He was full of moral sentiments--that man; only you could not look at him without fancying that they sprung more from an inclination to be contradictious and disagreeable than from any depth of principle.
"Absurd," Guy retorted. "Wasn't he a heathen, and rather an immoral one? It was of profligates with far greater advantages of education that some one said, '_'Le remords nait de l'abandon, et non de la faute_.' The walls of Troy were strong then, and the Destroyer-of-ships safe behind them, 'getting herself up alarmingly' for his return. No wonder Menelaüs was eager for the duel: he was staking his loneliness against Paris's nine points of the law."
Sir Henry Fallowfield smiled approvingly.
"Yes," he observed, not answering what had been said, but evidently following out a train of his own thought. "Modern exquisites have courage, and self-possession, and conceit--great elements of success with women, I own--but they have not much more. I am certain Charley, who is a favorable specimen of the class, often affects silence because he has nothing on earth to say. There is a decadence since my younger days (I hope I speak dispassionately), and how very far we fell short of the _roués_ of the Régence! We could no more match them than a fighting-man in good training could stand up to one of the old Pict giants. Look at Richelieu: good at all points--in the battle, in the boudoir, in the Bastille--a dangerous rival at the two ages of ordinary men's first and second childhood."
"He was a great man in his way," I assented. "Do you remember his answer to the Duchesse de Maine, when she asked him, for a political purpose, if he could remain faithful for one week to an intrigue then twenty-four hours old? '_Madame, quand une fois j'embrasse un parti, je suis capable des plus grandes sacrifices pour le soutenir._' The object of that heroic constancy was the Maréchale de Villars, one of the loveliest women in France. It was the sublime of fatuity--was it not?"
"Well, I don't know," said Charley, settling himself comfortably in his cushions, and glancing almost imperceptibly at Bruce; "they seem to fancy us, notwithstanding. We have only one great obstacle--the mothers that _bore_ us."