ch thick eyebrows and eyelashes it seemed
these must absorb them. I subsequently found, in a strange American
book,[24] some descriptions which may be applied to his odd expression
of eye. Monsieur Edmond About's mouth was sneering and sensual, and even
then affected Voltaire's sarcastic grimace. His bitter and equivocal
smile put you in mind of the grinding of an epigram-mill. One could
detect in his attitude, his physiognomy, and his language, that
obsequious malice, that familiarity, at the same time flattering and
jeering, which Voltaire turned to such good account in his commerce with
the great people of his day, and which his disciple was learning to
practise in his intercourse with the powerful of these times,--the
_parvenus_ and the wealthy. I was struck by the face of this college
Macchiavelli: on it were written the desire of success and the longing
to enjoy; the calculations of the ambitious man were allied with the
maliciousness of the giddy child. Of course he overwhelmed me with
compliments and flattery. He had, or thought he had, use for me. I
benevolently became the defender of the poor calumniated fellow in the
"Revue des Deux Mondes," just as one undertakes out of pure kindness of
heart to protect the widow and the orphan. Monsieur Edmond About thanked
me _orally_ with a flood of extraordinary gratitude; but he took good
care to avoid writing a word upon the subject. A letter might have laid
him under engagements, and might have embarrassed him one day or
another. Whereas he aimed to be both a diplomatist and a literary man.
He practised the art of good writing, and the art of turning it to the
best advantage.

Some months after this he brought out a piece called "Guillery," at the
French Comedy. The first night it was played, there was a hail-storm of
hisses. No _claqueur_ ever remembered to have heard the like before. The
charitable dramatic critics--delicate fellows, who cannot bear to see
people possess talents without their permission and despite
them--attacked the piece as blood-hounds the fugitive murderer. It
seemed as if Monsieur Edmond About was a ruined man, who could never
dare hold up his head again. He resisted the death-warrant. He had
friends in influential houses. He soon found lint enough for his wounds.
The next winter the town heard that Monsieur Edmond About's wounds had
been well dressed and were cured, and that he was going to write in
"Figaro." The amateurs of scandal began at o