I can imagine this in a journal: ‘ M. Gillenorman, minister!’ that would be a farce. Well! They are so stupid that it would pass;” he merrily called everything by its name, whether decent or indecent, and did not restrain himself in the least before ladies. He uttered coarse speeches, obscenities, and filth with a certain tranquillity and lack of astonishment which was elegant. It was in keeping with the unceremoniousness of his century. It is to be noted that the age of periphrase in verse was the age of crudities in prose. His godfather had predicted that he would turn out a man of genius, and had bestowed on him these two significant names: Luc-Esprit.
IV
A Centenarian Aspirant
He had taken prizes in his boyhood at the College of Moulins, where he was born, and he had been crowned by the hand of the Duc de Nivernais, whom he called the Duc de Nevers. Neither the Convention, nor the death of Louis XVI , nor the Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, nor anything else had been able to efface the memory of this crowning. The Duc de Nevers was, in his eyes, the great figure of the century. “What a charming grand seigneur,” he said, “and what a fine air he had with his blue ribbon!”
In the eyes of M. Gillenormand, Catherine the Second had made reparation for the crime of the partition of Poland by purchasing, for three thousand roubles, the secret of the elixir of gold, from Bestucheff. He grew animated on this subject: “The elixir of gold,” he exclaimed, “the yellow dye of Bestucheff, General Lamotte’s drops, in the eighteenth century—this was the great remedy for the catastrophes of love, the panacea against Venus, at one louis the half-ounce phial. Louis XV sent two hundred phials of it to the Pope.” He would have been greatly irritated and thrown off his balance, had anyone told him that the