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There were two who were very eminently such: the one was Lady Muskerry, who had married her cousin-german; and the other a maid of honour to the Duchess, called Blague.
It does not signify: I shall know you in whatever disguise you may be: but I shall be better informed of my fate, by the present I send you: you will wear knots of this riband in your hair; and these gloves will kiss the most beautiful hands in the universe." This billet, with the present, was delivered to Miss Blague with the same success as the other had been conveyed to Lady Muskerry.
Miss Price was short and thick, and consequently no dancer, the Duke of Buckingham, who brought Brisacier forward as often as he could, came to desire him, on the part of the king, to dance with Miss Blague, without knowing what was then passing in this nymph's heart: Brisacier excused himself, on account of the contempt that he had for country dances: Miss Blague thought that it was herself that he despised; and, seeing that he was engaged in conversation with her mortal enemy, she began to dance, without knowing what she was doing.
Miss Blague believed that all this finery was on her account; and the Marquis believed that her long eyelashes had never taken aim at any but himself: everybody perceived their inclination for each other; but they had only conversed by mute interpreters, when Miss Hamilton took it into her head to intermeddle in their affairs.
Martial gloves were then very much in fashion: she had by chance several pairs of them: she sent one to Miss Blague, accompanied with four yards of yellow riband, the palest she could find, to which she added this note: "You were the other day more charming than all the fair women in the world: you looked yesterday still more fair than you did the day before: if you go on, what will become of my heart?
That elaborate and delicate gallantry was a kind of blague for the whole nation; it made every Frenchman a knight of chivalry. No doubt it served as a cloak for many vices, but we have the vices still, without the cloak! "I should be surprised," says Mrs. Trollope, "if I heard it said that a Frenchman of good education had ever spoken rudely to his wife!"
This admirable power still temperamentally to react and take notice lurks in all her darkness and dirt and decay a something more careless and hopeless than our thrifty northern cheer, and yet more genial and urbane than the Parisian spirit of <i>blague</i>. The collective Roman nature is a healthy and hearty one, and you feel it abroad in the streets even when the sirocco blows and the medium of life seems to proceed more or less from the mouth of a furnace.
Bertrand was opposite to him, and having listened with delight and reverence to some tale of knavery truly royal, was exclaiming with a look and voice expressive of the most intense admiration, "AH VIEUX BLAGEUR! va!" the word blague is untranslatable it means FRENCH humbug as distinct from all other; and only those who know the value of an epigram in France, an epigram so wonderfully just, a little word so curiously comprehensive, can fancy the kind of rage and rapture with which it was received.
This was just what she was wishing for: This lady and Miss Blague had been at variance some time, on account of Duncan, whom Miss Price had drawn away from the other; and hatred still subsisted between these two divinities. Though the maids of honour were not nominated for the masquerade, yet they were to assist at it; and, consequently, were to neglect nothing to set themselves off to advantage.
And what is true of the beginning and the end is true of the long tract which lay between. From first to last he was a Critic a calm and impartial judge, a serene distributer of praise and blame never a zealot, never a prophet, never an advocate, never a dealer in that "blague and mob-pleasing" of which he truly said that it "is a real talent and tempts many men to apostasy."
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