Here and there was one of those uncomfortable tributes to elegance in
which the upholsterer's art, in France, is so prolific; a curtain recess
with a sheet of looking-glass in which, among the shadows, you could see
nothing; a divan on which, for its festoons and furbelows, you could not
sit; a fireplace draped, flounced, and frilled to the complete exclusion
of fire. The young man's possessions were in picturesque disorder, and
his apartment was pervaded by the odor of cigars, mingled with perfumes
more inscrutable. Newman thought it a damp, gloomy place to live in,
and was puzzled by the obstructive and fragmentary character of the
furniture.
Bellegarde, according to the custom of his country talked very
generously about himself, and unveiled the mysteries of his private
history with an unsparing hand. Inevitably, he had a vast deal to
say about women, and he used frequently to indulge in sentimental and
ironical apostrophes to these authors of his joys and woes. "Oh, the
women, the women, and the things they have made me do!" he would exclaim
with a lustrous eye. "C'est egal, of all the follies and stupidities I
have committed for them I would not have missed one!" On this subject
Newman maintained an habitual reserve; to expatiate largely upon it had
always seemed to him a proceeding vaguely analogous to the cooing of
pigeons and the chattering of monkeys, and even inconsistent with a
fully developed human character.
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