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Seeing that Beatrix was quite astounded, Raoul put fire into her heart by pretended reticences which stirred the fibres of a curiosity she did not know she possessed. Nathan hinted that La Palferine's wit was not so much the cause of his success with women as his superiority in the art of love; a statement which magnified the count immensely.
Aurelie thus expected nine guests, all men of the first ability, with the exception of du Ronceret; but the Norman vanity and the brutal ambition of the Heir were fully on a par with Claude Vignon's literary power, Nathan's poetic gift, La Palferine's finesse, Couture's financial eye, Bixiou's wit, Finot's shrewdness, Maxime's profound diplomacy, and Leon de Lora's genius.
Monsieur was born, I suppose? "'What, sir? "'Yes, are you born? What is your name? "'Godin. "'Godin, eh! exclaimed La Palferine's friend. "'One moment, my dear fellow, interrupted La Palferine. 'There are the Trigaudins. Are you one of them? "Astonishment. "'No? Then you are one of the new dukes of Gaeta, I suppose, of imperial creation? No?
Anybody but La Palferine would have been frozen by his reception, and disconcerted by the lady's first efforts to rid herself of her cavalier, by her chilly air, her curt speeches; but no gravity, with all the will in the world, could hold out long against La Palferine's jesting replies. The fair stranger went into her milliner's shop.
"Today, when Charles Edward de la Palferine's name is mentioned, not three persons in a hundred know the history of his house. But the Bourbons have actually left a Foix-Grailly to live by his easel. "Ah, if you but knew how brilliantly Charles Edward accepts his obscure position! how he scoffs at the bourgeois of 1830! What Attic salt in his wit!
A national fund had been started to give back to Laffitte the mansion in which the Revolution of 1830 was brewed, and this friend appeared at the offices of the fund with, 'Here are five francs, give me a hundred sous change! A caricature was made of it. It was once La Palferine's misfortune, in judicial style, to make a young girl a mother.
For the next week Calyste went every day to Madame de Rochefide's door, only to be refused by Antoine, who said with a studied face, "Madame is ill." From there Calyste hurried to La Palferine's lodging, where the valet answered, "Monsieur le comte is away, hunting." Each time this happened the Breton baron left a letter for La Palferine.
I have seen nothing like the thing that followed, not even in the supreme touch of a great actor's art; nothing to compare with her movement when she saw the hard eyes softened in tears; Claudine sank upon her knees and kissed La Palferine's pitiless hand.
The anecdote puts La Palferine's genius before you in all its vivacity and completeness. He realizes Pascal's entre-deux, he comprehends the whole scale between tenderness and pitilessness, and, like Epaminondas, he is equally great in extremes. And not merely so, his epigram stamps the epoch; the accoucheur is a modern innovation.
The sometime playwright has the Order of Leopold, the Order of Isabella, the cross of Saint-Vladimir, second class, the Order of Civil Merit of Bavaria, the Papal Order of the Golden Spur, all the lesser orders, in short, besides the Grand Cross. "Three months ago Claudine drove to La Palferine's door in her splendid carriage with its armorial bearings.
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