also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in
other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the
same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our coquette;
I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels,
and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen ours.
He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was a
Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her,
and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls
“types,” and labeled them in his usual scientific way with “formulas”–
brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a person blink, sometimes, they
are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are pretty far-fetched, but that
is not an important matter; they surprise, they compel admiration, and I
notice by some of the comments which his efforts have called forth that
they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of the coquette variants which
he has grouped and labeled:
THE COLLECTOR.
THE EQUILIBREE.
THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
THE BLUFFER.
THE GIRL-BOY.
If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been
obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen
them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further
and furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also
light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his
note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the
world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them
genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the
native the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make
that novel and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any
American can tell him–any American to whom he will show his anecdotes.
It was “put up” on him, as we say. It was a jest–to be plain, it was a
series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and
contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they
have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies.
M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a
type of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for
these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is
always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a
rule, and always the spirit of treachery.
In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted
to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little
frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the
situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his
confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.
But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to
exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such
daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction
that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite
unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in
his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted
was “significant” facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the
source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of
conspiracy against him almost from the start–a conspiracy to freight him
up with all the strange extravagances those people’s decayed brains could
invent.
The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
things which surely would have excited any one else’s suspicion, but they