grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. It is a
great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges; his eyes look straight
forward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that he has
been met. For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and
hospitalities? Is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations? Or, do
we not insatiably ask. Was a man in the house? I may easily go into a
great household where there is much substance, excellent provision for
comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter there any
Amphitryon,[414] who shall subordinate these appendages. I may go into
a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I have come
to see, and fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very natural
point of old feudal etiquette, that a gentleman who received a visit,
though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should
wait his arrival at the door of his house. No house, though it were
the Tuileries,[415] or the Escurial,[416] is good for anything without
a master. And yet we are not often gratified by this hospitality.
Everybody we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books,
conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to
interpose between himself and his guests. Does it not seem as if man
was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a
full renconter front to front with his fellow? It were unmerciful, I
know, quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of eminent
convenience, whether the guest is too great, or too little. We call
together many friends who keep each other in play, or by luxuries and
ornaments we amuse the young people, and guard our retirement. Or if,
perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose eyes we
have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, and hide
ourselves as Adam[417] at the voice of the Lord God in the garden.
Cardinal Caprara,[418] the Pope's[419] legate at Paris, defended
himself from the glances of Napoleon, by an immense pair of green