We Get Forwards In The World, Not So Much By Doing Services, As
Receiving Them; You Take A Withering Twig, And Put It In The
Ground; And Then You Water It, Because You Have Planted It.
Monsieur le Count de B-, merely because he had done me one kindness
in the affair of my passport,
Would go on and do me another, the
few days he was at Paris, in making me known to a few people of
rank; and they were to present me to others, and so on.
I had got master of my SECRET just in time to turn these honours to
some little account; otherwise, as is commonly the case, I should
have dined or supp'd a single time or two round, and then, by
TRANSLATING French looks and attitudes into plain English, I should
presently have seen, that I had hold of the couvert {3} of some
more entertaining guest; and in course should have resigned all my
places one after another, merely upon the principle that I could
not keep them. - As it was, things did not go much amiss.
I had the honour of being introduced to the old Marquis de B-: in
days of yore he had signalized himself by some small feats of
chivalry in the Cour d'Amour, and had dress'd himself out to the
idea of tilts and tournaments ever since. - The Marquis de B- wish'd
to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain.
"He could like to take a trip to England," and asked much of the
English ladies.
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