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The Firm of Nucingen-Part3_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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idea of it. I have been in England myself.--I will give him wit enough

for a couple of thousand," he added in an aside to Blondet.



"In England, Finot, you grow extremelyintimate with a woman in the

course of an evening, at a ball or wherever it is; next day you meet



her in the street and look as though you knew her again--'improper.'--

At dinner you discover a delightful man beneath your left-hand



neighbor's dresscoat; a clever man; no high mightiness, no constraint,

nothing of an Englishman about him. In accordance with the tradition



of French breeding, so urbane, so gracious as they are, you address

your neighbor--'improper.'--At a ball you walk up to a pretty woman to



ask her to dance--'improper.' You wax enthusiastic, you argue, laugh,

and give yourself out, you fling yourself heart and soul into the



conversation, you give expression to your real feelings, you play when

you are at the card-table, chat while you chat, eat while you eat--



'improper! improper! improper!' Stendhal, one of the cleverest and

profoundest minds of the age, hit off the 'improper' excellently well



when he said that such-and-such a British peer did not dare to cross

his legs when he sat alone before his own hearth for fear of being



improper. An English gentlewoman, were she one of the rabid 'Saints'--

that most straitest sect of Protestants that would leave their whole



family to starve if the said family did anything 'improper'--may play

the deuce's own delight in her own bedroom, and need not be



'improper,' but she would look on herself as lost if she received a

visit from a man of her acquaintance in the aforesaid room. Thanks to



propriety, London and its inhabitants will be found petrified some of

these days."



"And to think that there are asses here in France that want to import

the solemntomfoolery that the English keep up among themselves with



that admirable self-possession which you know!" added Blondet. "It is

enough to make any man shudder if he has seen the English at home, and



recollects the charming, gracious French manners. Sir Walter Scott was

afraid to paint women as they are for fear of being 'improper'; and at



the close of his life repented of the creation of the great character

of Effie in The Heart of Midlothian."



"Do you wish not to be 'improper' in England?" asked Bixiou,

addressing Finot.



"Well?"

"Go to the Tuileries and look at a figure there, something like a



fireman carved in marble ('Themistocles,' the statuary calls it), try

to walk like the Commandant's statue, and you will never be



'improper.' It was through strictobservance of the great law of the

IMproper that Godefroid's happiness became complete. There is the



story:

"Beaudenord had a tiger, not a 'groom,' as they write that know



nothing of society. The tiger, a diminutive Irish page called Paddy,

Toby, Joby (which you please), was three feet in height by twenty



inches in breadth, a weasel-faced infant, with nerves of steel

tempered in fire-water, and agile as a squirrel. He drove a landau



with a skill never yet at fault in London or Paris. He had a lizard's

eye, as sharp as my own, and he could mount a horse like the elder



Franconi. With the rosy cheeks and yellow hair of one of Rubens'

Madonnas he was double-faced as a prince, and as knowing as an old



attorney; in short, at the age of ten he was nothing more nor less

than a blossom of depravity, gambling and swearing, partial to jam and



punch, pert as a feuilleton, impudent and light-fingered as any Paris

street-arab. He had been a source of honor and profit to a well-known



English lord, for whom he had already won seven hundred thousand

francs on the race-course. The aforesaid nobleman set no small store



on Toby. His tiger was a curiosity, the very smallest tiger in town.

Perched aloft on the back of a thoroughbred, Joby looked like a hawk.



Yet--the great man dismissed him. Not for greediness, not for

dishonesty, nor murder, nor rudeness to my lady, nor for cutting holes



in my lady's own woman's pockets, nor because he had been 'got at' by

some of his master's rivals on the turf, nor for playing games of a



Sunday, nor for bad behavior of any sort or description. Toby might

have done all these things, he might even have spoken to milord before






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