Paris and its life attracted me greatly.  With the truly excellent opinion I had then of myself, with more confidence in my intelligence and the self-possession an independent position gives, I still played a very unsophisticated part on this scene of the world.  I began by falling desperately in love with Mademoiselle Richemberg of the Comedie Francaise, and absolutely insisted upon marrying her.  I will not dwell now upon the many tragicomic imbroglios, as I am partly ashamed of those times, and partly inclined to laugh at them.  Still later on it happened that I took counterfeits for pure gold.  The French women, and for the matter of that, my own countrywomen, of whatever class and in spite of all their virtues when young, remind me of my fencing lessons.  As the fencer has his hour of practice with the foils so as to keep his hand in, so women practise with sentimental foils.  As a mere youth, fairly good looking, I was sometimes invited to a passage of arms, and as I took the matter seriously, received many a scratch.  They were not mortal wounds and healed quickly.  Besides, everybody has to pay for his apprenticeship in this world, especially in a world like that.  My time of probation was, comparatively speaking, a short one.  Then came a period one might call “la revanche.”  I paid back in the same coin, and if now and then I was still taken in, it was with my eyes open to the fact.

Myself of a good social standing, I came to know all shades of society, from the old legitimist circles, where I was not a little bored, to the new aristocracy created by the Bonapartes and the Orleanists, representing the society, perhaps not of Paris, but let us say, of Nice.  Dumas the Younger, Sardou, and others, take thence their counts, marquises, and princes, who, without historical traditions, have titles and money in plenty, and whose principal aim is to enjoy life.  I frequented their salons mostly for the sake of their female element.  They are very subtle, the women there, with highly strung nerves always in search for new pleasures, fresh sensations, and truly void of any idealism.  They are often as corrupt as the novels they are reading, because their morality finds no support either in religion or tradition.  But it is a brilliant world all the same.  The hours of practice with the foils are so long there that they look more like days and nights, and the weapons are dangerous sometimes, as they are not blunted.  There too I received a few painful lessons until I got my hand in.  It would be a sign of mere vanity and still more of bad taste to write about my successes, and I will only say this, that I tried to keep alive the tradition of my father’s youth.