hem 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! Corbiere! Humann! Casimir Perier! 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.

CHAPTER IV--A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT

He had taken prizes in his boyhood at the College of Moulins, where he
was born, and he had been crowned by the hand of the Duc de Nivernais,
whom he called the Duc de Nevers. Neither the Convention, nor the death
of Louis XVI., nor the Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, nor
anything else had been able to efface the memory of this crowning. The
Duc de Nevers was, in his eyes, the great figure of the century. "What a
charming grand seigneur," he said, "and what a fine air he had with his
blue ribbon!"

In the eyes of M. Gillenormand, Catherine the Second had made reparation
for the crime of the partition of Poland by purchasing, for three
thousand roubles, the secret of the elixir of gold, from Bestucheff. He
grew animated on this subject: "The elixir of gold," he exclaimed, "the
yellow dye of Bestucheff, General Lamotte's drops, in the eighteenth
century,--this was the great remedy for the catastrophes of love, the
panacea against Venus, at one louis the half-ounce phial. Louis XV.
sent two hundred phials of it to the Pope." He would have been greatly
irritated and thrown off his balance, had any one told him that the
elixir of gold is nothing but the perchloride of iron. M. Gillenormand
adored the Bourbons, and had a horror of 1789; he was forever narrating
in what manner he had saved himself during the Terror, and how he had
been obliged to display a vast deal of gayety and cleverness in order to
escape having his head cut off. If any young man ventured to pronounce
an eulogium on the