He
Knew Absolutely What He Was About, Understood The
Place Thoroughly, And Constantly Reminded His Audience
Of What He Himself Had Done In The Way Of Excavations
And Reparations.
He described himself as the brother
of the architect of the work actually going forward
(that which has been done since the death of M. Viol-
let-le-Duc, I suppose he meant), and this fact was more
illustrative than all the others.
It reminded me, as
one is reminded at every turn, of the democratic con-
ditions of French life: a man of the people, with a
wife _en bonnet_, extremely intelligent, full of special
knowledge, and yet remaining essentially of the people,
and showing his intelligence with a kind of ferocity,
of defiance. Such a personage helps one to under-
stand the red radicalism of France, the revolutions,
the barricades, the sinister passion for theories. (I do
not, of course, take upon myself to say that the indi-
vidual I describe - who can know nothing of the
liberties I am taking with him - is actually devoted to
these ideals; I only mean that many such devotees
must have his qualities.) In just the _nuance_ that I
have tried to indicate here, it is a terrible pattern of
man. Permeated in a high degree by civilization, it
is yet untouched by the desire which one finds in the
Englishman, in proportion as he rises in the world, to
approximate to the figure of the gentleman. On the
other hand, a _nettete_, a faculty of exposition, such as
the English gentleman is rarely either blessed or cursed
with.
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