The particular point about the chevalier which would have made him noticeable from Paris to Pekin, was the gentle paternity of his manner to grisettes.  They reminded him of the illustrious operatic queens of his early days, whose celebrity was European during a good third of the eighteenth century.  It is certain that the old gentleman, who had lived in days gone by with that feminine nation now as much forgotten as many other great things,—­like the Jesuits, the Buccaneers, the Abbes, and the Farmers-General,—­had acquired an irresistible good-humor, a kindly ease, a laisser-aller devoid of egotism, the self-effacement of Jupiter with Alcmene, of the king intending to be duped, who casts his thunderbolts to the devil, wants his Olympus full of follies, little suppers, feminine profusions—­but with Juno out of the way, be it understood.

In spite of his old green damask dressing-gown and the bareness of the room in which he sat, where the floor was covered with a shabby tapestry in place of carpet, and the walls were hung with tavern-paper presenting the profiles of Louis XVI. and members of his family, traced among the branches of a weeping willow with other sentimentalities invented by royalism during the Terror,—­in spite of his ruins, the chevalier, trimming his beard before a shabby old toilet-table, draped with trumpery lace, exhaled an essence of the eighteenth century.  All the libertine graces of his youth reappeared; he seemed to have the wealth of three hundred thousand francs of debt, while his vis-a-vis waited before the door.  He was grand,—­like Berthier on the retreat from Moscow, issuing orders to an army that existed no longer.

“Monsieur le chevalier,” replied Suzanne, drolly, “seems to me I needn’t tell you anything; you’ve only to look.”

And Suzanne presented a side view of herself which gave a sort of lawyer’s comment to her words.  The chevalier, who, you must know, was a sly old bird, lowered his right eye on the grisette, still holding the razor at his throat, and pretended to understand.

“Well, well, my little duck, we’ll talk about that presently.  But you are rather previous, it seems to me.”

“Why, Monsieur le chevalier, ought I to wait until my mother beats me and Madame Lardot turns me off?  If I don’t get away soon to Paris, I shall never be able to marry here, where men are so ridiculous.”

“It can’t be helped, my dear; society is changing; women are just as much victims to the present state of things as the nobility themselves.  After political overturn comes the overturn of morals.  Alas! before long woman won’t exist” (he took out the cotton-wool to arrange his ears):  “she’ll lose everything by rushing into sentiment; she’ll wring her nerves; good-bye to all the good little pleasures of our time, desired without shame, accepted without nonsense.” (He polished up the little negroes’ heads.) “Women had hysterics in those days to get their ends, but now” (he began to laugh) “their vapors end in charcoal.  In short, marriage” (here he picked up his pincers to remove a hair) “will become a thing intolerable; whereas it used to be so gay in my day!  The reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.—­remember this, my child—­said farewell to the finest manners and morals ever known to the world.”