This characteristic caused
him to lead a double life. He found compensation with women of easy
virtue for the worship to which he surrendered himself in the salons,
or, if you like, the boudoirs, of the faubourg Saint-Germain. Such
habits and his puny figure, his suffering face with its blue eyes
turning upward in ecstasy, increased the ridicule already bestowed
upon him,--very unjustly bestowed, as it happened, for he was full of
wit and delicacy; but his wit, which never sparkled, only showed
itself when he felt at ease. Fanny Beaupre, an actress who was
supposed to be his nearest friend (at a price), called him "a sound
wine so carefully corked that you break all your corkscrews." The
beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whom the grand equerry could only
worship, annihilated him with a speech which, unfortunately, was
repeated from mouth to mouth, like all such pretty and malicious
sayings.
"He always seems to me," she said, "like one of those jewels of fine
workmanship which we exhibit but never wear, and keep in cotton-wool."
Everything about him, even to his absurdly contrasting title of grand
equerry, amused the good-natured king, Charles X.
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