ye bronzes and Dresden figures, there lacked some evidence of an
individual character that would give a dominant tone, an original key,
to the collection. This worldly dwelling, with its white lacquered bed
and Louis XV. canopy and its heads of birds carved in wood like the
queen's bed at Trianon, vaguely resembled the apartments of a
fashionable woman.

But Guy had hung around here and there a Samourai sabre, Malay krises,
Oriental daggers in purple velvet sheaths, and upon the green tapestry
background of the antechamber a panoply on which keen-bladed swords with
steel guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus
giving a masculine character to this hotel of a fashionable lounger,
steeped with the odor of ylang-ylang like the little house of a pretty
courtesan.

This Guy enjoyed in Paris a free and easy life, leaving to Vaudrey, his
old college-comrade at Grenoble, the pursuit of the pleasures of
political life, and, as Lissac said in that bantering tone which is
peculiar to Parisian gossip, the relish of the "sweets of power"; for
himself, what kept him in Paris was Paris itself, just that and nothing
more:--its pleasures, its first nights, its surprises, its women, that
flavor of scandal and perfume of refined immorality that seemed peculiar
to his time and surroundings.

He had squandered two fortunes, one after the other, without feeling any
regret; he had made a brush at journalism, tried finance, won at the
Bourse, lost at the clubs, knew everybody and was known by all, had a
smiling lip, was sound of tooth, loved the girls, was dreaded by the
men, was of fine appearance, and was unquestionably noble, which
permitted him to enjoy all the frolics of Bohemian life without sullying
himself, having always discovered a forgotten uncle or met some
considerate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences
on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was
well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a
well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a
term of imprisonment to be passed merrily--a Parisian to the finger-tips
and to the bottom of his soul, worse than a Parisian in fact, a
Parisianized provincial inoculated with _Parisine_, just as certain sick
persons are with morphine, judging men by their wit, actions by their
results, women by the size of their gloves; as sceptical as the devil,
wicked in speech and consi