things, with a suppleness of thought that put him at ease in any
society, and a subtle diplomatic scent that gave him the power to judge
men at first sight; and he strolled from salon to salon, morning and
evening, with his enlightened, useless, and gossiping activity.

Apt at everything, as he appeared, he would talk on any subject with
an air of convincing competence and familiarity that made him greatly
appreciated by fashionable women, whom he served as a sort of traveling
bazaar of erudition. As a matter of fact, he knew many things without
ever having read any but the most indispensable books; but he stood very
well with the five Academies, with all the savants, writers, and learned
specialists, to whom he listened with clever discernment. He knew how to
forget at once explanations that were too technical or were useless to
him, remembered the others very well, and lent to the information thus
gleaned an easy, clear, and good-natured rendering that made them as
readily comprehensible as the popular presentation of scientific facts.
He gave the impression of being a veritable storehouse of ideas, one of
those vast places wherein one never finds rare objects but discovers
a multiplicity of cheap productions of all kinds and from all sources,
from household utensils to the popular instruments for physical culture
or for domestic surgery.

The painters, with whom his official functions brought him in continual
contact, made sport of him but feared him. He rendered them some
services, however, helped them to sell pictures, brought them in contact
with fashionable persons, and enjoyed presenting them, protecting them,
launching them. He seemed to devote himself to a mysterious function of
fusing the fashionable and the artistic worlds, pluming himself on
his intimate acquaintance with these, and of his familiar footing with
those, on breakfasting with the Prince of Wales, on his way through