But the most absurd, disgusting, contemptible sight
in the world would you and I be, leaving the barn-door for my lady's
flower-garden, forsaking our natural sturdy walk for the peacock's
genteel rickety stride, and adopting the squeak of his voice in the
place of our gallant lusty cock-a-doodle-dooing.
Do you take the allegory? I love to speak in such, and the above
types have been presented to my mind while sitting opposite a gimcrack
coat-of-arms and coronet that are painted in the Invalides Church, and
assigned to one of the Emperor's Generals.
Ventrebleu! Madam, what need have THEY of coats-of-arms and coronets,
and wretched imitations of old exploded aristocratic gewgaws that they
had flung out of the country--with the heads of the owners in them
sometimes, for indeed they were not particular--a score of years before?
What business, forsooth, had they to be meddling with gentility and
aping its ways, who had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and
a pride of their own to support, if proud they were inclined to be? A
clever young man (who was not of high family himself, but had been bred
up genteelly at Eton and the university)--young Mr.
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