable, he heard. - If we knew but how
to collect them, said I, making him a low bow.
I could never have been invited to Mons. P-'s concerts upon any
other terms.
I had been misrepresented to Madame de Q- as an esprit. - Madame de
Q- was an esprit herself: she burnt with impatience to see me, and
hear me talk. I had not taken my seat, before I saw she did not
care a sous whether I had any wit or no; - I was let in, to be
convinced she had. I call heaven to witness I never once opened
the door of my lips.
Madame de V- vow'd to every creature she met - "She had never had a
more improving conversation with a man in her life."
There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman. - 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 re-
peoples it with slaves of infidelity, - and then with the slaves of
the church.
Madame de V- was vibrating betwixt the first of those epochas: the
colour of the rose was fading fast away; - she ought to have been a
deist five years before the time I had the honour 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 Madame de
V- told me she believed nothing. - I told Madame de V- it might be
her principle, but I was sure it could not be her interest to level
the outworks, without which I could 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 sat upon the sofa beside her, but I had begun to
form designs; - and what is it, but the sentiments of religion, and
the persuasion they had excited in her breast, which could have
check'd 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, - 'tis too-
-too soon.
I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de
V-. - She affirmed to Monsieur 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
Madame de V-'s coterie; - and she put off the epocha 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, when the young
Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the
room, to tell me my solitaire was pinn'd too straight about my
neck. - It should be plus badinant, said the Count, looking down
upon his own; - but a word, Monsieur Yorick, TO THE WISE -
And FROM THE WISE, Monsieur le Count, replied I, making him a bow,-
-IS ENOUGH.
The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardour than ever I was
embraced by mortal man.
For three weeks together I was of every man's opinion I met. -
Pardi! ce Monsieur 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 drank and been merry all
the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest RECKONING; - I
grew ashamed of it. - It was the gain of a slave; - every sentiment
of honour 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 languish'd 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; - order'd La Fleur to get me
horses in the morning to set out for Italy.
