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"Ordinarily, I should respect a host's privacy to the extent that I should walk a hundred miles round rather than stumble upon it, but this time I do not know whether to blame myself for my gaucherie or feel pleased that for once it brought me into good company. Mungo has just hinted with his customary discretion at the cause of the mystery.
May these not see in us some malgrace which it needs the gentleness of Christ to get over and forget, some savagery of which we are not aware, some gaucherie that repels though it cannot estrange them? Casting from us our own faults first, let us cast from us and from him our neighbor's also.
In his Memoirs he boasts of the "gaucherie de ses manières qui ne se plièrent jamais aux grâces de la Cour," p. 7. See her letter to Mercy, without date, but, apparently written a day or two after the king's journey to Paris, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 238. Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 240. "Mémoires de la Princesse de Lamballe," i., p. 342. Les Gardes du Corps.
During their meal, at the service of which he assisted, his eyes scarcely quitted her whom be appeared to regard with a mingled feeling of awe and adoration; nay, such was his abstraction that, in attempting to place a dish of game on the rude table at which the party sat, he lodged the whole of the contents in the lap of Middlemore, a gaucherie that drew from the latter an exclamation of horror, followed however the instant afterwards by Sambo's apology.
Katenka was now sixteen years old quite a grown-up girl; and although at that age the angular figures, the bashfulness, and the gaucherie peculiar to girls passing from childhood to youth usually replace the comely freshness and graceful, half-developed bloom of childhood, she had in no way altered.
"Much the same, thank you," mumbled a voice down in the throat. A silence, until Margaret tried another question, equally briefly answered; and, after a short interval, the young lady contrived to make her exit, with the same amount of gaucherie as had marked her entrance. Expressions of surprise at once began, and were so loud, that when Harry entered the room, his inquiry was, "What's the row?"
A protest rose to Montaiglon's throat; a fury stirred him at the gaucherie that should bring Olivia's name upon the top of such a subject. He could not trust himself to speak with calmness, and it was to his great relief the Chamberlain changed the topic broadened it, at least, and spoke of women in the general, almost cheerfully, as if he delighted to put an unpleasant topic behind him.
Well for such a man if a day comes to him in which he will look back with shame and self-reproach, not merely on every scandal which he may have caused by breaking the moral and social laws of humanity, by neglecting to restrain his appetites, pay his bills, and keep his engagements; but also on every conceited word and look, every gaucherie and rudeness, every self-indulgent moroseness and fastidiousness, as sins against the sacred charge which has been committed to him; and determine with that Jew of old, who, to judge from his letter to Philemon, was one of the most perfect gentlemen of God's making who ever walked this earth, to become "all things to all men, if by any means he may save some."
It need scarcely be added that he left Vienna the next day, and a week later obtained his transfer to another post. A short time before the tragedy of Mayerling, Crown Princess Stephanie had a very nasty fall, owing to the gaucherie of a cavalry officer with whom she was waltzing. The emperor was terribly annoyed, and Crown Prince Rudolph spoke his mind in no measured tones to the offender.
"Certainly not," stammered I, somewhat ashamed at my gaucherie. "He says they're in the drawing-room," whispered the major, in a voice that betokened a degree of suspicion; "but where the plague that is, Heaven only knows! Stand by, my boys! are your pistols all right?" "Pshaw, Major! for shame!" The mystery of the drawing-room, and the servants, and the dishes, was soon over.
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