The most amusing society,but also the most mixed,which Madame Felix de Vandenesse frequented,was that of the Comtesse de Montcornet,a charming little woman,who received illustrious artists,leading financial personages,distinguished writers;but only after subjecting them to so rigid an examination that the most exclusive aristocrat had nothing to fear in coming in contact with this second-class society.
The loftiest pretensions were there respected.
During the winter of 1833,when society rallied after the revolution of July,some salons,notably those of Mesdames d'Espard and de Listomere,Mademoiselle des Touches,and the Duchesse de Grandlieu,had selected certain of the celebrities in art,science,literature,and politics,and received them.Society can lose nothing of its rights,and it must be amused.At a concert given by Madame de Montcornet toward the close of the winter of 1833,a man of rising fame in literature and politics appeared in her salon,brought there by one of the wittiest,but also one of the laziest writers of that epoch,Emile Blondet,celebrated behind closed doors,highly praised by journalists,but unknown beyond the barriers.Blondet himself was well aware of this;he indulged in no illusions,and,among his other witty and contemptuous sayings,he was wont to remark that fame is a poison good to take in little doses.
From the moment when the man we speak of,Raoul Nathan,after a long struggle,forced his way to the public gaze,he had put to profit the sudden infatuation for form manifested by those elegant descendants of the middle ages,jestingly called Young France.He assumed the singularities of a man of genius and enrolled himself among those adorers of art,whose intentions,let us say,were excellent;for surely nothing could be more ridiculous than the costume of Frenchmen in the nineteenth century,and nothing more courageous than an attempt to reform it.Raoul,let us do him this justice,presents in his person something fine,fantastic,and extraordinary,which needs a frame.His enemies,or his friends,they are about the same thing,agree that nothing could harmonize better with his mind than his outward form.
Raoul Nathan would,perhaps,be more singular if left to his natural self than he is with his various accompaniments.His worn and haggard face gives him an appearance of having fought with angels or devils;it bears some resemblance to that the German painters give to the dead Christ;countless signs of a constant struggle between failing human nature and the powers on high appear in it.But the lines in his hollow cheeks,the projections of his crooked,furrowed skull,the caverns around his eyes and behind his temples,show nothing weakly in his constitution.His hard membranes,his visible bones are the signs of remarkable solidity;and though his skin,discolored by excesses,clings to those bones as if dried there by inward fires,it nevertheless covers a most powerful structure.He is thin and tall.
His long hair,always in disorder,is worn so for effect.This ill-combed,ill-made Byron has heron legs and stiffened knee-joints,an exaggerated stoop,hands with knotty muscles,firm as a crab's claws,and long,thin,wiry fingers.Raoul's eyes are Napoleonic,blue eyes,which pierce to the soul;his nose is crooked and very shrewd;his mouth charming,embellished with the whitest teeth that any woman could desire.There is fire and movement in the head,and genius on that brow.Raoul belongs to the small number of men who strike your mind as you pass them,and who,in a salon,make a luminous spot to which all eyes are attracted.
He makes himself remarked also by his "neglige,"if we may borrow from Moliere the word which Eliante uses to express the want of personal neatness.His clothes always seem to have been twisted,frayed,and crumpled intentionally,in order to harmonize with his physiognomy.He keeps one of his hands habitually in the bosom of his waistcoat in the pose which Girodet's portrait of Monsieur de Chateaubriand has rendered famous;but less to imitate that great man (for he does not wish to resemble any one)than to rumple the over-smooth front of his shirt.His cravat is no sooner put on than it is twisted by the convulsive motions of his head,which are quick and abrupt,like those of a thoroughbred horse impatient of harness,and constantly tossing up its head to rid itself of bit and bridle.His long and pointed beard is neither combed,nor perfumed,nor brushed,nor trimmed,like those of the elegant young men of society;he lets it alone,to grow as it will.His hair,getting between the collar of his coat and his cravat,lies luxuriantly on his shoulders,and greases whatever spot it touches.His wiry,bony hands ignore a nailbrush and the luxury of lemon.Some of his cofeuilletonists declare that purifying waters seldom touch their calcined skin.
In short,the terrible Raoul is grotesque.His movements are jerky,as if produced by imperfect machinery;his gait rejects all idea of order,and proceeds by spasmodic zig-zags and sudden stoppages,which knock him violently against peaceable citizens on the streets and boulevards of Paris.His conversation,full of caustic humor,of bitter satire,follows the gait of his body;suddenly it abandons its tone of vengeance and turns sweet,poetic,consoling,gentle,without apparent reason;he falls into inexplicable silences,or turns somersets of wit,which at times are somewhat wearying.In society,he is boldly awkward,and exhibits a contempt for conventions and a critical air about things respected which makes him unpleasant to narrow minds,and also to those who strive to preserve the doctrines of old-fashioned,gentlemanly politeness;but for all that there is a sort of lawless originality about him which women do not dislike.
