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Denoisel had spoken as he really felt. If he had sometimes wished for wealth, he had never envied people who had it. He had a sincere and thorough contempt for money—the contempt of a man who is rich with very little.

Denoisel was a Parisian, or rather he was the true Parisian. Well up in all the experiences of Paris, wonderfully skilled in the great art of living, thanks to the habits and customs of Parisian life, he was the very man for that life; he had all its instincts, its sentiments, and its genius. He represented perfectly that very modern personage, the civilized man, triumphing, day by day, like the inhabitants of a forest of Bondy, over the price of things, over the costly life of capitals, as the savage triumphs over nature in a virgin forest. He had all the show and glitter of wealth. He lived among rich people, frequented their restaurants and clubs, had their habits, and shared in their amusements. He knew some of the wealthiest people, and all that money opened to them was open to him. He was seen at the grand private balls of the ProvenÇaux, at the races, and at first nights at the theatres. In summer he went to the watering-places, to the sea, and to the gambling resorts. He dressed like a man who owns a carriage.

And yet Denoisel only possessed between four and five thousand pounds. Belonging to a family that had been steeped in the ideas of the past with regard to property, attached and devoted to landed wealth, always talking of bankruptcy, and as mistrustful of stocks and shares as peasants formerly were of bank-notes, Denoisel had shaken himself free of all the prejudices of his own people. Without troubling about the advice, the remonstrances, the indignation, and the threats of old and distant relatives, he had sold the small farms which his father and mother had left him. It seemed to him that there was no longer any proportion between the revenue of land and the expenses of modern life. In his opinion landed estate might have been a means of wealth at the time when Paul de Kock's novels said of a young man, "Paul was rich, he had two hundred and fifty a year." But since that time it had, according to him, become an anachronism, a kind of archaic property, a fancy fox which was only permissible in very wealthy people. He therefore realized his land and turned it into a small capital, which he placed, after consulting with a friend of his who frequented the Stock Exchange, in foreign bonds, in shares and securities, thus doubling and tripling his revenue without any risk to his regular income. Having thus converted his capital into a figure which meant nothing, except in the eyes of a notary, and which no longer regulated his current means, Denoisel arranged his life as he had done his money. He organized his expenses. He knew exactly the cost in Paris of vanity, little extras, bargains, and all such ruinous things. He was not ashamed to add up a bill himself before paying it. Away from home he only smoked fourpenny cigars, but at home he smoked pipes. He knew where to buy things, discovered the new shops, which give such good value during the first three months. He knew the wine-cellars at the various restaurants, ordered Chambertin a certain distance up the boulevards, and only ordered it there. If he gave a dinner, his menu won the respect of the waiter. And with all that, he knew how to order supper for four shillings at the CafÉ Anglais.

All his expenses were regulated with the same skill. He went to one of the first tailors in Paris, but a friend of his who was in the Foreign Office procured for him from London all the suits he wanted between the seasons. When he had a present to make, or any New Year's gifts to buy, he always knew of a cargo of Indian or Chinese things that had just arrived, or he remembered an old piece of Saxony or SÈvres china that was lying hidden away in some shop in an unfrequented part of Paris, one of those old curiosities, the price of which cannot be discovered by the person for whom it is destined. All this with Denoisel was spontaneous, natural, and instinctive. This never-ending victory of Parisian intelligence over all the extravagance of life had nothing of the meanness and pettiness of sordid calculation about it. It was the happy discovery of a scheme of existence under satisfactory conditions, and not a series of vulgar petty economies, and in the well-organized expenditure of his six hundred pounds a year the man remained liberal and high-minded: he avoided what was too expensive for him, and never attempted to beat prices down. Denoisel had a flat of his own on the first storey of a well-ordered house with a carpeted staircase. He had only three rooms, but the Boulevard des Italiens was at his very door. His little drawing-room, which he had furnished as a smoking-den, was charming. It was one of those snug little rooms which Parisian upholsterers are so clever in arranging. It was all draped and furnished with chintz, and had divans as wide as beds. It had been Denoisel's own wish that the absence of all objects of art should complete the cheerful look of the room. He was waited on in the morning by his hall-porter, who brought him a cup of chocolate and did all the necessary housework. He dined at a club or restaurant or with friends.

The low rent and the simplicity of his household and domestic arrangements left Denoisel more of that money of which wealthy people are so often short, that money for the little luxuries of life, which is more necessary than any other in Paris, and which is known as pocket-money. Occasionally, however, that force majeure, the Unforeseen, would suddenly arrive in the midst of this regular existence and disarrange its equilibrium and its budget.

Denoisel would then disappear from Paris for a time. He would ruralize at some little country inn, near a river, on half-a-crown a day, and he would spend no other money than what was necessary for tobacco. Two or three winters, finding himself quite out of funds, he had emigrated, and, on discovering a city like Florence, where happiness costs nothing and where the living is almost as inexpensive as that happiness, he had stayed there six months, lodging in a room with a cupola, dining À la trattoria on truffles with Parmesan cheese, passing his evenings in the boxes of society people, going to the Grand Duke's balls, fÊted, invited everywhere, with white camellias in his buttonhole—economizing in the happiest way in the world.

Denoisel spent no more for his love-affairs than for other things. It was no longer a question of self-respect with him, so that he only paid what he thought them worth. And yet such things had been his one allurement as a young man. He had, however, always been cool and methodical, even in his love-affairs. He had wanted, in a lordly way, to test for himself what the love of the woman who was the most in vogue in Paris was like. He allowed himself for this experiment about two thousand pounds of the seven thousand he then possessed, and, during the six months that he was the accepted lover of the celebrated GÉnicot, a woman who would give a five-pound note as a tip to her postillion on returning from the Marche, he lived in the same style as a man with five thousand a year. When the six months were over he left her, and she, for the first time in her life, was in love with a man who had paid for that love.

Tempered by this proof he had had several other experiences afterward, until they had palled on him; and then there had suddenly come to him, not a desire for further love adventures, but a great curiosity about women. He set out to discover all that was unforeseen, unexpected, and unknown to him in woman. All actresses seemed to him very much the same kind of courtesan, and all courtesans very much the same kind of actress. What attracted him now was the unclassed woman, the woman that bewilders the observer and the oldest Parisian. He often went wandering about at night, vaguely and irresistibly led on by one of those creatures who are neither all vice nor all virtue, and who walk so gracefully along in the mire. Sometimes he was dazzled by one of those fine-looking girls, so often seen in Paris, who seem to brighten everything as they pass along, and he would turn round to look at her and stand there even after she had suddenly disappeared in the darkness of some passage. His vocation was to discover tarnished stars. Now and then in some faubourg he would come across one of these marvellous daughters of the people and of Nature, and he would talk to her, watch her, listen to her, and study her; then when she wearied him he would let her go, and it would amuse him later on to raise his hat to her when he met her again driving in a carriage.

Denoisel's wealthy air won for him a welcome in social circles. He soon established himself there and on a superior footing, thanks to his geniality and wit, the services of every kind he was always ready to render, and the need every one had of him. His large circle of acquaintances among foreigners, artists, and theatrical people, his knowledge of the ins and outs of things when small favours were required, made him very valuable on hundreds of occasions. Every one applied to him for a box at a theatre, permission to visit a prison or a picture gallery, an entrance for a lady to the law courts at some trial, or a foreign decoration for some man. In two or three duels in which he had served as seconds, he had shown sound sense, decision, and a manly regard for the honour as well as the life of the man for whom he was answerable. People were under all kinds of obligations to him, and the respect they had for him was not lessened by his reputation as a first-rate swordsman. His character had won for him the esteem of all with whom he came in contact, and he was even held in high consideration by wealthy people, whose millions, nevertheless, were not always respected by him.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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