The Member for Arcis. the Seamy Side of History, and Other Stories (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... the chaste ears of the pious Italian. So these men, forced to be cautions, all men of wit and feeling--more or less, as a famous critic said, had lost their spirit; and falling back on the dinner, which was excellent, they murmured in undertones, or reduced the conver sation to commonplace remarks. In short, they ate and they drank under protest, so to speak; but they did not really dine. Bixiou, to whom such a state of things was quite unendurable, was bent on making some break in this monotony. The intimacy between a foreign nobleman and their hostess had given him food for thought; h-e had also been struck by a certain inefficiency in the Amphitryon; and had said to himself that a genuine nobleman would at a smaller cost have succeeded in putting some life into the party. So, in order to feel his way, it occurred to him to test the Count by speaking of Sweden, and atthe beginning of the second course he asked him all across the table: "Monsieur le Comte, you are too young, I imagine, to have known Gustavus III., whom Scribe and Auber have set in an opera, and who in France has given his glorious name to a galop.." "I beg your pardon," replied Vautrin, seizing the opportunity thus offered to him; "I am very nearly sixty, which would make me thirteen in 1792, when our beloved sovereign was killed by the assassin Anckastroem; so I can remember those times." Having said this, by the help of a volume called Caracteres et Anecdotes de la cour de Suede (published by Arthus Bertrand in 1808 without the author's name), which he had picked up at a bookstall since his incarnation as a Swede, Vautrin was in a position to defy pitfalls. He improved the occasion; like a speaker who only waits to...