To-day it is çoisRenéno longer so: the dandy must have a conquering, thoughtless, insolent air; he must attend to his dress, wear mustachios or a beard cut round like Queen Elizabeth's ruff or the radiant disk of the sun; he reveals the lofty independence of his character by keeping his hat on his head, by lolling on the sofa, stretching out his boots before the noses of the ladies seated in admiration on chairs before him; he rides with a cane which he carries like a wax-taper, indifferent to the horse which chances to be between his legs. His health must be perfect and his soul always at the height of five or six felicities. A few Radical dandies, those most advanced towards the future, possess a pipe.
But, no doubt, all these things are changed in the very time which I am taking to describe them. They say that the dandy of the present moment must no longer know if he exists, if the world is there, if there are women, and if he ought to salute his neighbour. Is it not curious to find the original of the dandy under Henry III.?
"Those pretty minions," says the author of the _Isle des Hermaphrodites_[172], "wore their hair longish, curled and curled again, showing above their little velvet caps, like the women, and their shirt-ruffs of linen all around, starched and half-a-foot wide, in such fashion that, to see their heads above their ruffs, it seemed as though it was the head of Saint John in a dish." They leave to go to Henry III.'s chamber, "swinging their body, their heads and their legs so that I thought at every turn that they must needs fall at full length.... They found that manner of walking finer than any other."
All the English are mad by nature or by fashion.
Lord Clanwilliam passed quickly: I met him again at Verona; he became British Minister in Berlin after me. For a moment we followed the same road, although we did not walk with the same step.
Nothing in London succeeded like insolence, as witness d'Orsay[173] the brother of the Duchesse de Guiche[174]: he had taken to galloping in Hyde Park, leaping turnpike gates, gambling, treating the dandies without ceremony; he had an unequalled success and, to crown the whole, he ended by carrying off an entire family, father, mother and children.