Both of these are traits common enough in a Frenchman, but in Mons.

Margot their excesses rendered them uncommon.

He was a most ultra specimen of le chevalier amoureux--a mixture of Don Quixote and the Duc de Lauzun.

Whenever he spoke of the present tense, even en professeur, he always gave a sigh to the preterite, and an anecdote of Bayard; whenever he conjugated a verb, he paused to tell me that the favourite one of his female pupils was je t'aime.
In short, he had tales of his own good fortune, and of other people's brave exploits, which, without much exaggeration, were almost as long, and had perhaps as little substance as himself; but the former was his favourite topic: to hear him, one would have imagined that his face, in borrowing the sharpness of the needle, had borrowed also its attraction;--and then the prettiness of Mons.

Margot's modesty! "It is very extraordinary," said he, "very extraordinary, for I have no time to give myself up to those affairs; it is not, Monsieur, as if I had your leisure to employ all the little preliminary arts of creating la belle passion.