I forgot to say that among the most violent detractors of Madame de Pënâfiel were several young Christians of her acquaintance. Since I have written these words, they require some explanation; for the young Christian of the salon, a pretentious and grotesque type, that will soon be displaced by another equally ridiculous, deserves to be properly described, so that his exhilarating personality may be handed down to posterity. CHAPTER XIX ON PARLOUR CHRISTIANITY Parlour Christianity is divided into two classes: the first, pretentious and grotesque, and the second, respectable, because its members have at least an exterior, a language and manners that are not in too ridiculous a contrast with their specialty. These mundane apostles can also be divided into two sorts,--the young Christian who dances, and one who does not. This classification will be sufficient to enable one to recognise them at a glance. The first, the dancing Christians, are more or less plump and rosy, curled, frizzled, cravated, stiffened, starched, and perfumed. They are the beaux, the cavaliers, the lions of parlour Christianity, of tea-table Catholicism; they eat, drink, talk, laugh, sing, shout, dance, waltz, galop, dance the cotillon and mazurka, and make love (when they get a chance) as enthusiastically as the most austere Lutheran or the most hardened sinner. Some of them, remembering that David danced before the ark, have even gone so far as to study the cachucha, no doubt with a view of rendering Christian homage to that adorable dance, which is so popular in Spain, the most Catholic of countries. Some of them, however, more strict than these, before consenting to rival the most agile of the "Majos," have demanded that cachucha shall be rebaptised "the inquisition." The question is now under consideration. However this may be, when we see these young apostles in kid gloves and high pompadours arrive, all panting, from a galop, and abandon themselves to a delirious waltz, devouring their partners with their eyes; when we see them afterwards trying to forget or remembering their charming partners in the exciting intimacy of the Pierettes of the Bal Musard, we can hardly believe that they are very much more Christian than Abd-el-Kadir. But thanks to certain indiscreet revelations on the topography of divine religions, to certain compromising confessions as to the duration of eternal punishment, and more than all, by their triumphant fatuity, we divine, we almost can see the supernumerary angel under the terrestrial veil of these young Christians. The only thing I can reproach them with is that they do not take more pains to conceal the fact of their intimacy with Jehovah, their hand-in-glove acquaintance with a kind Providence, that they have lots of influential friends up there, and that the seraphim are their most humble servants.