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He must needs see, I said, that I was at a great loss what to resolve upon; entirely a stranger to London, having no adviser, no protector, at present: himself, he must give me leave to tell him, greatly deficient in practice, if not in the knowledge, of those decorums, which, I had supposed, were always to be found in a man of birth, fortune, and education.
What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper;" while, like a skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the Play, still putting off his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good man!"
His sardonic and polished indifference, his professed code that there was no life worth caring for but his own life, his exemption from all cant, prejudice, and disguise, the frigid lubricity with which he glided out of the grasp of the Conventional, whenever it so pleased him, without shocking the Decorums whose sense is in their ear, and who are not roused by the deed but by the noise, all this had in it the marrow and essence of a system triumphant with the vulgar; for little minds give importance to the man who gives importance to nothing.
A declaration of this nature might have provoked a less haughty court than that of Vienna, and, indeed, seems to have been calculated on purpose to exasperate the pride of her imperial majesty, whose answer he soon received to this effect: that his majesty the king of Prussia had already been employed, for some time, in all kinds of the most considerable preparations of war, and the most disquieting with regard to the public tranquillity, when he thought fit to demand explanations of her majesty, touching the military dispositions that were making in her dominions; dispositions on which she had not resolved till after the preparations of his Prussian majesty had been made; that though her majesty might have declined explaining herself on those subjects, which required no explanation, she had been pleased to declare, with her own mouth, to M. de Klingraafe, that the critical state of public affairs rendered the measures she was taking absolutely necessary for her own safety, and that of her allies; but that, in other respects, they tended to the prejudice of no person whatsoever; that her imperial majesty had undoubtedly a right to form what judgment she pleased on the circumstances of the times; and likewise that it belonged to none but herself to estimate her own danger; that her declaration was so clear, she never imagined it could be thought otherwise; that being accustomed to receive, as well as to practise, the decorums which sovereigns owe to each other, she could not hear without astonishment and sensibility the contents of the memorial now presented by M. de Klingraafe; so extraordinary, both in the matter and expressions, that she would find herself under a necessity of transgressing the bounds of that moderation which she had prescribed to herself, were she to answer the whole of its contents; nevertheless, she thought proper to declare, that the information communicated to his Prussian majesty, of an offensive alliance against him, subsisting between herself and the empress of Russia, together with the circumstances and pretended stipulations of that alliance, were absolutely false and forged, for no such treaty did exist, or ever had existed.
And with these critics were associated many others, who, whether they agreed or disagreed with its purely religious tendencies, denounced it because it dealt plainly with certain corruptions of human nature, the very mention of which, according to them, was in itself corrupting, and was an outrage of the decorums of a respectable Christian home.
When it goes beyond its just bounds, it loses the first advantage, and even becomes prejudicial; which is the reason why we condemn an extravagant pride and ambition, however regulated by the decorums of good-breeding and politeness.
But this thing he realised, that even in the mad stories he had heard, when they had been divested of their madness, the chief figure in them had always stood out an honest, strong, fair thing, dwarfed by no petty feminine weakness, nor follies, nor spites. Rules she broke, decorums she defied, but in such manner as hurt none but herself.
He collects the lady's expressions, which his pride cannot bear: such as, That he is a stranger to the decorums which she thought inseparable from a man of birth and education; and that he is not the accomplished man he imagines himself to be; and threatens to remember them against her.
"It seems such silly work, to draw threads apart and then sew them together again." Isabelle elevated her eyebrows with a look of horror. Louis laughed. "She's a hopeless case, Isabelle. You'll never convert her into an elegant trifler. You might as well throw up the contract." "It seems to me, Evadne," said his sister icily, "that you might have a little regard for the decorums of society.
I did not think so at the time. The Italian priest had given me a few letters of introduction to French ladies with whom, when they had sojourned at Florence, he had made acquaintance. These ladies were very strict devotees, formal observers of those decorums by which devotion proclaims itself to the world. They had received me not only with kindness but with marked respect.
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