In the rue Adolphe Yvon, one of the most exclusive and expensive streets in Paris, near enough to the Bois de Boulogne to be convenient for morning exercise, but far enough removed to be without the surge and roar of the tides of life that beat there in the afternoons, the Pompadour écossais had a mansion like a palace, where he entertained the fashionable world with the aid of a cook who seemed possessed of magic powers to startle and delight, a wine-cellar incredibly comprehensive, and a retinue of servants such as the President of the Republic himself could not command. If he dined at his house alone, he dined with all the grandiose formality of Lucullus; if he patronised a restaurant, he must have his private cabinet and a menu unbelievingly extravagant. But strictly speaking, he never dined alone, either in the rue Adolphe Yvon, Voisin’s, or Paillard’s: he was invariably accompanied by a fellow-countryman, who was his secretary or companion—a fellow saturnine and cynical, who ate and drank voraciously, while his master was content with the simplest viands and a glass of water.
They had come in spring to the _Ville Lumière_, and stepped, as it were, from the wagon-lit of the P.L.M. train from the South into the very vortex of frivolity. You saw the Pompadour écossais in the morning riding in the Bois on a snowy Irish hunter, wearing garments of a tone and cut that promptly set the fashion to the gommeaux, with a boutonnière of orchids; driving his coach through the avenues of Versailles in the afternoon with a coat of gendarme blue with golden buttons; at the clubs, the galleries, the opera, the cafés, the coulisses of the theatre—always the very latest cry in fashion, ever splendid and inscrutable! Withal, he never had so much as a sou in his pocket to buy a newspaper; his secretary paid for all, and paid with nothing less than gold. Balgowie, arbiter of elegance, envied by young men for his style, was adored by the most fastidious and discerning women for his sensibility, which was curiously out of keeping with his life of waste.
Quite as deeply interested in the Pompadour as any of the butterflies who fluttered round him in the rue Adolphe Yvon was a poor old widow, wholly unknown, in Scotland, for every Saturday she had a letter from her son, Balgowie’s secretary. She read of childish escapades, inordinate and unwholesome pleasures, reckless prodigality.