Page 1038 - les-miserables

CHAPTER I

AN ANCIENT SALON

When M. Gillenormand lived in the Rue Servandoni, he
had frequented many very good and very aristocratic sa-
lons. Although a bourgeois, M. Gillenormand was received
in society. As he had a double measure of wit, in the first
place, that which was born with him, and secondly, that
which was attributed to him, he was even sought out and
made much of. He never went anywhere except on condition
of being the chief person there. There are people who will
have influence at any price, and who will have other people
busy themselves over them; when they cannot be oracles,
they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature;
his domination in the Royalist salons which he frequented
cost his self-respect nothing. He was an oracle everywhere.
It had happened to him to hold his own against M. de Bon-
ald, and even against M. Bengy-Puy-Vallee.
About 1817, he invariably passed two afternoons a week
in a house in his own neighborhood, in the Rue Ferou, with
Madame la Baronne de T., a worthy and respectable person,
whose husband had been Ambassador of France to Berlin
under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his lifetime,

1038 Les Miserables