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.  Besides, to them, he is often most amiably courteous; he seems to take pleasure in making them forget his personal singularities, and thus obtains a victory over antipathies which flatters either his vanity, his self-love, or his pride.

“Why do you present yourself like that?” said the Marquise de Vandenesse one day.

“Pearls live in oyster-shells,” he answered, conceitedly.

To another who asked him somewhat the same question, he replied,—­

“If I were charming to all the world, how could I seem better still to the one woman I wish to please?”

Raoul Nathan imports this same natural disorder (which he uses as a banner) into his intellectual life; and the attribute is not misleading.  His talent is very much that of the poor girls who go about in bourgeois families to work by the day.  He was first a critic, and a great critic; but he felt himself cheated in that vocation.  His articles were equal to books, he said.  The profits of theatrical work then allured him; but, incapable of the slow and steady application required for stage arrangement, he was forced to associate with himself a vaudevillist, du Bruel, who took his ideas, worked them over, and reduced them into those productive little pieces, full of wit, which are written expressly for actors and actresses.  Between them, they had invented Florine, an actress now in vogue.

Humiliated by this association, which was that of the Siamese twins, Nathan had produced alone, at the Theatre-Francais, a serious drama, which fell with all the honors of war amid salvos of thundering articles.  In his youth he had once before appeared at the great and noble Theatre-Francais in a splendid romantic play of the style of “Pinto,”—­a period when the classic reigned supreme.  The Odeon was so violently agitated for three nights that the play was forbidden by the censor.  This second piece was considered by many a masterpiece, and won him more real reputation than all his productive little pieces done with collaborators,—­but only among a class to whom little attention is paid, that of connoisseurs and persons of true taste.