the young advocate drank many cups of Orleanist tea, going even into the
same drawing-rooms as Beule and Prevost-Paradol, and accompanying
political ladies to the receptions at the Academie Francaise.

"That is where you must make havoc, you rascal!"

But Papillon defends himself with conceited smiles and meaning looks.
According to him--and he puts his two thumbs into the armholes of his
vest--the ambitious must be chaste.

"Abstineo venere," said he, lowering his eyes in a comical manner, for he
did not fear Latin quotations. However, he declared himself very hard to
please in that matter; he dreamed of an Egeria, a superior mind. What he
did not tell them was, that a dressmaker's little errand-girl, with whom
he had tried to converse as he left the law-school, had surveyed him from
head to foot and threatened him with the police.

Upon some new joke of Maurice's, the lawyer gave his amorous programme in
the following terms:

"Understand me, a woman must be as intelligent as Hypatia, and have the
sensibility of Heloise; the smile of a Joconde, and the limbs of an
Antiope; and, even then, if she had not the throat of a Venus de Medicis,
I should not love her."

Without going quite so far, the actor showed himself none the less
exacting. According to his ideas, Deborah, the tragedienne at the Odeon
--a Greek statue!--had too large hands, and the fascinating Blanche
Pompon at the Varietes was a mere wax doll.