We get forward in the world not so much by doing services as
receiving them. You take a withering twig and put it in the
ground, and then you water it because you have planted it.
Monsieur le Comte de B----, merely because he had done me one
kindness in the affair of my passport, would go on and do me
another the few days he was at Paris, in making me known to a few
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 honors to
some little account; otherwise, as is commonly the case, I should
have dined or supped 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 got hold of the couvert* of some
more entertaining guest; and in course of time 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.
* Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon.
I had the honor 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 dressed himself out to the
idea of tilts and tournaments ever since. The Marquis de B----
wished 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 Anglais can scarce
get a kind look from them as it is." The marquis invited me to
supper.
M. 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 M. P----'s concerts upon any
other terms.
I had been misrepresented to Mme. de Q---- as an esprit--Mme. de Q----
was an esprit herself; she burned with impatience to see me and
hear me talk. I had not taken my seat before I saw she did not
care a sou 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.
Mme. de V---- vowed to every creature she met, "She had never had a
more improving conversation with a man in her life."
There are three epochs in the empire of a Frenchwoman--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
repeoples it with slaves of infidelity, and, then with the slaves
of the church.
Mme. de V---- was vibrating between the first of these epochs; the
color of the rose was fading fast away; she ought to have been a
deist five years before the time I had the honor 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, Mme. de V---- told
me she believed nothing.
I told Mme. 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 upon the sofa
beside her before I had begun to form designs; and what is it but
the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had existed in
her breast, which could have checked 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, "it
is too--too soon."
I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Mme. de
V----. She affirmed to M. 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 Mme.
de V----o's coterie, and she put off the epoch 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, that the young
Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the
room, to tell me that my solitaire was pinned too strait about my
neck. "It should be plus badinant," said the count, looking down
upon his own; "but a word, M. Yorick, to the wise--"
"And from the wise, M. le Comte," replied I, making him a bow, "is
enough."
The Count de Faineant embraced me with more ardor than ever I was
embraced by mortal man.
For three weeks together I was of every man's opinion I met.
"Pardi! ce M. 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 drunk and been merry all
the days of my life at Paris; but it was a dishonest reckoning. I
grew ashamed of it; it was the gain of a slave; every sentiment of
honor 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 languished 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, and ordered horses in the morning to set
out for Italy.