about without danger. A certain prelate had arrived by slow and imperceptible degrees at the point of drunkenness every night, and that by himself and at his studies. In order to effect a cure which should be as agreeable as the slow stumbling into the vicious habit had been, he adopted a very ingenious plan. He changed his glass for a silver-gilt cap, and every night he dropped into it one drop of wax, thus gradually diminishing the capacity of the cup and the quantity of wine consumed. The difficulty still presented itself of not making up for the deficiency of size in the cup by filling it up more frequently, but such critical inquiries would manifestly spoil the effect of the drop of wax story.
I exchanged (M. Véron relates) little acts of politeness with an Englishman who appeared to me worthy of study. He sent me his card: his name was surrounded by bottles, opera-dancers with outstretched calves, flowers and birds, all delicately engraved. He lived at the Hotel Meurice, and he often give dinners to Englishmen, his friends, which began at eight o'clock at night, and finished at eight in the morning.
His father, the possessor of one of the largest fortunes in England, had also one of the finest collections of birds in the country. The son had, like the father, only two passions—wine and ornithology. He asked me one day to breakfast; nothing was put on the table but hard-boiled eggs of the rarest birds, from the egg of a partridge to that of a swan. I breakfasted as one ought to breakfast, for I did not breakfast at all.
This story had probably no better foundation than that, the Englishman wishing to present his visitor with a rarity, had some plovers' eggs served up (the artist being responsible for their being hard boiled), and which the inventor of the pâte pectorale, not being familiar with, he at once pronounced to be the eggs of all the rarest birds that are known.
I was acquainted (he adds further on) for a long time, having met with him at a restaurateur's, with a half-idiot, whose repartees were often very original and witty. One day he came into the Café Anglais. "I am very tired," he said to me; "I have been walking ever since eight o'clock this morning." And taking a bottle of Bordeaux from his pocket, he added: "Here is some excellent wine which you must taste; all the world knows that wine improves by travel, and I have been carrying it about ever since eight o'clock this morning."
It was the same semi-idiot who interrupted the performance, in the midst of a first representation at the Théâtre Français, by rising up in his box and saying to the public: "You must agree with me, gentlemen, that it is very unfortunate that the author of this new piece has not an income of fifty thousand francs, he might then, perhaps, be induced not to write such pitiable productions."
Here is another highly-coloured portrait of an imaginary Englishman:
His fortune was immense; he had no family or connexions; he was a bachelor. Life weighed heavily upon him; he had no vices, no tastes to pander to. This man sought my confidence, and I trembled for the moment lest it was to disclose a projected suicide; but it was not so. "I have found," he said, "a means of supporting existence; I have conceived a plan, to accomplish which will carry me to the confines of old age. I have had three travelling-carriages built, the arrangements of which I myself have planned. I have set myself the task of collecting, in labelled bottles, the waters of all the streams and rivers in the world; but I shall have, unfortunately, the pain of dying before my collection is complete." Was not this a very intelligent and felicitous mode of disposing of a large fortune?
