The Parisians — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best novels ever txt) 📕

A few weeks after the date of the preceding chapter, a gay party of men were assembled at supper in one of the private salons of the Maison Doree. The supper was given by Frederic Lemercier, and the guests were, though in various ways, more or less distinguished. Rank and fashion were not unworthily represented by Alain de Rochebriant and Enguerrand de Vandemar, by whose supremacy as “lion” Frederic still felt rather humbled, though Alain had contrived to bring them familiarly together. Art, Literature, and the Bourse had also their representatives in Henri Bernard, a rising young portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honoured with his patronage, the Vicomte de Braze, and M. Savarin. Science was not altogether forgotten, but contributed its agreeable delegate in the person of the eminent physician to whom we have been before introduced,—Dr. Bacourt. Doctors in Paris are not so serious as they mostly are in London; and Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher of the school of Aristippus, was no unfrequent nor ungenial guest at any banquet in which the Graces relaxed their zones. Martial glory was also represented at that social gathering by a warrior, bronzed and decorated, lately arrived from Algiers, on which arid soil he had achieved many laurels and the rank of Colonel. Finance contributed Duplessis. Well it might; for Duplessis had just assisted the host to a splendid coup at the Bourse.

“Ah, cher Monsieur Savarin,” says Enguerrand de Vandemar, whose patrician blood is so pure from revolutionary taint that he is always instinctively polite, “what a masterpiece in its way is that little paper of yours in the ‘Sens Commun,’ upon the connection between the national character and the national diet! so genuinely witty!—for wit is but truth made amusing.”

“You flatter me,” replied Savarin, modestly; “but I own I do think there is a smattering of philosophy in that trifle. Perhaps, however, the character of a people depends more on its drinks than its food. The wines of Italy, heady, irritable, ruinous to the digestion, contribute to the character which belongs to active brains and disordered livers. The Italians conceive great plans, but they cannot digest them. The English common-people drink beer, and the beerish character is stolid, rude, but stubborn and enduring. The English middle-class imbibe port and sherry; and with these strong potations their ideas become obfuscated. Their character has no liveliness; amusement is not one of their wants; they sit at home after dinner and doze away the fumes of their beverage in the dulness of domesticity. If the English aristocracy are more vivacious and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to the wines of France, which it is the mode with them to prefer; but still, like all plagiarists, they are imitators, not inventors; they borrow our wines and copy our manners. The Germans—”

“Insolent barbarians!” growled the French Colonel, twirling his mustache; “if the Emperor were not in his dotage, their Sadowa would ere this have cost them their Rhine.”

“The Germans,” resumed Savarin, unheeding the interruption, “drink acrid wines, varied with beer, to which last their commonalty owes a quasi resemblance in stupidity and endurance to the English masses. Acrid wines rot the teeth Germans are afflicted with toothache from infancy. All people subject to toothache are sentimental. Goethe was a martyr to toothache. ‘Werther’ was written in one of those paroxysms which predispose genius to suicide. But the German character is not all toothache; beer and tobacco step in to the relief of Rhenish acridities, blend philosophy with sentiment, and give that patience in detail which distinguishes their professors and their generals. Besides, the German wines in themselves have other qualities than that of acridity. Taken with sourkrout and stewed prunes, they produce fumes of self-conceit. A German has little of French vanity; he has German self-esteem. He extends the esteem of self to those around him; his home, his village, his city, his country,—all belong to him. It is a duty he owes to himself to defend them. Give him his pipe and his sabre, and, Monsieur le Colonel, believe me, you will never take the Rhine from him.”

“P-r-r,” cried the Colonel; “but we have had the Rhine.”

“We did not keep it. And I should not say I had a francpiece if I borrowed it from your purse and had to give it back the next day.”

Here there arose a very general hubbub of voices, all raised against M. Savarin. Enguerrand, like a man of good ton, hastened to change the conversation.

“Let us leave these poor wretches to their sour wines and toothaches. We drinkers of the champagne, all our own, have only pity for the rest of the human race. This new journal ‘Le Sens Commun’ has a strange title,