French Government were better
informed upon, and deigned to recognize by an official agent.

"Hold on there a bit!" shouted out the captain to the boat's crew.
"What shall I say, Senhor Conde? The Chevalier de la Boutonerie is very
anxious on the subject."

"Let this man have his passage," said I, indolently, and lighted a
cigar, as if to turn my thoughts in another direction, not even noticing
the new arrival, who was hoisted up the side with his portmanteau in a
very undignified fashion for an official character. He soon, however,
baffled this indifference on my part, by advancing towards me, and, in a
manner where considerable ease and tact were evident, thanked me for my
polite consideration regarding him, and expressed a hope that he might
not in any way inconvenience me during the voyage.

Now, the Chevalier was not in himself a very prepossessing personage,
while his dress was of the very shabbiest, being a worn-out suit of
black, covered by a coarse brown Mexican mantle; and yet his fluency,
his quiet assurance, his seeming self-satisfaction, gained an ascendancy
over me at once. I saw that he was a master in a walk in which I myself
had so long been a student, and that he was a consummate adept in the
"art of impudence."

And how mistaken is the world at large in the meaning of that art!
How prone to call the unblushing effrontery of every underbred man
impudence! The rudeness that dares any speech, or adventures upon
any familiarity; the soul less, heartless, selfish intrusiveness that
scruples not to invade any society,--these are not impudence, or they
are such specimens of the quality as men only possess in common with
inferior animals. I speak of that educated, cultivated "impudence"
which, never abashed by an inferiority, felt acutely, is resolved to
overbear worldly prejudices by the exercise of gifts that assert a
mastery over others,--a power of rising, by the expansive force of
self-esteem, into something almost estimable. Ordinary mortals tell lies
at intervals, _per saltum_, as the doctors say; but these people's
whole life is a lie. The Chevalier was a fine specimen of the class,
and seemed as indifferent to a hundred little adverse circumstances as
though everything around him went well and pleasantly.

There was a suave dignity in the way he moved a very dubious hand
over his unshaven chin, in the graceful negligence he exhibited when
disposing the folds of his threadbare cloak, in the jaun