THE PARISIANS

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton



BOOK VI.


CHAPTER I.

A few weeks after the date of the preceding chapter, a gay party of men
were assembled at supper in one of the private salons of the Maison
Doree. The supper was given by Frederic Lemercier, and the guests were,
though in various ways, more or less distinguished. Rank and fashion
were not unworthily represented by Alain de Rochebriant and Enguerrand de
Vandemar, by whose supremacy as "lion" Frederic still felt rather
humbled, though Alain had contrived to bring them familiarly together.
Art, Literature, and the Bourse had also their representatives in Henri
Bernard, a rising young portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honoured with
his patronage, the Vicomte de Braze, and M. Savarin. Science was not
altogether forgotten, but contributed its agreeable delegate in the
person of the eminent physician to whom we have been before introduced,
--Dr. Bacourt. Doctors in Paris are not so serious as they mostly are in
London; and Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher of the school of Aristippus,
was no unfrequent nor ungenial guest at any banquet in which the Graces
relaxed their zones. Martial glory was also represented at that social
gathering by a warrior, bronzed and decorated, lately arrived from
Algiers, on which arid soil he had achieved many laurels and the rank of
Colonel. Finance contributed Duplessis. Well it might; for Duplessis