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Thackeray, in a delightful ballad, invites a pretty page to wait till he comes to forty years: well, I have waited indeed, I have somewhat overshot the mark and to-day the sight of all this brisk life, going on just as it used to do, with the same insouciance and the same merriment, makes me wish to reflect, to gather up the fragments, to see if it is all loss, all declension, or whether there is something left, some strength in what remains behind.
'Oh, you did not like that charming carelessness of Englishmen that goes where it likes and when it likes, that does not wait to be answered when it questions, and only insists on one thing, which is "not to be bored." If you knew, dearest Kate, how foreigners school themselves, and strive to catch up that insouciance, and never succeed never! 'My brother's friend certainly is no adept in it.
His frame was prodigiously muscular, strong, and thick-set; so that it seemed as if a man of much greater height would have been an inadequate match in any close personal conflict. He was hard-favoured, and, which was worse, his face bore nothing of the insouciance, the careless, frolicsome jollity and vacant curiosity, of a sailor on shore.
He would be winsome and coaxing, but at the same time strong, direct, deliciously brutal, like her Frank. He had, too, what Cowperwood could not have, a certain social air or swagger which came with idleness, much loafing, a sense of social superiority and security a devil-may-care insouciance which recks little of other people's will or whims.
Afterward the gentlemen betake themselves to the tower and smoke; Violet and her guest divide between the shady end of the drawing-room and the porch, with its beautiful prospect. When the midday heat begins to abate they have their drive and some trotting on the boulevard. Miss Murray grows quite confidential, not in a weak or silly manner, but with the frank insouciance of youth.
The English were shocked by the insouciance of a race who could dance under the very nose of the usurper; but those who understood the situation knew that Milan was playing Brutus, and playing it uncommonly well. I was in the thick of it all it was just the atmosphere to suit a young fellow of nine-and-twenty, with a healthy passion for waltzing and fighting.
Now that Johanna thought of it, a change had also come over Ephie's mode of treating Maurice; the gay insouciance of the early days had given place to the pert flippancy which, only the night before, had so pained her sister. What had brought about this change? Was it pique? Was Ephie chafing, in secret, at his prolonged absences, and was she, girl-like, anxious to conceal it from him?
For instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-habit a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and daring but swagger breeches, perhaps! galloping insouciantly up to take that dare! But she knew it was an empty dream. Even if she had the swagger togs a notion mad to absurdity she could never gallop with insouciance. She wasn't the athletic sort.
Treachery hovered in the air. But the Scarlet Pimpernel himself, with that indomitable optimism of his, and almost maddening insouciance, either did not believe in Kulmsted's disloyalty or chose not to heed it.
But the flush dies down, the insouciance departs, and with it the ardent generosity of life. Some day perhaps, when life has become simpler and wealth more equalised, when work is more distributed, when there is less production of unnecessary things, these groups will form themselves, and the frank, eager, vivid spirit of youth will last on into middle-age, and even into age itself.
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