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"And yet," said Saville, "how few men of letters perceive a truth so evident to us, so hackneyed even in the conversations of society! For a little reputation at a dinner table, for a coaxing nobe from some titled demirep affecting the De Stael, they forget not only to be glorious but even to be respectable.
But if you suppose, sir, that the banquet which I have sent upstairs is all for Aquamorta and his lady to consume en tete-a-tete, you know very little about him. Why, I'll wager that demirep of a valet of his has collected half our young blades to the board. Good food, good wine, good talk there will be, never fear. And afterwards what follows?
There was Sulla, of the class of men to which Alcibiades and Alexander belonged, but an inferior specimen of the class and unscrupulous rip, and a brave successful commander; personally beautiful, till his way of living made his face "like a mulberry sprinkled with flour"; with many elements of greatness always negatived by sudden fatuities; much of genius, more of fool, and most of rake-helly demirep; highly cultured, and plunderer of Athens and Delphi; great general, who maintained his hold on his troops by unlimited tolerance of undiscipline.
For the cold, ascetical mind, a cell and a scourge, and a record kept of starving fancies as calling them ecstatic visions vouchsafed by some old Stylite to bless his favoured worshipper; for the painted demirep of fashionable life, there would be a pretty pocket-idol, and the snug confessional well tenanted by a not unsympathizing father; for the pure girl, blighted in her heart's first love, the papist would afford that seemingly merciful refuge, that calm and musical and gentle place, the irrevocable nunnery; a place, for all its calmness, and its music, and its gentle reputations, soon to be abhorred of that poor child as a living tomb, the extinguisher of all life's aims, all its duties, uses and delights: for the bandit, a tythe of the traveller's gold would avail to pay away the murder, and earn for him a heap of merits kept within the cash-box: the educated, high-born and finely-moulded mind might be well amused with architecture, painting, carving, sweet odours, and the most wondrous music that has ever cheated man, even while he offers up his easy adorations, and departs, equally complacent at the choral remedies as at the priestly absolution; while, for those good few, the truly pious and enlightened children of Rome, who mourn the corruptions of their church, and explain away, with trembling tongue, her obvious errors and idolatries, for these the wily scheme, so probable, devised an undoubted mass of truth to be left among the rubbish.
"Lady S. The paragraphs, you say, were all inserted. "Spat. They were, madam. "Lady S. Did you circulate the report of Lady Brittle's intrigue with Captain Boastall? "Spat. Madam, by this Lady Brittle is the talk of half the town; and in a week will be treated as a demirep. "Lady S. What have you done as to the innuendo of Miss Niceley's fondness for her own footman? "Spat.
'And yet, he said to himself, 'could I have resisted an appeal for marriage now? That comes of being so confoundedly humane. It's a marvel that I didn't find myself married to some sheer demirep long ago. Nancy was speaking. 'Will it make you love me less? 'I have always refused to prophesy about love, he answered, with forced playfulness. 'But you wouldn't you wouldn't?
'I dare say, said Aunt Becky, rather stiffly, pulling him up; for though she had fought a round for poor George Anne Bellamy for Mossop's sake, she nevertheless had formed a pretty just estimate of that faded, good-natured, and insolvent demirep, and rather recoiled from any anecdotes of her telling.
He was in a very poor way, and glad to hear that Demirep was in Dublin, and making money. When I came back I was in the Hue-and-Cry for the assault on Sturk. 'I took no precaution, not knowing what had happened; but 'twas night when we arrived, Duncan and I, and we went straight to Gamble's and he concealed me. I kept close within his house, except on one night, when I took coach.
Messire Noel frowned and his hand made a gesture in the direction of his sword-hilt; then he remembered the folly of quarrelling with so great a man and contented himself with shrugging his shoulders as he questioned, "And the demirep in the doublet and hose?"
Jones, the husband, head of a book company in Los Angeles; a Barbary Coast singer and her man; a demirep of Chicago and her loved one; three Tahitian youths with wreaths; the post-office manager, and with him the surgeon of the hospital; a notary's clerk, the governor's private secretary; the administrateur of the Marquesas Islands, Margaret, Lurline and Mathilde, Lena, and Lucy, lovely part-Tahitian girls who clerked in stores; the Otoman, chauffeur for Polonsky; English tourists; Nance, the California capitalist; and others.
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