s essentially a
Parisian; a Parisian is essentially impressionable to the impulse or
fashion of the moment. Is it a la mode for the moment to be Liberal or
anti-Liberal? Parisians embrace and kiss each other, and swear through
life and death to adhere forever to the mode of the moment. The
Three Days were the mode of the moment,--the Count de Passy became an
enthusiastic Orleanist. Louis Philippe was very gracious to him. He
was decorated; he was named prefet of his department; he was created
senator; he was about to be sent Minister to a German Court when Louis
Philippe fell. The Republic was proclaimed. The Count caught the popular
contagion, and after exchanging tears and kisses with patriots whom a
week before he had called canaille, he swore eternal fidelity to the
Republic. The fashion of the moment suddenly became Napoleonic, and with
the coup d'etat the Republic was metamorphosed into an Empire. The Count
wept on the bosoms of all the Vieilles Moustaches he could find, and
rejoiced that the sun of Austerlitz had re-arisen. But after the affair
of Mexico the sun of Austerlitz waxed very sickly. Imperialism was
fast going out of fashion. The Count transferred his affection to Jules
Favre, and joined the ranks of the advanced Liberals. During all these
political changes, the Count had remained very much the same man in
private life; agreeable, good-natured, witty, and, above all, a devotee
of the fair sex. When he had reached the age of sixty-eight he was still
fort bel homme, unmarried, with a grand presence and charming manner. At
that age he said, "Je me range," and married a young lady of eighteen.
She adored her husband, and was wildly jealous of him; while the Count
did not seem at all jealous of her, and submitted to her adoration with
a gentle shrug of the shoulders.

The three other guests who, with Graham and the two Italian ladies,
made up the complement of ten, were the German Count von Rudesheim,
a celebrated French physician named Bacourt, and a young author whom
Savarin had admitted into his clique and declared to be of rare promise.
This author, whose real name was Gustave Rameau, but who, to prove, I
suppose, the sincerity of that scorn for ancestry which he professed,
published his verses under the patrician designation of Alphonse de
Valcour, was about twenty-four, and might have passed at the first
glance for younger; but, looking at him closely, the signs of old age
were already stamped on his