Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

a year. He managed to get on with it--by running into debt. In
magnificence, extravagance, and novelty he was without a rival. Directly
he was copied he changed his fashion. On horseback he wore loose boots
of cow-hide, which turned over, with spurs. He had hats like nobody
else's, unheard-of lace, and bands of which he alone had the pattern.
CHAPTER III.
THE DUCHESS JOSIANA.
Towards 1705, although Lady Josiana was twenty-three and Lord David
forty-four, the wedding had not yet taken place, and that for the best
reasons in the world. Did they hate each other? Far from it; but what
cannot escape from you inspires you with no haste to obtain it. Josiana
wanted to remain free, David to remain young. To have no tie until as
late as possible appeared to him to be a prolongation of youth.
Middle-aged young men abounded in those rakish times. They grew gray as
young fops. The wig was an accomplice: later on, powder became the
auxiliary. At fifty-five Lord Charles Gerrard, Baron Gerrard, one of the
Gerrards of Bromley, filled London with his successes. The young and
pretty Duchess of Buckingham, Countess of Coventry, made a fool of
herself for love of the handsome Thomas Bellasys, Viscount Falconberg,
who was sixty-seven. People quoted the famous verses of Corneille, the
septuagenarian, to a girl of twenty--"_Marquise, si mon visage_." Women,
too, had their successes in the autumn of life. Witness Ninon and
Marion. Such were the models of the day.
Josiana and David carried on a flirtation of a particular shade. They
did not love, they pleased, each other. To be at each other's side
sufficed them. Why hasten the conclusion? The novels of those days
carried lovers and engaged couples to that kind of stage which was the
most becoming. Besides, Josiana, while she knew herself to be a bastard,
felt herself a princess, and carried her authority over him with a high
tone in all their arrangements. She had a fancy for Lord David. Lord
David was handsome, but that was over and above the bargain. She
considered him to be fashionable.
To be fashionable is everything. Caliban, fashionable and magnificent,
would distance Ariel, poor. Lord David was handsome, so much the better.
The danger in being handsome is being insipid; and that he was not. He
betted, boxed, ran into debt. Josiana thought great things of his
horses, his dogs, his losses at play, his mistresses. Lord David, on his
side, bowed down before the fascinations of the Duchess Josiana--a
maiden without spot or scruple, haughty, inaccessible, and audacious. He
addressed sonnets to her, which Josiana sometimes read. In these sonnets
he declared that to possess Josiana would be to rise to the stars, which
did not prevent his always putting the ascent off to the following year.
He waited in the antechamber outside Josiana's heart; and this suited
the convenience of both. At court all admired the good taste of this
delay. Lady Josiana said, "It is a bore that I should be obliged to
marry Lord David; I, who would desire nothing better than to be in love
with him!"