Valmont flatters himself he is not yet middle-aged, but poor Ducharme
does not need his sparse gray beard to proclaim his advancing years.
Valmont vaunts an air of prosperity; Ducharme wears the shabby
habiliments and the shoulder-stoop of hopeless poverty. He shuffles
cringingly along the street, a compatriot not to be proud of. There
are so many Frenchmen anxious to give lessons in their language, that
merely a small living is to be picked up by any one of them. You will
never see the spruce Valmont walking alongside the dejected Ducharme.
'Ah!' you exclaim, 'Valmont in his prosperity has forgotten those less
fortunate of his nationality.'
Pardon, my friends, it is not so. Behold, I proclaim to you, the
exquisite Valmont and the threadbare Ducharme are one and the same
person. That is why they do not promenade together. And, indeed, it
requires no great histrionic art on my part to act the role of the
miserable Ducharme, for when I first came to London, I warded off
starvation in this wretched room, and my hand it was that nailed to
the door the painted sign 'Professor Paul Ducharme, Teacher of the
French Language'. I never gave up the room, even when I became
prosperous and moved to Imperial Flats, with its concealed chamber of
horrors unknown to British authority.
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