CHAPTER IV--A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT

  He had taken prizes in his boyhood at the College of Moulins, where hewas born, and he had been crowned by the hand of the Duc de Nivernais,whom he called the Duc de Nevers. Neither the Convention, nor the deathof Louis XVI., nor the Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, noranything else had been able to efface the memory of this crowning. _TheDuc de Nevers_ was, in his eyes, the great figure of the century. "Whata charming grand seigneur," he said, "and what a fine air he had withhis blue ribbon!"

  In the eyes of M. Gillenormand, Catherine the Second had made reparationfor the crime of the partition of Poland by purchasing, for threethousand roubles, the secret of the elixir of gold, from Bestucheff. Hegrew animated on this subject: "The elixir of gold," he exclaimed, "theyellow dye of Bestucheff, General Lamotte's drops, in the eighteenthcentury,--this was the great remedy for the catastrophes of love, thepanacea against Venus, at one louis the half-ounce phial. Louis XV.sent two hundred phials of it to the Pope." He would have been greatlyirritated and thrown off his balance, had any one told him that theelixir of gold is nothing but the perchloride of iron. M. Gillenormandadored the Bourbons, and had a horror of 1789; he was forever narratingin what manner he had saved himself during the Terror, and how he hadbeen obliged to display a vast deal of gayety and cleverness in order toescape having his head cut off. If any young man ventured to pronouncean eulogium on the Republic in his presence, he turned purple and grewso angry that he was on the point of swooning. He sometimes alluded tohis ninety years, and said, "I hope that I shall not see ninety-threetwice." On these occasions, he hinted to people that he meant to live tobe a hundred.