Coxcombs are the product of this feminine
manoeuvre, when they are not fops by nature. Canalis, taken young by
the handsome duchess, vindicated his affectations to his own mind by
telling himself that they pleased that "grande dame," whose taste was
law. Such shades of character may be excessively faint, but it is
improper for the historian not to point them out. For instance,
Melchior possessed a talent for reading which was greatly admired, and
much injudicious praise had given him a habit of exaggeration, which
neither poets nor actors are willing to check, and which made people
say of him (always through De Marsay) that he no longer declaimed, he
bellowed his verses; lengthening the sounds that he might listen to
himself. In the slang of the green-room, Canalis "dragged the time."
He was fond of exchanging glances with his hearers, throwing himself
into postures of self-complacency and practising those tricks of
demeanor which actors call "balancoires,"--the picturesque phrase of
an artistic people. Canalis had his imitators, and was in fact the
head of a school of his kind. This habit of declamatory chanting
slightly affected his conversation, as we have seen in his interview
with Dumay.
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