Nor was Henri de Malfort a man to provoke jealousy by any superior
gifts of mind or person. Nature had not been especially kind to him. His
features were insignificant, his eyes pale, and he had not escaped that
scourge of the seventeenth century, the small-pox. His pale and clear
complexion was but slightly pitted, however, and his eyelids had
not suffered. Men were inclined to call him ugly; women thought him
interesting. His frame was badly built from the athlete's point of view;
but it had the suppleness which makes the graceful dancer, and was an
elegant scaffolding on which to hang the picturesque costume of the day.
For the rest, all that he was he had made himself, during those eighteen
years of intelligent self-culture, which had been his engrossing occupation
since his fifteenth birthday, when he determined to be one of the finest
gentlemen of his epoch.
A fine gentleman at the Court of Louis had to be something more than a
figure steeped in perfumes and hung with ribbons. His red-heeled shoes, his
periwig and cannon sleeves, were indispensable to fashion, but not
enough for fame. The favoured guest of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and of
Mademoiselle de Scudery's "Saturdays," must have wit and learning, or at
least that capacity for smart speech and pedantic allusion which might pass
current for both in a society where the critics were chiefly feminine.
Pages:
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176