There are no such reservations to be made for Roger de Beauvoir, whom Madame de Girardin called "Alfred de Musset aux cheveux noirs." He was the arch-_viveur_, with one exquisitely shod foot on the boulevard, the other in Bohemia, the gayest of all those who supped, the insatiable quaffer of champagne, the inexhaustible fountain of epigram, the king of _la haute Bohème_, the very incarnation of the _Noctambule_ in Charpentier's delightful opera, "Louise." His family was the good Norman family of de Bully, and he took the name of Beauvoir from one of the two estates which were his heritage. Those who were responsible for his early guidance clearly intended that he should make his way in diplomacy--a career in which his good looks, sympathetic voice, and charming manners would have greatly helped his pioneering--for he was sent to be Polignac's secretary when that unfortunate minister occupied the embassy at London. When his chief came back to the stormy days of July, the debonair secretary, judging no doubt that any association with politics was incompatible with gilded ease, abandoned all attempts to play the game of a Rastignac, and pursued his fantasies in airy independence. The Romanticism of the _Jeune-France_ party attracted at once the enthusiasm of a young man, just in his majority by 1830, who was naturally a lover of brilliant colouring. He became a fanatical medievalist, who displayed with pride a Gothic cabinet panelled in carved oak, hung with black velvet, and lit by stained-glass windows. The ceiling was covered with coats-of-arms; the chief decorations were a panoply of armour and an old _prie-dieu_ on which a missal of 1350 opened its illuminated pages. Even in 1842, when Maxime du Camp first met him, he still dreamt of reviving the age of chivalry, having just created a sensation by waltzing at a ball in full armour, fainting and falling with the clatter of innumerable stove-pipes. Undeterred by this mishap, he proposed to form a company, to be called the "Société des champs clos de France," which was to buy land for a tilting-ground, Arab steeds, and armour for the purpose of holding weekly tourneys. The shares were to be 1000 francs each, but as Maxime du Camp's guardian prohibited the purchase of any by his enthusiastic ward, the project was dropped. Like every true Romantic he wrote a medieval novel, but his novel, "L'Écolier de Cluny," unlike those of the majority, was published and brought him considerable fame. After its publication in 1832, he became in some sort a man of letters, but he never added to his reputation, being far too bent upon the pursuit of pleasure to bear the restrictions of any profession. Having failed as a writer of vaudevilles, he found his true vocation as the leader of a band of revellers and a composer of wicked epigrams in verse. His epigrams, always written _impromptu_ upon the pages of a notebook, were a real addition to the gaiety of Paris. Here is one composed when