innest
and most conventional of things, except, perhaps, the companion
trap-to-catch-the-French-Philistine of anti-clericalism which also shows
itself sometimes.

[432] Two people, thinking of moving house in London, went once to
inspect an advertised abode in the Kensington district. They did not
much like the street; they still less liked a very grim female who
opened the door and showed them over the house; and there was nothing to
reconcile them in the house itself. But, wishing to be polite, the lady
of the couple, as they were leaving, addressed to the grim guardian some
feeble compliment on something or other as being "nice." "P'raps," was
the reply, "for them as likes the ---- Road." It is unnecessary to say
that the visitors went down the steps in a fashion for which we have no
exact English term, but which is admirably expressed by the French verb
_degringoler_.

[433] The favouritism declined, and the history of its decline was
anecdotised in a fashion somewhat _gaulois_, but quite harmless. "Uncle
Beuve," to the astonishment of literary mankind, put the portrait of
this "nephew" of his in his _salon_. After _Daniel_ (I think) it was
moved to the dining-room, and thence to his bedroom. Later it was missed
even there, and was, or was said to be, relegated to _un lieu plus
intime encore_. The _trovatore_ of this probably remembered his
Rabelais.

[434] The labour of reading the book has been repaid by a few useful
specimens of Feydeau's want of anything like distinction of thought or
style. He makes his hero (whom he does not in the least mean for a fool,
though he is one) express surprise at the fact that when he was _in
statu pupillari_ he liked _fredaines_, but when he became his own master
did not care about them! Again: "Were I to possess the power and
infinite charm of HIM [_sic_] who invented the stars I could never
exactly paint the delightful creature who stood before me." Comment on
either of these should be quite needless. Again: "Her nose, by a happy
and bold curve, joined itself to the lobes, lightly expanded, of her
diaphanous nostrils." Did it never occur to the man that a nose,
separately considered from its curve and its nostrils, is terribly like
that of La Camarde herself? I wasted some time over the tedious trilogy
of _Un Debut a L'Opera_, _M. de Saint Bertrand_, _Le Mari de la
Danseuse_. Nobody--not even anybody _qui_ Laclos _non odit_--need follow
me.

[435] Their author wrote others