countrymen, of making the very reputations of those rivals contribute to
his own. And while he assembled them around him, the lustre of their
/bons mots/, though it emanated from themselves, was reflected upon him.

It was a pleasant though not a costly apartment in which we found our
host. The room was sufficiently full of people to allow scope and
variety to one group of talkers, without being full enough to permit
those little knots and /coteries/ which are the destruction of literary
society. An old man of about seventy, of a sharp, shrewd, yet polished
and courtly expression of countenance, of a great gayety of manner,
which was now and then rather displeasingly contrasted by an abrupt
affectation of dignity, that, however, rarely lasted above a minute, and
never withstood the shock of a /bon mot/, was the first person who
accosted us. This old man was the wreck of the once celebrated Anthony
Count Hamilton!

"Well, my Lord," said he to Bolingbroke, "how do you like the weather at
Paris? It is a little better than the merciless air of London; is it
not? 'Slife!--even in June one could not go open breasted in those
regions of cold and catarrh,--a very great misfortune, let me tell you,
my Lord, if one's cambric happened to be of a very delicate and
brilliant texture, and one wished to penetrate the inward folds of a
lady's heart, by developing to the best advantage the exterior folds
that covered his own."

"It is the first time," answered Bolingbroke, "that I ever heard so
accomplished a courtier as Count Hamilton repine, with sincerity, that
he could not bare his bosom to inspection."

"Ah!" cried Boulainvilliers, "but vanity makes a man show much that