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Updated: June 8, 2025
But will you, Tournebroche, in default of a better qualified person, present me to yonder gentleman in black, who wears diamond studs, and whom I reckon to be M. d'Asterac?" "Ah! sir," I replied, "consider the presentation to be made. I have no other feelings but to assist my dear tutor." "Be it so!" said M. d'Anquetil.
That old spagyric raven is not the man fit for such a beauty, and I am rather inclined to take an interest in her myself. "Mosaide will have to hide her very secretly and carefully; should she show herself once only at the promenade or the theatre, she would have all the world at her feet on the following morning. Don't you wish to see her, Tournebroche?" I replied that I wished it very much.
If I refer to some of the finest texts in morals it is to enlighten you, Tournebroche, to make you return to the humble and sweet modesty which suits you, and not to defend my innocence, when the multitude of my iniquities weighs on me and bears me down.
I have also studied the Greek and Latin moralists, whose maxims have strengthened my soul in the vicissitudes of my life, and I have particularly applied Boethius as an antidote for the evils of existence. And here near me is Jacobus Tournebroche, my disciple, who knows the sentences of Publius Syrus by heart."
But, indulgent to others, as to himself, M. Jerome Coignard had a kind smile for my trouble and distraction. "Jacques Tournebroche," he said to me, one day, "are you not struck by the variations in morals during the course of the centuries? The books in this admirable Asteracian collection witness to the uncertainties of mankind on this subject.
M. d'Anquetil saluted with the utmost correctness and said: "Accord us the favour to come in, sir. You'll find some persons as amiable as singular. Tournebroche, to whom Mam'selle Catherine throws kisses from the window, and a priest who believes in God." Wherewith he bowed respectfully. M. de la Gueritude was of the dry sort, very tall, and little inclined to the enjoyment of a joke.
"Jacques Tournebroche! my dear boy," said my tutor, with a sigh, "that Jew must be Isaac Laquedem in person, so to blaspheme in all languages. He vowed me to a death near and violent with an enormous abundance of metaphors, and he called me a pig in fourteen distinct languages, if I counted them correctly.
After having received, my good master made me a sign to come near him, and said with a feeble but distinct voice: "Jacques Tournebroche, my son, reject, along with the example I gave you, the maxims which I may have proposed to you during my period of lifelong folly.
I am sure that had that Florentine lived in our days in France he would make of Quonion's misfortune one of his pleasantest tales. As far as I am myself concerned I have been reminded of it at this table for the sole purpose, and by the effect of contrast, to make the virtue of Madame Leonard Tournebroche shine. She is the honour of cookshops, of which Madame Quonion is the disgrace.
Now that you are dressed like a marquis, Tournebroche, does not the desire tickle you to assist at the toilet of an opera girl, and to put a roll of spurious gold pieces on a faro-table in one word, do you not feel yourself to be a man of quality?
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