There was just one true
phrase of Mr. Marinetti's about himself: "the feverish insomnia."
The whole universe is pouring headlong to the happiness of the night.
It is only the madman who has not the courage to sleep.
Dukes
The Duc de Chambertin-Pommard was a small but lively relic of a really
aristocratic family, the members of which were nearly all Atheists
up to the time of the French Revolution, but since that event
(beneficial in such various ways) had been very devout.
He was a Royalist, a Nationalist, and a perfectly sincere patriot
in that particular style which consists of ceaselessly asserting
that one's country is not so much in danger as already destroyed.
He wrote cheery little articles for the Royalist Press entitled
"The End of France" or "The Last Cry," or what not, and he gave
the final touches to a picture of the Kaiser riding across a pavement
of prostrate Parisians with a glow of patriotic exultation.
He was quite poor, and even his relations had no money.
He walked briskly to all his meals at a little open cafe,
and he looked just like everybody else.
Living in a country where aristocracy does not exist, he had a high
opinion of it. He would yearn for the swords and the stately
manners of the Pommards before the Revolution--most of whom had been
(in theory) Republicans. But he turned with a more practical
eagerness to the one country in Europe where the tricolour has
never flown and men have never been roughly equalized before the
State.
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