II

Within ten years England has made two little gifts to our language.

The /Incroyable/, the /Merveilleux/, the /Elegant/, the three

successes of the /petit-maitre/ of discreditable etymology, have made

way for the "dandy" and the "lion." The /lion/ is not the parent of

the /lionne/. The /lionne/ is due to the famous song by Alfred de

Musset:

Avez vou vu dans Barcelone

C'est ma maitresse et ma lionne.

There has been a fusion--or, if you prefer it, a confusion--of the two

words and the leading ideas. When an absurdity can amuse Paris, which

devours as many masterpieces as absurdities, the provinces can hardly

be deprived of them. So, as soon as the /lion/ paraded Paris with his

mane, his beard and moustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass,

maintained in its place, without the help of his hands, by the

contraction of his cheek, and eye-socket, the chief towns of some

departments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of

their trouser-straps against the untidiness of their fellow-townsmen.

Thus, in 1834, Besancon could boast of a /lion/, in the person of

Monsieur Amedee-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at the time of the

Spanish occupation. Amedee de Soulas is perhaps the only man in

Besancon descended from a Spanish family. Spain sent men to manage her

business in the Comte, but very few Spaniards settled there. The

Soulas remained in consequence of their connection with Cardinal

Granvelle. Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving

Besancon, a dull town, church-going, and not literary, a military

centre and garrison town, of which the manners and customs and

physiognomy are worth describing. This opinion allowed of his lodging,

like a man uncertain of the future, in three very scantily furnished

rooms at the end of the Rue Neuve, just where it opens into the Rue de

la Prefecture.

Young Monsieur de Soulas could not possibly live without a tiger. This

tiger was the son of one of his farmers, a small servant aged

fourteen, thick-set, and named Babylas. The lion dressed his tiger

very smartly--a short tunic-coat of iron-gray cloth, belted with

patent leather, bright blue plush breeches, a red waistcoat, polished

leather top-boots, a shiny hat with black lacing, and brass buttons

with the arms of Soulas. Amedee gave this boy white cotton gloves and

his washing, and thirty-six francs a month to keep himself--a sum that

seemed enormous to the grisettes of Besancon: four hundred and twenty

francs a year to a child of fifteen, without counting extras! The

extras consisted in the price for which he could sell his turned

clothes, a present when Soulas exchanged one of his horses, and the

perquisite of the manure. The two horses, treated with sordid economy,

cost, one with another, eight hundred francs a year. His bills for

articles received from Paris, such as perfumery, cravats, jewelry,

patent blacking, and clothes, ran to another twelve hundred francs.

Add to this the groom, or tiger, the horses, a very superior style of

dress, and six hundred francs a year for rent, and you will see a

grand total of three thousand francs.

Now, Monsieur de Soulas' father had left him only four thousand francs

a year, the income from some cottage farms which lent painful

uncertainty to the rents. The lion had hardly three francs a day left

for food, amusements, and gambling. He very often dined out, and

breakfasted with remarkable frugality. When he was positively obliged

to dine at his own cost, he sent his tiger to fetch a couple of dishes

from a cookshop, never spending more than twenty-five sous.

Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, recklessly

extravagant, whereas the poor man made the two ends meet in the year

with a keenness and skill which would have done honor to a thrifty

housewife. At Besancon in those days no one knew how great a tax on a

man's capital were six francs spent in polish to spread on his boots

or shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepest

secrecy to make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten francs,

and lasting three months, four waistcoats at twenty-five francs, and

trousers fitting close to the boots. How could he do otherwise, since

we see women in Paris bestowing their special attention on simpletons

who visit them, and cut out the most remarkable men by means of these

frivolous advantages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and get

his hair curled and a fine linen shirt into the bargain?

If this unhappy youth should seem to you to have become a /lion/ on

very cheap terms, you must know that Amedee de Soulas had been three

times to Switzerland, by coach and in short stages, twice to Paris,

and once from Paris to England. He passed as a well-informed traveler,

and could say, "In England, where I went . . ." The dowagers of the

town would say to him, "You, who have been in England . . ." He had

been as far as Lombardy, and seen the shores of the Italian lakes. He

read new books. Finally, when he was cleaning his gloves, the tiger

Babylas replied to callers, "Monsieur is very busy." An attempt had

been made to withdraw Monsieur Amedee de Soulas from circulation by

pronouncing him "A man of advanced ideas." Amedee had the gift of

uttering with the gravity of a native the commonplaces that were in

fashion, which gave him the credit of being one of the most

enlightened of the nobility. His person was garnished with fashionable

trinkets, and his head furnished with ideas hall-marked by the press.

In 1834 Amedee was a young man of five-and-twenty, of medium height,

dark, with a very prominent thorax, well-made shoulders, rather plump

legs, feet already fat, white dimpled hands, a beard under his chin,

moustaches worthy of the garrison, a good-natured, fat, rubicund face,

a flat nose, and brown expressionless eyes; nothing Spanish about him.

He was progressing rapidly in the direction of obesity, which would be

fatal to his pretensions. His nails were well kept, his beard trimmed,

the smallest details of his dress attended to with English precision.

Hence Amedee de Soulas was looked upon as the finest man in Besancon.

A hairdresser who waited upon him at a fixed hour--another luxury,

costing sixty francs a year--held him up as the sovereign authority in

matters of fashion and elegance.

Amedee slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to go to one of

his farms and practise pistol-shooting. He attached as much importance

to this exercise as Lord Byron did in his later days. Then, at three

o'clock he came home, admired on horseback by the grisettes and the

ladies who happened to be at their windows. After an affectation of

study or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he dressed to

dine out, spent the evening in the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy of

Besancon playing whist, and went home to bed at eleven. No life could

be more above board, more prudent, or more irreproachable, for he

punctually attended the services at church on Sundays and holy days.

To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life, it is

necessary to devote a few words to an account of Besancon. No town

ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to progress. At Besancon

the officials, the employes, the military, in short, every one engaged

in governing it, sent thither from Paris to fill a post of any kind,

are all spoken of by the expressive general name of /the Colony/. The

colony is neutral ground, the only ground where, as in church, the

upper rank and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here, fired by a

word, a look, or gesture, are started those feuds between house and

house, between a woman of rank and a citizen's wife, which endure till

death, and widen the impassable gulf which parts the two classes of

society. With the exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the

Beauffremont, the de Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others

who come only to stay on their estates in the Comte, the aristocracy

of Besancon dates no further back than a couple of centuries, the time

of the conquest by Louis XIV. This little world is essentially of the

/parlement/, and arrogant, stiff, solemn, uncompromising, haughty

beyond all comparison, even with the Court of Vienna, for in this the

nobility of Besancon would put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. As

to Victor Hugo, Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, they are

never mentioned, no one thinks about them. The marriages in these

families are arranged in the cradle, so rigidly are the greatest

things settled as well as the smallest. No stranger, no intruder, ever

finds his way into one of these houses, and to obtain an introduction

for the colonels or officers of title belonging to the first families

in France when quartered there, requires efforts of diplomacy which

Prince Talleyrand would gladly have mastered to use at a congress.