possessed every qualification. Personable and of a good figure, a
clever billiard-player, a passable amateur actor, he danced well, and
excelled in most physical exercises; he could, moreover, sing a ballad
and applaud a witticism. Supple, envious, never at a loss, there was
nothing that he did not know--nothing that he really knew. He knew
nothing, for instance, of music, but he could sit down to the piano
and accompany, after a fashion, a woman who consented after much
pressing to sing a ballad learned by heart in a month of hard
practice. Incapable though he was of any feeling for poetry, he would
boldly ask permission to retire for ten minutes to compose an
impromptu, and return with a quatrain, flat as a pancake, wherein
rhyme did duty for reason. M. du Chatelet had besides a very pretty
talent for filling in the ground of the Princess' worsted work after
the flowers had been begun; he held her skeins of silk with infinite
grace, entertained her with dubious nothings more or less
transparently veiled. He was ignorant of painting, but he could copy a
landscape, sketch a head in profile, or design a costume and color it.
He had, in short, all the little talents that a man could turn to such
useful account in times when women exercised more influence in public
life than most people imagine. Diplomacy he claimed to be his strong
point; it usually is with those who have no knowledge, and are
profound by reason of their emptiness; and, indeed, this kind of skill
possesses one signal advantage, for it can only be displayed in the
conduct of the affairs of the great, and when discretion is the
quality required, a man who knows nothing can safely say nothing, and
take refuge in a mysterious shake of the head; in fact; the cleverest
practitioner is he who can swim with the current and keep his head
well above the stream of events which he appears to control, a man's
fitness for this business varying inversely as his specific gravity.
But in this particular art or craft, as in all others, you shall find