htful equability of temper made many persons
say,--

"I do admire the Chevalier de Valois!"

His conversation, his manners, seemed bland, like his person. He
endeavored to shock neither man nor woman. Indulgent to defects both
physical and mental, he listened patiently (by the help of the Princess
Goritza) to the many dull people who related to him the petty miseries
of provincial life,--an egg ill-boiled for breakfast, coffee with
feathered cream, burlesque details about health, disturbed sleep,
dreams, visits. The chevalier could call up a languishing look, he could
take on a classic attitude to feign compassion, which made him a most
valuable listener; he could put in an "Ah!" and a "Bah!" and a "What
DID you do?" with charming appropriateness. He died without any one
suspecting him of even an allusion to the tender passages of his romance
with the Princess Goritza. Has any one ever reflected on the service a
dead sentiment can do to society; how love may become both social and
useful? This will serve to explain why, in spite of his constant winning
at play (he never left a salon without carrying off with him about six
francs), the old chevalier remained the spoilt darling of the town. His
losses--which, by the bye, he always proclaimed, were very rare.

All who know him declare that they have never met, not even in the
Egyptian museum at Turin, so agreeable a mummy. In no country in
the world did parasitism ever take on so pleasant a form. Never did
selfishness of a most concentrated kind appear less forth-putting, less
offensive, than in this old gentleman; it stood him in place of devoted
friendship. If some one asked Monsieur de Valois to do him a little
service which might have discommoded him, that some one did not part
from the worthy chevalier without being truly enchanted with him, and
quite convinced that he either could not do the service demanded, or
that he should injure the affair if he meddled in it.

To explain the problematic existence of the chevalier, the historian,
whom Truth, that cruel wanton, grasps by the throat, is compelled to say
that after the "glorious" sad days of July, Alencon discovered that the
chevalier's nightly winnings amounted to about one hundred and fifty
francs every three months; and that the clever old nobleman had had the
pluck to send to himself his annuity in order not to appear in the eyes
of a community, which loves the main chance, to be entirely without
resources.