- Same as my grandfather, who he spoke about the most diverse things. That old Visnsmoken would certainly seem like a monster to me, if my grandfather, whom I considered the best judge and whose sentences made jurisprudence for me, often helping me to absolve faults that I felt inclined to condemn, had not exclaimed:
- But how is that possible? – He questioned him.
- I still believe in your goodness, in your ardent heart, in that simple beauty of your adventurous heart. - He said.
For many years, when Mr. Visnsmoken son came to visit us with
With that, he knew that that city, that of his former home, called Conan Doyle County, especially before his marriage, my great-aunt and my grandparents never suspected that he no longer lived in the society that his family frequented.
They were under a kind of strange moment of an uncomfortable and unknown situation, in which the name Visnsmoken was haloed in our house, they welcomed.
Even if he had his innocence, in fact they are not very honourable, in that men and their hosts who may have, under their roof, without knowing it, a celebrated bandit.
It was there that he met one of the most elegant members of the Jockey-Club, a favourite friend of the Count of Paris and the Prince of Wales, one of the most courted men of high society in the Saint-Germain district.
Our ignorance of the brilliant worldly life that Visnsmoken led evidently arose in part from the reserve and discretion of his temperament, but also from the fact that.
They would be their peers and high-class equals in the high society of their generation in which they were part of that select group of wealthy society in which they came from a traditional and wealthy family in which they had a set of ideals that would be of a more traditional tradition. than specify.
Around her when they all belonged to a certain more than traditional society and came from ancient ideas and ancient lives that were not considered as composed of ancient families and far from contemporary ideas, in which each one, their traditions came from birth.
Even if he thought he was placed in the position occupied by his parents, even if they would be where they came from traditions and ancient families and full of ancient customs, in which nothing could take them away to make them penetrate a superior caste, except by chance. of an exceptional career or an unexpected marriage.
As for your colleague, Mr. Visnsmoken Sr. had been a stockbroker; the "son of Visnsmoken " would therefore have to belong all his life to a caste whose fortunes, as in a certain category of contributors, varied between such and such an income, where they knew what his father's relations had been, one knew, in that way, what theirs would be, what kind of people they would be, even in those strange conditions when frequenting my mansion.
Even if, through a contact, which none of this was by chance, I got to know others, they would be simple boyish relationships to which old friends of the family, as was the case with my parents, closed their eyes with benevolence, all the more so that he, even after he was an orphan, they still had frequent visitors, but it would be a bet that the people, unknown to us, he frequented.
Even if these still came from another country, where he wouldn't dare take off his hat in our presence when he found them. If one wanted to apply a living force, to Visnsmoken, a social coefficient of his own, among the other children of brokers in the same situation as their parents.
Even coming from the highest standards of the old families, in which the Visnsmoken came from, in very simple ways and always having the "mania" for antique objects and painting, he now lived in an old house where he gathered his collections and which my grandmother dreamed of visiting , but which was located on the quays of Orléans, a neighbourhoods in which my great-aunt found it infamous to live.
- Even if you know who you are and where you came from?
At that time, questioning everyone around him, he really asked this question, it came from curiosity and his own interest, regarding businesspeople and they came from aristocratic families, in which even if they came with objects and interested parties, they were obsolete, seeing that they had those and lots of crap.
– When your great aunt said she said.
Still, this was a fact that everyone knew, just as she did not attribute any competence to him and did not even have a high idea, from an intellectual point of view, of the man who in conversation avoided serious and strange subjects.
She showed no precision of any balance and any moment, not only when she gave us, going down to the smallest detail, cooking recipes, but even when my grandmother's sisters spoke about artistic themes, even if they were provoking them to give your opinion.
Completely overwhelmed by the admiration that a painting brings, Visnsmoken maintained an almost rude silence, but on the other hand, she opened up when she could provide some material information about the museum where the painting was located, and about the date on which it was painted.
She was not content with this habit, with trying to amuse us by telling, each time, a new story that had just occurred to her with people selected from among those we knew, with the pharmacist from Conan Doyle County, with our cook, our coachman.
With all these lies and hairy stories that made them laugh, I say it next to my great-aunt, but without her really realizing if it was because of the ridiculous role that Visnsmoken always attributed to himself, a tremendous clown.
Taking each one of them, with their clown spirits, it was when she told each of her lies, which everyone knew that no one would contradict her.
- You know you're a real guy, Mr. _
Seeing as she was more than being the only person, she was less than being the rather sloppy, slovenly, vulgarity person.
As he came within our family, he made a point of noting to strangers, when they spoke of Visnsmoken , that he could have, if he wanted, lived on Boulevard Haussmann or on the avenue of the theatre that he went to see the play with what he said, by inviting your son from Mr. Visnsmoken , that he must have left him four or five million.
Living near the beach that lay between the piers between the ports of Orléans was a simple whim of hers, even though, like her whims, she was completely self-centred and full of eccentricities.
When she thought she must be so amusing to others that, in Paris, when M. Visnsmoken came, on the 1st of January, to bring him her bag of frosted browns, she did not fail to tell him, if there were strangers, when she forced the maids to cook for the battalion, even though there are not so many visitors in a single day.
- You know, Mr. Visnsmoken means that you always live close to the cellars and vineyards to start preparing your wines, commercialize the sale of grapes and wines. – Those gossip men.
All this to make sure he doesn't miss his train when he goes to Lyon?" then, at that hour, when he looked at the other visitors out of the corner of his eye, over his pince-nez.
But if my great-aunt had been told that this Visnsmoken.
Even if it was perfectly marked, even if it was of a more ancient origin, illustrious, even being that she said so much aristocratic.
When he went to be received by all the high society.
Same as all the reporters, among the most influential, the senators, in addition to the most distinguished lawyers in Paris, the one he had been privileged, in which he seemed to disdain a little.
When he had to keep some secrets from the rich and affected even if they were called gossips, being that it was an entirely different life, even if, leaving our house in Paris, after having told us that he was going to sleep, he shivered on the way as soon as he turned the corner and headed for a hall that never the eyes of a...
Maybe brokers and partners, businesspeople, even executives, the strange French.
As incredible as this would have seemed to my aunt, as, to a more learned lady, the idea of having personal relations with Aristaeus and that the latter, after conversing with her, would plunge into the kingdoms of Thetis, an empire hidden from the eyes of men. mortals and where Virgil do not dictate what he describes as a man with open arms; or, to stop even showing an image that was not true.