When an Englishwoman is not
very handsome she is horribly ugly. Comte Adam belonged in the second
category of human beings. His small face, rather sharp in expression,
looked as if it had been pressed in a vise. His short nose, and fair
hair, and reddish beard and moustache made him look all the more like
a goat because he was small and thin, and his tarnished yellow eyes
caught you with that oblique look which Virgil celebrates. How came
he, in spite of such obvious disadvantages, to possess really
exquisite manners and a distinguished air? The problem is solved
partly by the care and elegance of his dress, and partly by the
training given him by his mother, a Radziwill. His courage amounted to
daring, but his mind was not more than was needed for the ephemeral
talk and pleasantry of Parisian conversation. And yet it would have
been difficult to find among the young men of fashion in Paris a
single one who was his superior. Young men talk a great deal too much
in these days of horses, money, taxes, deputies; French CONVERSATION
is no longer what it was. Brilliancy of mind needs leisure and certain
social inequalities to bring it out. There is, probably, more real
conversation in Vienna or St. Petersburg than in Paris. Equals do not
need to employ delicacy or shrewdness in speech; they blurt out things
as they are.
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