Part 39

So I left the papers with her.

It is the fashion this year for ladies to wear lockets on a black-velvet ribbon around their necks. The more lockets you can collect and wear, the finer you are. Each locket represents an event, such as a birthday, a bet, an anniversary of any kind, and so forth. Any excuse is good for the sending of a locket. The Empress had seventeen beautiful ones to-day (I counted them). They have a rather cannibalish look, I think. Is it not in Hayti (or in which country is it?) that the black citizens wear their rivals' teeth as trophies on their black necks?

Who should offer me his arm for dinner to night but Prosper Mérimée, the lion of lions, the pampered poet, who entrances all those who listen to him whenever he opens his lips.

He looks more like an Englishman than a Frenchman; he is quite old, and I fancy older than he looks (he may be fifty). He is tall and dégagé, with a nice smile and pleasant eyes, though sometimes he gives you a sharp and suspicious glance. He speaks English very well. I told him (stretching a point) that I had never heard a foreigner speak such good English as he did.

He replied, without a blush: "I ought to speak it well. I learned it when I was a child." And he added, complacently, "I can even write better than I speak."

I asked him if he could write poetry in English.

He answered: "I do not think I could. My English goes just so far and no farther. I have what is strictly necessary, but not what is superfluous." ("J'ai, le stricte nécessaire, mais pas le superflu.")

"To make rhymes," said I, "I should think one would have to know every word in the dictionary."

"Oh!" he said, "I don't attempt rhymes; they are far beyond me."

When he talks French he is perfectly delightful. He creates the funniest words, and gives such an original turn to his phrases that you are--at least I was--on the qui vive not to lose anything he said. It is like listening to a person who, improvising on the piano, makes unexpected and subtle modulations which you hate to have escape you.

He told me he had been in correspondence with an English lady for over thirty years.

"Were you in love with her, that you wrote to her all those years?" I inquired.

"I was in love with her letters," he replied. "They were the cleverest things I ever read--full of wit and humor."

"Was she in love with you or only with your letters?" I was tactless enough to ask.

"How can you ask?" he said. I wondered myself how I could have asked so indiscreet a question.

"Did she write in English, and did you write in French?"

"Yes, she wrote in English," he answered, and looked bored.

"Is she dead?" I asked, getting bolder and bolder; but he would not talk any more about this clever lady, and we drifted into other channels of conversation. Too bad! I would have liked to have known if the lady was still living.

I wish I could remember all the pearls which fell from his lips; but alas! one cannot, like Cleopatra, digest pearls. But I do remember one thing he said, which was, "If I should define the difference between men and women, I should say, 'Que les hommes valent plus, mais que les femmes valent mieux.'"

I wondered if this was one of the pearls he let drop in his letters to the wonderful English bas-bleu.

In the evening we danced to the waltzes of the Debain, and were obliged to tread a very spasmodic measure. The Prince Imperial asked me for a polka, and I had to clutch his shoulder with one hand and beat time with the other on his arm to keep any kind of rhythm in his evolutions. It is nice to see him circulating about and chatting with all the ladies.

November 29th.

A message came to my room this morning, to the effect that I was to sit next to the Emperor. I suppose they thought it best to let me know in time, in case I should go wandering off sight-seeing, like last year, but no danger! Once caught, twice warned, as the saying is.

Therefore, when we descended to the grand salon, I knew what my fate was to be. The Due de Sesto, who had recently married the widow of the Duc de Morny, gave me his arm and deposited me at the side of his Majesty.

The Emperor was in the most delightful spirits, and full of bonhomie and fun. Glancing across the table at a certain diplomat (Baron F----), he said, "I never knew a person more impervious to a joke than that gentleman is." And then he went on to say that once he had told the Baron the old time-worn joke which any child can understand.

(You have heard it many times, I am sure, dear mama.)

One begins by saying, "Vous me permettez de vous tutoyer (You will permit me to use the thee and thou)?" And then one says, "Pourquoi aimes-tu la chicorée (Why dost thou like chicory)?" To which the answer is, "Parce qu'elle est amère (ta mère) (Because it is 'bitter' or 'your mother')."

But I had better tell the story in the Emperor's own language.