406 Asmodetis and the Incognito. 



recollect me, and then said que me voulez vous? je ne vous connais 

 pas. 



Here Shoudruk suddenly stopped, apparently much excited by 

 narrating the unworthy, and ungrateful conduct of Peyronnet; and 

 after having remained with his eyes shut for a minute or two, he re- 

 sumed by saying je vous demands pardon, Messieurs, I have been 

 in some measure absent from you, because with my thought I have 

 paid a short visit to my former acquaintance Peyronnet, I will not call 

 him a friend, because friendship is indeed a rara avis in our days; 

 nay, from what Cicero has written on it in his Laelius, it must have 

 been almost the same with our ancestors. But to return to my nar- 

 ration. To the few words addressed to me by the brutal Minister 

 I answered not; but my looks, having spoken volumes to him, caused 

 his hasty disappearance. I returned to my apartment with feelings 

 indescribable. Ingratitude is perhaps the worst and most common 

 vice of mankind; but it always retains its contemptible ugliness. 

 D'abord je voulus le tuer, et me suicider ensuite; but afterwards 

 I changed my mind, because I was unable to conquer my innate 

 aversion to suicide. To challenge a Minister of the Crown was also 

 impossible without incurring first an imprisonment, and afterwards a 

 strict surveillance of the Police. To abuse him by letter I thought 

 mean and degrading. Consequently I determined to expose his 

 conduct towards me through the press, and having done so, I caused 

 a great uproar against his Excellency; and the satirical little journals 

 of Paris, having soon taken hold of my exposure, ridiculed for years 

 the ungrateful Guascon, and at his expense amused their readers. 

 Then to cast a greater shame on Peyronnet (whether I acted right 

 or wrong it is not for me to judge), I became in public " L? homme 

 & la longue barbe;" and during ten years it has been my greatest 

 delight to pass several times every day before the Hotel of the 

 Minister in the distressed state in which you have already seen me. 

 When in 1830 the proud Peyronnet was unexpectedly overthrown 

 from his grandeur, and was even deprived of his civil rights, I truly 

 pitied my former acquaintance, and I assure you that I am very 



flad that he has been again restored to liberty and civil life. Now 

 will briefly iell you why since 1830 I have not changed my conduct 

 with regard to my dress in public. Every man has his foible, and 

 habit, once deeply rooted in us, is very difficult to eradicate. My 

 shabby and disgusting appearance has been for years my pride, 

 because I thought that the public remarked in me a living monu- 

 ment of the ingratitude of the human heart. Therefore I shall end 

 my days in the same accoutrement. With regard to my finances I 

 have an annuity sufficient to my wants : besides I obtain some addi- 

 tional comforts from literary, and political articles which I furnish to 

 the Royalist Journals; and here let me candidly acknowledge that I 

 respect all political tenets, but that I am still a staunch Royalist, not 

 only because I was brought up so, but because all those who were 

 most dear to me in this valley of" tears and darkness have been sacri- 

 ficed for the same eause. But enough of myself for the present, 

 perhaps when we meet again I may recount to you some of my 



