to rise to the occasion. All that he does is witty and
never in bad taste; always and in everything he displays the genius of
Rivarol, the polished subtlety of the old French noble. It was he who
told that delicious anecdote of a friend of Laffitte the banker. A
national fund had been started to give back to Laffitte the mansion in
which the Revolution of 1830 was brewed, and this friend appeared at the
offices of the fund with, 'Here are five francs, give me a hundred
sous change!'--A caricature was made of it.--It was once La Palferine's
misfortune, in judicial style, to make a young girl a mother. The girl,
not a very simple innocent, confessed all to her mother, a respectable
matron, who hurried forthwith to La Palferine and asked what he meant to
do.

"'Why, madame,' said he, 'I am neither a surgeon nor a midwife.'

"She collapsed, but three or four years later she returned to the
charge, still persisting in her inquiry, 'What did La Palferine mean to
do?'

"'Well, madame,' returned he, 'when the child is seven years old, an
age at which a boy ought to pass out of women's hands'--an indication
of entire agreement on the mother's part--'if the child is really
mine'--another gesture of assent--'if there is a striking likeness, if
he bids fair to be a gentleman, if I can recognize in him my turn of
mind, and more particularly the Rusticoli air; then, oh--ah!'--a new
movement from the matron--'on my word and honor, I will make him a
cornet of--sugar-plums!'

"All this, if you will permit me to make use of the phraseology employed
by M. Sainte-Beuve for his biographies of obscurities--all this, I
repeat, is the playful and sprightly yet already somewhat decadent side
of a strong race. It smacks rather of the Parc-aux-Cerfs than of the
Hotel de Rambouillet. It is a race of the strong rather than of the
sweet; I incline to lay a little debauchery to its charge, and more than
I should wish in brilliant and generous natures; it is gallantry after
the fashion of the Marechal de Richelieu, high spirits and frolic
carried rather too far; perhaps we may see in it the _outrances_ of
another age, the Eighteenth Century pushed to extremes; it harks back
to the Musketeers; it is an exploit stolen from Champcenetz; nay, such
light-hearted inconstancy takes us back to the festooned and ornate
period of the old court of the Valois. In an age as moral as the
present, we are bound to regard audacity of this kind sternly; still, at