X.
The Kind of a Man My Father Was
He was a man of the past age, and had the indefinable character, common to the youths of that time, a compound of chivalry, daring, self-confidence, amiability and merriment. He looked contemptuously at the people of the present generation, which view originated as much in his inborn haughtiness, as in the secret annoyance because in our age he could have neither that influence, nor those successes, which he had enjoyed in his. His two chief passions in life were cards and women; he had won several millions in the course of his life, and he had liaisons with an endless number of women of all classes of society.
A tall, stately stature, a strange, mincing gait, a habit of shrugging his shoulder, small, eternally smiling eyes, a large, aquiline nose, irregular lips that were folded rather awkwardly, but pleasantly, a defective enunciation, — he lisped, — and a head entirely bald: such was the exterior of my father ever since I can remember him, — an exterior with which he managed not only to pass for a man à bonnes fortunes, — and he really was such, — but even to be in favour with people of all conditions of life, especially with those whom he wished to please.
He knew how to get the best out of his relations with everybody. Although he had never been a man of very fashionable society, he always cultivated the acquaintance of people of that circle, and he did this in such a manner
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