5 files changed, 2685 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/7738.txt b/7738.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ffdd37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7738.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2669 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Parisians, by E. B. Lytton, Book 2.
+#165 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Parisians, Book 2.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7738]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, B2, LYTTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE PARISIANS
+
+                         By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+
+                                 BOOK II.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It is several weeks after the date of the last chapter; the lime-trees in
+the Tuileries are clothed in green.
+
+In a somewhat spacious apartment on the ground-floor in the quiet
+locality of the Rue d'Anjou, a man was seated, very still and evidently
+absorbed in deep thought, before a writing-table placed close to the
+window.
+
+Seen thus, there was an expression of great power both of intellect and
+of character in a face which, in ordinary social commune, might rather be
+noticeable for an aspect of hardy frankness, suiting well with the clear-
+cut, handsome profile, and the rich dark auburn hair, waving carelessly
+over one of those broad open foreheads, which, according to an old
+writer, seem the "frontispiece of a temple dedicated to Honour."
+
+The forehead, indeed, was the man's most remarkable feature.  It could
+not but prepossess the beholder.  When, in private theatricals, he had
+need to alter the character of his countenance, he did it effectually,
+merely by forcing down his hair till it reached his eyebrows.  He no
+longer then looked like the same man.
+
+The person I describe has been already introduced to the reader as Graham
+Vane.  But perhaps this is the fit occasion to enter into some such
+details as to his parentage and position as may make the introduction
+more satisfactory and complete.
+
+His father, the representative of a very ancient family, came into
+possession, after a long minority, of what may be called a fair squire's
+estate, and about half a million in moneyed investments, inherited on the
+female side.  Both land and money were absolutely at his disposal,
+unencumbered by entail or settlement.  He was a man of a brilliant,
+irregular genius, of princely generosity, of splendid taste, of a
+gorgeous kind of pride closely allied to a masculine kind of vanity.  As
+soon as he was of age he began to build, converting his squire's hall
+into a ducal palace.  He then stood for the county; and in days before
+the first Reform Bill, when a county election was to the estate of a
+candidate what a long war is to the debt of a nation.  He won the
+election; he obtained early successes in Parliament.  It was said by good
+authorities in political circles that, if he chose, he might aspire to
+lead his party, and ultimately to hold the first rank in the government
+of his country.
+
+That may or may not be true; but certainly he did not choose to take the
+trouble necessary for such an ambition.  He was too fond of pleasure, of
+luxury, of pomp.  He kept a famous stud of racers and hunters.  He was a
+munificent patron of art.  His establishments, his entertainments, were
+on a par with those of the great noble who represented the loftiest (Mr.
+Vane would not own it to be the eldest) branch of his genealogical tree.
+
+He became indifferent to political contests, indolent in his attendance
+at the House, speaking seldom, not at great length nor with much
+preparation, but with power and fire, originality and genius; so that
+he was not only effective as an orator, but combining with eloquence
+advantages of birth, person, station, the reputation of patriotic
+independence, and genial attributes of character, he was an authority
+of weight in the scales of party.
+
+This gentleman, at the age of forty, married the dowerless daughter of a
+poor but distinguished naval officer, of noble family, first cousin to
+the Duke of Alton.
+
+He settled on her a suitable jointure, but declined to tie up any portion
+of his property for the benefit of children by the marriage.  He declared
+that so much of his fortune was invested either in mines, the produce of
+which was extremely fluctuating, or in various funds, over rapid
+transfers in which it was his amusement and his interest to have control,
+unchecked by reference to trustees, that entails and settlements on
+children were an inconvenience he declined to incur.
+
+Besides, he held notions of his own as to the wisdom of keeping children
+dependent on their father.  "What numbers of young men," said he, "are
+ruined in character and in fortune by knowing that when their father dies
+they are certain of the same provision, no matter how they displease him;
+and in the meanwhile forestalling that provision by recourse to usurers."
+These arguments might not have prevailed over the bride's father a year
+or two later, when, by the death of intervening kinsmen, he became Duke
+of Alton; but in his then circumstances the marriage itself was so much
+beyond the expectations which the portionless daughter of a sea-captain
+has the right to form that Mr. Vane had it all his own way, and he
+remained absolute master of his whole fortune, save of that part of his
+landed estate on which his wife's jointure was settled; and even from
+this incumbrance he was very soon freed.  His wife died in the second
+year of marriage, leaving an only son,--Graham.  He grieved for her loss
+with all the passion of an impressionable, ardent, and powerful nature.
+Then for a while he sought distraction to his sorrow by throwing himself
+into public life with a devoted energy lie had not previously displayed.
+
+His speeches served to bring his party into power, and he yielded, though
+reluctantly, to the unanimous demand of that party that he should accept
+one of the highest offices in the new Cabinet.  He acquitted himself well
+as an administrator, but declared, no doubt honestly, that he felt like
+Sinbad released from the old man on his back, when, a year or two
+afterwards, he went out of office with his party.  No persuasions could
+induce him to come in again; nor did he ever again take a very active
+part in debate.  "No," said he, "I was born to the freedom of a private
+gentleman: intolerable to me is the thraldom of a public servant.  But I
+will bring up my son so that he may acquit the debt which I decline to
+pay to my country."  There he kept his word.  Graham had been carefully
+educated for public life, the ambition for it dinned into his ear from
+childhood.  In his school vacations his father made him learn and declaim
+chosen specimens of masculine oratory; engaged an eminent actor to give
+him lessons in elocution; bade him frequent theatres, and study there the
+effect which words derive from looks and gesture; encouraged him to take
+part himself in private theatricals.  To all this the boy lent his mind
+with delight.  He had the orator's inborn temperament; quick, yet
+imaginative, and loving the sport of rivalry and contest.  Being also, in
+his boyish years, good-humoured and joyous, he was not more a favourite
+with the masters in the schoolroom than with the boys in the play-ground.
+Leaving Eton at seventeen, he then entered at Cambridge, and became, in
+his first term, the most popular speaker at the Union.
+
+But his father cut short his academical career, and decided, for reasons
+of his own, to place him at once in diplomacy.  He was attached to the
+Embassy at Paris, and partook of the pleasures and dissipations of that
+metropolis too keenly to retain much of the sterner ambition to which he
+had before devoted himself.  Becoming one of the spoiled darlings of
+fashion, there was great danger that his character would relax into the
+easy grace of the Epicurean, when all such loiterings in the Rose Garden
+were brought to abrupt close by a rude and terrible change in his
+fortunes.
+
+His father was killed by a fall from his horse in hunting; and when his
+affairs were investigated, they were found to be hopelessly involved:
+apparently the assets would not suffice for the debts.  The elder Vane
+himself was probably not aware of the extent of his liabilities.  He had
+never wanted ready money to the last.  He could always obtain that from a
+money-lender, or from the sale of his funded investments.  But it became
+obvious, on examining his papers, that he knew at least how impaired
+would be the heritage he should bequeath to a son whom he idolized.  For
+that reason he had given Graham a profession in diplomacy, and for that
+reason he had privately applied to the Ministry for the Viceroyalty of
+India, in the event of its speedy vacancy.  He was eminent enough not to
+anticipate refusal, and with economy in that lucrative post much of his
+pecuniary difficulties might have been redeemed, and at least an
+independent provision secured for his son.
+
+Graham, like Alain de Rochebriant, allowed no reproach on his father's
+memory; indeed, with more reason than Alain, for the elder Vane's fortune
+had at least gone on no mean and frivolous dissipation.
+
+It had lavished itself on encouragement to art, on great objects of
+public beneficence, on public-spirited aid of political objects; and even
+in more selfish enjoyments there was a certain grandeur in his princely
+hospitalities, in his munificent generosity, in a warm-hearted
+carelessness for money.  No indulgence in petty follies or degrading
+vices aggravated the offence of the magnificent squanderer.
+
+"Let me look on my loss of fortune as a gain to myself," said Graham,
+manfully.  "Had I been a rich man, my experience of Paris tells me that I
+should most likely have been a very idle one.  Now that I have no gold, I
+must dig in myself for iron."
+
+The man to whom he said this was an uncle-in-law,--if I may use that
+phrase,--the Right Hon.  Richard King, popularly styled "the blameless
+King."
+
+This gentleman had married the sister of Graham's mother, whose loss in
+his infancy and boyhood she had tenderly and anxiously sought to supply.
+It is impossible to conceive a woman more fitted to invite love and
+reverence than was Lady Janet King, her manners were so sweet and gentle,
+her whole nature so elevated and pure.
+
+Her father had succeeded to the dukedom when she married Mr. King, and
+the alliance was not deemed quite suitable.  Still it was not one to
+which the Duke would have been fairly justified in refusing his assent.
+
+Mr. King could not indeed boast of noble ancestry, nor was even a landed
+proprietor; but he was a not-undistinguished member of Parliament, of
+irreproachable character, and ample fortune inherited from a distant
+kinsman, who had enriched himself as a merchant.  It was on both sides a
+marriage of love.
+
+It is popularly said that a man uplifts a wife to his own rank: it as
+often happens that a woman uplifts her husband to the dignity of her own
+character.  Richard King rose greatly in public estimation after his
+marriage with Lady Janet.
+
+She united to a sincere piety a very active and a very enlightened
+benevolence.  She guided his ambition aside from mere party politics into
+subjects of social and religious interest, and in devoting himself to
+these he achieved a position more popular and more respected than he
+could ever have won in the strife of party.
+
+When the Government of which the elder Vane became a leading Minister was
+formed, it was considered a great object to secure a name as high in the
+religious world, so beloved by the working classes, as that of Richard
+King; and he accepted one of those places which, though not in the
+cabinet, confers the rank of Privy Councillor.
+
+When that brief-lived Administration ceased, he felt the same sensation
+of relief that Vane had felt, and came to the same resolution never again
+to accept office, but from different reasons, all of which need not now
+be detailed.  Amongst them, however, certainly this: he was exceedingly
+sensitive to opinion, thin-skinned as to abuse, and very tenacious of the
+respect due to his peculiar character of sanctity and philanthropy.  He
+writhed under every newspaper article that had made "the blameless King"
+responsible for the iniquities of the Government to which he belonged.
+In the loss of office he seemed to recover his former throne.
+
+Mr. King heard Graham's resolution with a grave approving smile, and his
+interest in the young man became greatly increased.  He devoted himself
+strenuously to the object of saving to Graham some wrecks of his paternal
+fortunes, and having a clear head and great experience in the transaction
+of business, he succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations formed by
+the family solicitor.  A rich manufacturer was found to purchase at a
+fancy price the bulk of the estate with the palatial mansion, which the
+estate alone could never have sufficed to maintain with suitable
+establishments.
+
+So that when all debts were paid, Graham found himself in possession of a
+clear income of about L500 a year, invested in a mortgage secured on a
+part of the hereditary lands, on which was seated an old hunting-lodge
+bought by a brewer.
+
+With this portion of the property Graham parted very reluctantly.  It was
+situated amid the most picturesque scenery on the estate, and the lodge
+itself was a remnant of the original residence of his ancestors before it
+had been abandoned for that which, built in the reign of Elizabeth, had
+been expanded into a Trenthain-like palace by the last owner.
+
+But Mr. King's argument reconciled him to the sacrifice.  "I can manage,"
+said the prudent adviser, "if you insist on it, to retain that remnant of
+the hereditary estate which you are so loath to part with.  But how?  by
+mortgaging it to an extent that will scarcely leave you L50. a year net
+from the rents.  This is not all.  Your mind will then be distracted from
+the large object of a career to the small object of retaining a few
+family acres; you will be constantly hampered by private anxieties and
+fears; you could do nothing for the benefit of those around you,--could
+not repair a farmhouse for a better class of tenant, could not rebuild a
+labourer's dilapidated cottage.  Give up an idea that might be very well
+for a man whose sole ambition was to remain a squire, however beggarly.
+Launch yourself into the larger world of metropolitan life with energies
+wholly unshackled, a mind wholly undisturbed, and secure of an income
+which, however modest, is equal to that of most young men who enter that
+world as your equals."
+
+Graham was convinced, and yielded, though with a bitter pang.  It is hard
+for a man whose fathers have lived on the soil to give up all trace of
+their whereabouts.  But none saw in him any morbid consciousness of
+change of fortune, when, a year after his father's death, he reassumed
+his place in society.  If before courted for his expectations, he was
+still courted for himself; by many of the great who had loved his father,
+perhaps even courted more.
+
+He resigned the diplomatic career, not merely because the rise in that
+profession is slow, and in the intermediate steps the chances of
+distinction are slight and few, but more because he desired to cast his
+lot in the home country, and regarded the courts of other lands as exile.
+
+It was not true, however, as Lemercier had stated on report, that he
+lived on his pen.  Curbing all his old extravagant tastes, L500 a year
+amply supplied his wants.  But he had by his pen gained distinction, and
+created great belief in his abilities for a public career.  He had
+written critical articles, read with much praise, in periodicals of
+authority, and had published one or two essays on political questions
+which had created yet more sensation.  It was only the graver literature,
+connected more or less with his ultimate object of a public career, in
+which he had thus evinced his talents of composition.  Such writings were
+not of a nature to bring him much money, but they gave him a definite and
+solid station.  In the old time, before the first Reform Bill, his
+reputation would have secured him at once a seat in Parliament; but the
+ancient nurseries of statesmen are gone, and their place is not supplied.
+
+He had been invited, however, to stand for more than one large and
+populous borough, with very fair prospects of success; and, whatever the
+expense, Mr. King had offered to defray it.  But Graham would not have
+incurred the latter obligation; and when he learned the pledges which his
+supporters would have exacted, he would not have stood if success had
+been certain and the cost nothing.  "I cannot," he said to his friends,
+"go into the consideration of what is best for the country with my
+thoughts manacled; and I cannot be both representative and slave of the
+greatest ignorance of the greatest number.  I bide my time, and meanwhile
+I prefer to write as I please, rather than vote as I don't please."
+
+Three years went by, passed chiefly in England, partly in travel; and at
+the age of thirty, Graham Vane was still one of those of whom admirers
+say, "He will be a great man some day;" and detractors reply, "Some day
+seems a long way off."
+
+The same fastidiousness which had operated against that entrance into
+Parliament, to which his ambition not the less steadily adapted itself,
+had kept him free from the perils of wedlock.  In his heart he yearned
+for love and domestic life, but he had hitherto met with no one who
+realized the ideal he had formed.  With his person, his accomplishments,
+his connections, and his repute, he might have made many an advantageous
+marriage.  But somehow or other the charm vanished from a fair face, if
+the shadow of a money-bag fell on it; on the other hand, his ambition
+occupied so large a share in his thoughts that he would have fled in time
+from the temptation of a marriage that would have overweighted him beyond
+the chance of rising.  Added to all, he desired in a wife an intellect
+that, if not equal to his own, could become so by sympathy,--a union of
+high culture and noble aspiration, and yet of loving womanly sweetness
+which a man seldom finds out of books; and when he does find it, perhaps
+it does not wear the sort of face that he fancies.  Be that as it may,
+Graham was still unmarried and heart-whole.
+
+And now a new change in his life befell him.  Lady Janet died of a fever
+contracted in her habitual rounds of charity among the houses of the
+poor.  She had been to him as the most tender mother, and a lovelier soul
+than hers never alighted on the earth.  His grief was intense; but what
+was her husband's?--one of those griefs that kill.
+
+To the side of Richard King his Janet had been as the guardian angel.
+His love for her was almost worship: with her, every object in a life
+hitherto so active and useful seemed gone.  He evinced no noisy passion
+of sorrow.  He shut himself up, and refused to see even Graham.  But
+after some weeks had passed, he admitted the clergyman in whom on
+spiritual matters he habitually confided, and seemed consoled by the
+visits; then he sent for his lawyer and made his will; after which he
+allowed Graham to call on him daily, on the condition that there should
+be no reference to his loss.  He spoke to the young man on other
+subjects, rather drawing him out about himself, sounding his opinion on
+various grave matters, watching his face while he questioned, as if
+seeking to dive into his heart, and sometimes pathetically sinking into
+silence, broken but by sighs.  So it went on for a few more weeks; then
+he took the advice of his physician to seek change of air and scene.
+He went away alone, without even a servant, not leaving word where he had
+gone.  After a little while he returned, more ailing, more broken than
+before.  One morning he was found insensible,--stricken by paralysis.
+He regained consciousness, and even for some days rallied strength.
+He might have recovered, but he seemed as if he tacitly refused to live.
+He expired at last, peacefully, in Graham's arms.
+
+At the opening of his will it was found that he had left Graham his sole
+heir and executor.  Deducting government duties, legacies to servants,
+and donations to public charities, the sum thus bequeathed to his lost
+wife's nephew was two hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
+
+With such a fortune, opening indeed was made for an ambition so long
+obstructed.  But Graham affected no change in his mode of life; he still
+retained his modest bachelor's apartments, engaged no servants, bought no
+horses, in no way exceeded the income he had posesssed before.  He
+seemed, indeed, depressed rather than elated by the succession to a
+wealth which he had never anticipated.
+
+Two children had been born from the marriage of Richard King: they had
+died young, it is true, but Lady Janet at the time of her own decease was
+not too advanced in years for the reasonable expectation of other
+offspring; and even after Richard King became a widower, he had given to
+Graham no hint of his testamentary dispositions.  The young man was no
+blood-relation to him, and naturally supposed that such relations would
+become the heirs.  But in truth the deceased seemed to have no blood-
+relations: none had ever been known to visit him; none raised a voice to
+question the justice of his will.
+
+Lady Janet had been buried at Kensal Green; her husband's remains were
+placed in the same vault.
+
+For days and days Graham went his way lonelily to the cemetery.  He might
+be seen standing motionless by that tomb, with tears rolling down his
+cheeks; yet his was not a weak nature,--not one of those that love
+indulgence of irremediable grief.  On the contrary, people who did not
+know him well said "that he had more head than heart," and the character
+of his pursuits, as of his writings, was certainly not that of a
+sentimentalist.  He had not thus visited the tomb till Richard King had
+been placed within it.  Yet his love for his aunt was unspeakably greater
+than that which he could have felt for her husband.  Was it, then, the
+husband that he so much more acutely mourned; or was there something
+that, since the husband's death, had deepened his reverence for the
+memory of her whom he had not only loved as a mother, but honoured as a
+saint?
+
+These visits to the cemetery did not cease till Graham was confined to
+his bed by a very grave illness,--the only one he had ever known.  His
+physician said it was nervous fever, and occasioned by moral shock or
+excitement; it was attended with delirium.  His recovery was slow, and
+when it was sufficiently completed he quitted England; and we find him
+now, with his mind composed, his strength restored, and his spirits
+braced, in that gay city of Paris; hiding, perhaps, some earnest purpose
+amid his participation in its holiday enjoyments.  He is now, as I have
+said, seated before his writing-table in deep thought.  He takes up a
+letter which he had already glanced over hastily, and reperuses it with
+more care.
+
+The letter is from his cousin, the Duke of Alton, who had succeeded a few
+years since to the family honours,--an able man, with no small degree of
+information, an ardent politician, but of very rational and temperate
+opinions; too much occupied by the cares of a princely estate to covet
+office for himself; too sincere a patriot not to desire office for those
+to whose hands he thought the country might be most safely entrusted; an
+intimate friend of Graham's.  The contents of the letter are these:--
+
+     MY DEAR GRAHAM,--I trust that you will welcome the brilliant opening
+     into public life which these lines are intended to announce to you.
+     Vavasour has just been with me to say that he intends to resign his
+     seat for the county when Parliament meets, and agreeing with me that
+     there is no one so fit to succeed him as yourself, he suggests the
+     keeping his intention secret until you have arranged your committee
+     and are prepared to take the field.  You cannot hope to escape a
+     contest; but I have examined the Register, and the party has gained
+     rather than lost since the last election, when Vavasour was so
+     triumphantly returned.  The expenses for this county, where there
+     are so many outvoters to bring up, and so many agents to retain, are
+     always large in comparison with some other counties; but that
+     consideration is all in your favour, for it deters Squire Hunston,
+     the only man who could beat you, from starting; and to your
+     resources a thousand pounds more or less are a trifle not worth
+     discussing.  You know how difficult it is nowadays to find a seat
+     for a man of moderate opinions like yours and mine.  Our county
+     would exactly suit you.  The constituency is so evenly divided
+     between the urban and rural populations, that its representative
+     must fairly consult the interests of both.  He can be neither an
+     ultra-Tory nor a violent Radical.  He is left to the enviable
+     freedom, to which you say you aspire, of considering what is best
+     for the country as a whole.
+
+     Do not lose so rare an opportunity.  There is but one drawback to
+     your triumphant candidature.  It will be said that you have no
+     longer an acre in the county in which the Vanes have been settled so
+     long.  That drawback can be removed.  It is true that you can never
+     hope to buy back the estates which you were compelled to sell at
+     your father's death: the old manufacturer gripes them too firmly to
+     loosen his hold; and after all, even were your income double what it
+     is, you would be overhoused in the vast pile in which your father
+     buried so large a share of his fortune.  But that beautiful old
+     hunting-lodge, the Stamm Schloss of your family, with the adjacent
+     farms, can be now repurchased very reasonably.  The brewer who
+     bought them is afflicted with an extravagant son, whom he placed in
+     the--Hussars, and will gladly sell the property for L5,000 more than
+     he gave: well worth the difference, as he has improved the farm-
+     buildings and raised the rental.  I think, in addition to the sum
+     you have on mortgage, L3,000 will be accepted, and as a mere
+     investment pay you nearly three per cent.  But to you it is worth
+     more than double the money; it once more identifies your ancient
+     name with the county.  You would be a greater personage with that
+     moderate holding in the district in which your race took root, and
+     on which your father's genius threw such a lustre, than you would be
+     if you invested all your wealth in a county in which every squire
+     and farmer would call you "the new man."  Pray think over this most
+     seriously, and instruct your solicitor to open negotiations with the
+     brewer at once.  But rather put yourself into the train, and come
+     back to England straight to me.  I will ask Vavasour to meet you.
+     What news from Paris?  Is the Emperor as ill as the papers
+     insinuate?  And is the revolutionary party gaining ground?
+
+     Your affectionate cousin,
+
+                                   ALTON.
+
+As he put down this letter, Graham heaved a short impatient sigh.
+
+"The old Stamm Schloss," he muttered,--"a foot on the old soil once more!
+and an entrance into the great arena with hands unfettered.  Is it
+possible!--is it?--is it?"
+
+At this moment the door-bell of the apartment rang, and a servant whom
+Graham had hired at Paris as a _laquais de place_ announced "Ce
+Monsieur."
+
+Graham hurried the letter into his portfolio, and said, "You mean the
+person to whom I am always at home?"
+
+"The same, Monsieur."
+
+"Admit him, of course."
+
+There entered a wonderfully thin man, middle-aged, clothed in black, his
+face cleanly shaven, his hair cut very short, with one of those faces
+which, to use a French expression, say "nothing."  It was absolutely
+without expression: it had not even, despite its thinness, one salient
+feature.  If you had found yourself anywhere seated next to that man,
+your eye would have passed him over as too insignificant to notice; if at
+a cafe, you would have gone on talking to your friend without lowering
+your voice.  What mattered it whether a _bete_ like that overheard or
+not?  Had you been asked to guess his calling and station, you might have
+said, minutely observing the freshness of his clothes and the undeniable
+respectability of his _tout ensemble_, "He must be well off, and with no
+care for customers on his mind,--a ci-devant chandler who has retired on
+a legacy."
+
+Graham rose at the entrance of his visitor, motioned him courteously to a
+seat beside him, and waiting till the _laquais_ had vanished, then asked,
+"What news?"
+
+"None, I fear, that will satisfy Monsieur.  I have certainly hunted out,
+since I had last the honour to see you, no less than four ladies of the
+name of Duval, but only one of them took that name from her parents, and
+was also christened Louise."
+
+"Ah--Louise!"
+
+"Yes, the daughter of a perfumer, aged twenty-eight.  She, therefore, is
+not the Louise you seek.  Permit me to refer to your instructions."  Here
+M. Renard took out a note-book, turned over the leaves, and resumed,
+"Wanted, Louise Duval, daughter of Auguste Duval, a French drawing-
+master, who lived for many years at Tours, removed to Paris in 1845,
+lived at No. 12, Rue de S---- at Paris for some years, but afterwards
+moved to a different guartier of the town, and died 1848, in Rue I----,
+No. 39.  Shortly after his death, his daughter Louise left that lodging,
+and could not be traced.  In 1849 official documents reporting her death
+were forwarded from Munich to a person (a friend of yours, Monsieur).
+Death, of course, taken for granted; but nearly five years afterwards,
+this very person encountered the said Louise Duval at Aix-la-Chapelle,
+and never heard nor saw more of her.  Demande submitted, to find out said
+Louise Duval or any children of hers born in 1848-9; supposed in 1852-3
+to have one child, a girl, between four and five years old.  Is that
+right, Monsieur?"
+
+"Quite right."
+
+"And this is the whole information given to me.  Monsieur on giving it
+asked me if I thought it desirable that he should commence inquiries at
+Aix-la-Chapelle, where Louise Duval was last seen by the person
+interested to discover her.  I reply, No; pains thrown away.  Aix-la-
+Chapelle is not a place where any Frenchwoman not settled there by
+marriage would remain.  Nor does it seem probable that the said Duval
+would venture to select for her residence Munich, a city in which she had
+contrived to obtain certificates of her death.  A Frenchwoman who has
+once known Paris always wants to get back to it; especially, Monsieur, if
+she has the beauty which you assign to this lady.  I therefore suggested
+that our inquiries should commence in this capital.  Monsieur agreed with
+me, and I did not grudge the time necessary for investigation."
+
+"You were most obliging.  Still I am beginning to be impatient if time is
+to be thrown away."
+
+"Naturally.  Permit me to return to my notes.  Monsieur informs me that
+twenty-one years ago, in 1848, the Parisian police were instructed to
+find out this lady and failed, but gave hopes of discovering her through
+her relations.  He asks me to refer to our archives; I tell him that is
+no use.  However, in order to oblige him, I do so.  No trace of such
+inquiry: it must have been, as Monsieur led me to suppose, a strictly
+private one, unconnected with crime or with politics; and as I have the
+honour to tell Monsieur, no record of such investigations is preserved in
+our office.  Great scandal would there be, and injury to the peace of
+families, if we preserved the results of private inquiries intrusted to
+us--by absurdly jealous husbands, for instance.  Honour,--Monsieur,
+honour forbids it.  Next I suggest to Monsieur that his simplest plan
+would be an advertisement in the French journals, stating, if I
+understand him right, that it is for the pecuniary interest of Madame or
+Mademoiselle Duval, daughter of Auguste Duval, _artiste en dessin_, to
+come forward.  Monsieur objects to that."
+
+"I object to it extremely; as I have told you, this is a strictly
+confidential inquiry; and an advertisement which in all likelihood would
+be practically useless (it proved to be so in a former inquiry) would not
+be resorted to unless all else failed, and even then with reluctance."
+
+"Quite so.  Accordingly, Monsieur delegates to me, who have been
+recommended to him as the best person he can employ in that department
+of our police which is not connected with crime or political
+surveillance, a task the most difficult.  I have, through strictly
+private investigations, to discover the address and prove the identity
+of a lady bearing a name among the most common in France, and of whom
+nothing has been heard for fifteen years, and then at so migratory an
+_endroit_ as Aix-la-Chapelle.  You will not or cannot inform me if since
+that time the lady has changed her name by marriage."
+
+"I have no reason to think that she has; and there are reasons against
+the supposition that she married after 1849."
+
+"Permit me to observe that the more details of information Monsieur can
+give me, the easier my task of research will be."
+
+"I have given you all the details I can, and, aware of the difficulty of
+tracing a person with a name so much the reverse of singular, I adopted
+your advice in our first interview, of asking some Parisian friend of
+mine, with a large acquaintance in the miscellaneous societies of your
+capital, to inform me of any ladies of that name whom he might chance to
+encounter; and he, like you, has lighted upon one or two, who alas!
+resemble the right one in name and nothing more."
+
+"You will do wisely to keep him on the watch as well as myself.  If it
+were but a murderess or a political incendiary, then you might trust
+exclusively to the enlightenment of our corps, but this seems an affair
+of sentiment, Monsieur.  Sentiment is not in our way.  Seek the trace of
+that in the haunts of pleasure."
+
+M. Renard, having thus poetically delivered himself of that philosophical
+dogma, rose to depart.
+
+Graham slipped into his hand a bank-note of sufficient value to justify
+the profound bow he received in return.
+
+When M. Renard had gone, Graham heaved another impatient sigh, and said
+to himself, "No, it is not possible,--at least not yet."
+
+Then, compressing his lips as a man who forces himself to something he
+dislikes, he dipped his pen into the inkstand, and wrote rapidly thus to
+his kinsman:
+
+     MY DEAR COUSIN,--I lose not a post in replying to your kind and
+     considerate letter.  It is not in my power at present to return to
+     England.  I need not say how fondly I cherish the hope of
+     representing the dear old county some day.  If Vavasour could be
+     induced to defer his resignation of the seat for another session, or
+     at least for six or seven months, why then I might be free to avail
+     myself of the opening; at present I am not.  Meanwhile I am sorely
+     tempted to buy back the old Lodge; probably the brewer would allow
+     me to leave on mortgage the sum I myself have on the property, and a
+     few additional thousands.  I have reasons for not wishing to
+     transfer at present much of the money now invested in the Funds.  I
+     will consider this point, which probably does not press.
+
+     I reserve all Paris news till my next; and begging you to forgive so
+     curt and unsatisfactory a reply to a letter so important that it
+     excites me more than I like to own, believe me your affectionate
+     friend and cousin,
+
+                              GRAHAM.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+AT about the same hour on the same day in which the Englishman held the
+conference with the Parisian detective just related, the Marquis de
+Rochebriant found himself by appointment in the _cabinet d'affaires_ of
+his _avoue_ M. Gandrin that gentleman had hitherto not found time to give
+him a definite opinion as to the case submitted to his judgment.  The
+_avoue_ received Alain with a kind of forced civility, in which the
+natural intelligence of the Marquis, despite his inexperience of life,
+discovered embarrassment.
+
+"Monsieur le Marquis," said Gandrin, fidgeting among the papers on his
+bureau, "this is a very complicated business.  I have given not only my
+best attention to it, but to your general interests.  To be plain, your
+estate, though a fine one, is fearfully encumbered--fearfully--
+frightfully."
+
+"Sir," said the Marquis, haughtily, "that is a fact which was never
+disguised from you."
+
+"I do not say that it was, Marquis; but I scarcely realized the amount of
+the liabilities nor the nature of the property.  It will be difficult--
+nay, I fear, impossible--to find any capitalist to advance a sum that
+will cover the mortgages at an interest less than you now pay.  As for
+a Company to take the whole trouble off your hands, clear off the
+mortgages, manage the forests, develop the fisheries, guarantee you an
+adequate income, and at the end of twenty-one years or so render up to
+you or your heirs the free enjoyment of an estate thus improved, we must
+dismiss that prospect as a wild dream of my good friend M. Hebert.
+People in the provinces do dream; in Paris everybody is wide awake."
+
+"Monsieur," said the Marquis, with that inborn imperturbable loftiness
+of _sang froid_ which has always in adverse circumstances characterized
+the French noblesse, "be kind enough to restore my papers.  I see that
+you are not the man for me.  Allow me only to thank you, and inquire the
+amount of my debt for the trouble I have given."
+
+"Perhaps you are quite justified in thinking I am not the man for you,
+Monsieur le Marquis; and your papers shall, if you decide on dismissing
+me, be returned to you this evening.  But as to my accepting remuneration
+where I have rendered no service, I request M. le Marquis to put that out
+of the question.  Considering myself, then, no longer your _avoue_,
+do not think I take too great a liberty in volunteering my counsel as
+a friend,--or a friend at least to M. Hebert, if you do not vouchsafe
+my right so to address yourself."
+
+M. Gandrin spoke with a certain dignity of voice and manner which touched
+and softened his listener.
+
+"You make me your debtor far more than I pretend to repay," replied
+Alain.  "Heaven knows I want a friend, and I will heed with gratitude and
+respect all your counsels in that character."
+
+"Plainly and briefly, my advice is this: M. Louvier is the principal
+mortgagee.  He is among the six richest capitalists of Paris.  He does
+not, therefore, want money, but, like most self-made men, he is very
+accessible to social vanities.  He would be proud to think he had
+rendered a service to a Rochebriant.  Approach him, either through me,
+or, far better, at once introduce yourself, and propose to consolidate
+all your other liabilities in one mortgage to him, at a rate of interest
+lower than that which is now paid to some of the small mortgagees.  This
+would add considerably to your income and would carry out M. Hebert's
+advice."
+
+"But does it not strike you, dear M. Gandrin, that such going cap-in-hand
+to one who has power over my fate, while I have none over his, would
+scarcely be consistent with my self-respect, not as Rochebriant only,
+but as Frenchman?"
+
+"It does not strike me so in the least; at all events, I could make the
+proposal on your behalf, without compromising yourself, though I should
+be far more sanguine of success if you addressed M. Louvier in person."
+
+"I should nevertheless prefer leaving it in your hands; but even for that
+I must take a few days to consider.  Of all the mortgagees M. Louvier has
+been hitherto the severest and most menacing, the one whom Hebert dreads
+the most; and should he become sole mortgagee, my whole estate would pass
+to him if, through any succession of bad seasons and failing tenants, the
+interest was not punctually paid."
+
+"It could so pass to him now."
+
+"No; for there have been years in which the other mortgagees, who are
+Bretons and would be loath to ruin a Rochebriant, have been lenient and
+patient."
+
+"If Louvier has not been equally so, it is only because he knew nothing
+of you, and your father no doubt had often sorely tasked his endurance.
+Come, suppose we manage to break the ice easily.  Do me the honour to
+dine here to meet him; you will find that he is not an unpleasant man."
+
+The Marquis hesitated, but the thought of the sharp and seemingly
+hopeless struggle for the retention of his ancestral home to which he
+would be doomed if he returned from Paris unsuccessful in his errand
+overmastered his pride.  He felt as if that self-conquest was a duty he
+owed to the very tombs of his fathers.  "I ought not to shrink from the
+face of a creditor," said he, smiling somewhat sadly, "and I accept the
+proposal you so graciously make."
+
+"You do well, Marquis, and I will write at once to Louvier to ask him to
+give me his first disengaged day."
+
+The Marquis had no sooner quitted the house than M. Gandrin opened a door
+at the side of his office, and a large portly man strode into the room,--
+stride it was rather than step,--firm, self-assured, arrogant, masterful.
+
+"Well, _mon ami_," said this man, taking his stand at the hearth, as a
+king might take his stand in the hall of his vassal, "and what says our
+_petit muscadin_?"
+
+"He is neither _petit_ nor _muscadin_, Monsieur Louvier," replied
+Gandrin, peevishly; "and he will task your powers to get him thoroughly
+into your net.  But I have persuaded him to meet you here.  What day can
+you dine with me?  I had better ask no one else."
+
+"To-morrow I dine with my friend O-----, to meet the chiefs of the
+Opposition," said M. Louvier, with a sort of careless rollicking
+pomposity.  "Thursday with Pereire; Saturday I entertain at home.  Say
+Friday.  Your hour?"
+
+"Seven."
+
+"Good!  Show me those Rochebriant papers again; there is something I had
+forgotten to note.  Never mind me.  Go on with your work as if I were not
+here."
+
+Louvier took up the papers, seated himself in an armchair by the
+fireplace, stretched out his legs, and read at his ease, but with a very
+rapid eye, as a practised lawyer skims through the technical forms of a
+case to fasten upon the marrow of it.
+
+"Ah!  as I thought.  The farms could not pay even the interest on my
+present mortgage; the forests come in for that.  If a contractor for the
+yearly sale of the woods was bankrupt and did not pay, how could I get my
+interest?  Answer me that, Gandrin."
+
+"Certainly you must run the risk of that chance."
+
+"Of course the chance occurs, and then I foreclose, seize,--Rochebriant
+and its _seigneuries_ are mine."
+
+As he spoke he laughed, not sardonically,--a jovial laugh,--and opened
+wide, to reshut as in a vice, the strong iron hand which had doubtless
+closed over many a man's all.
+
+"Thanks.  On Friday, seven o'clock."  He tossed the papers back on the
+bureau, nodded a royal nod, and strode forth imperiously as he had strode
+in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MEANWHILE the young Marquis pursued his way thoughtfully through the
+streets, and entered the Champs Elysees.  Since we first, nay, since we
+last saw him, he is strikingly improved in outward appearances.  He has
+unconsciously acquired more of the easy grace of the Parisian in gait and
+bearing.  You would no longer detect the Provincial--perhaps, however,
+because he is now dressed, though very simply, in habiliments that belong
+to the style of the day.  Rarely among the loungers in the Champs Elysees
+could be seen a finer form, a comelier face, an air of more unmistakable
+distinction.
+
+The eyes of many a passing fair one gazed on him, admiringly or
+coquettishly.  But he was still so little the true Parisian that they got
+no smile, no look in return.  He was wrapped in his own thoughts; was he
+thinking of M. Louvier?
+
+He had nearly gained the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne, when he was
+accosted by a voice behind, and turning round saw his friend Lemercier
+arm-in-arm with Graham Vane.
+
+"Bonjour, Alain," said Lemercier, hooking his disengaged arm into
+Rochebriant's.  "I suspect we are going the same way."
+
+Alain felt himself change countenance at this conjecture, and replied
+coldly, "I think not; I have got to the end of my walk, and shall turn
+back to Paris;" addressing himself to the Englishman, he said with formal
+politeness, "I regret not to have found you at home when I called some
+weeks ago, and no less so to have been out when you had the complaisance
+to return my visit."
+
+"At all events," replied the Englishman, "let me not lose the opportunity
+of improving our acquaintance which now offers.  It is true that our
+friend Lemercier, catching sight of me in the Rue de Rivoli, stopped his
+coupe and carried me off for a promenade in the Bois.  The fineness of
+the day tempted us to get out of his carriage as the Bois came in sight.
+But if you are going back to Paris I relinquish the Bois and offer myself
+as your companion."
+
+Frederic (the name is so familiarly English that the reader might think
+me pedantic did I accentuate it as French) looked from one to the other
+of his two friends, half amused and half angry.
+
+"And am I to be left alone to achieve a conquest, in which, if I succeed,
+I shall change into hate and envy the affection of my two best friends?
+Be it so.
+
+          "' Un veritable amant ne connait point d'amis.'"
+
+"I do not comprehend your meaning," said the Marquis, with a compressed
+lip and a slight frown.
+
+"Bah!" cried Frederic;  "come, _franc jeu_; cards on the table.  M. Gram
+Varn was going into the Bois at my suggestion on the chance of having
+another look at the pearl-coloured angel; and you, Rochebriant, can't
+deny that you were going into the Bois for the same object."
+
+"One may pardon an _enfant terrible_," said the Englishman, laughing,
+"but an _ami terrible_ should be sent to the galleys.  Come, Marquis, let
+us walk back and submit to our fate.  Even were the lady once more
+visible, we have no chance of being observed by the side of a Lovelace so
+accomplished and so audacious!"
+
+"Adieu, then, recreants: I go alone.  Victory or death."  The Parisian
+beckoned his coachman, entered his carriage, and with a mocking grimace
+kissed his hand to the companions thus deserting or deserted.
+
+Rochebriant touched the Englishman's arm, and said, "Do you think that
+Lemercier could be impertinent enough to accost that lady?"
+
+"In the first place," returned the Englishman, "Lemercier himself tells
+me that the lady has for several weeks relinquished her walks in the
+Bois, and the probability is, therefore, that he will not have the
+opportunity to accost her.  In the next place, it appears that when she
+did take her solitary walk, she did not stray far from her carriage, and
+was in reach of the protection of her _laquais_ and coachman.  But to
+speak honestly, do you, who know Lemercier better than I, take him to be
+a man who would commit an impertinence to a woman unless there were
+_viveurs_ of his own sex to see him do it?"
+
+Alain smiled.  "No.  Frederic's real nature is an admirable one, and if
+he ever do anything that he ought to be ashamed of, 'twill be from the
+pride of showing how finely he can do it.  Such was his character at
+college, and such it still seems at Paris.  But it is true that the lady
+has forsaken her former walk; at least I--I have not seen her since the
+day I first beheld her in company with Frederic.  Yet--yet, pardon me,
+you were going to the Bois on the chance of seeing her.  Perhaps she has
+changed the direction of her walk, and--and--"
+
+The Marquis stopped short, stammering and confused.
+
+The Englishman scanned his countenance with the rapid glance of a
+practised observer of men and things, and after a short pause said: "If
+the lady has selected some other spot for her promenade, I am ignorant of
+it; nor have I ever volunteered the chance of meeting with her, since I
+learned--first from Lemercier, and afterwards from others--that her
+destination is the stage.  Let us talk frankly, Marquis.  I am accustomed
+to take much exercise on foot, and the Bois is my favourite resort: one
+day I there found myself in the _allee_ which the lady we speak of used
+to select for her promenade, and there saw her.  Something in her face
+impressed me; how shall I describe the impression?  Did you ever open a
+poem, a romance, in some style wholly new to you, and before you were
+quite certain whether or not its merits justified the interest which the
+novelty inspired, you were summoned away, or the book was taken out of
+your hands?  If so, did you not feel an intellectual longing to have
+another glimpse of the book?  That illustration describes my impression,
+and I own that I twice again went to the same _allee_.  The last time I
+only caught sight of the young lady as she was getting into her carriage.
+As she was then borne away, I perceived one of the custodians of the
+Bois; and learned, on questioning him, that the lady was in the habit of
+walking always alone in the same _allee_ at the same hour on most fine
+days, but that he did not know her name or address.  A motive of
+curiosity--perhaps an idle one--then made me ask Lemercier, who boasts of
+knowing his Paris so intimately, if he could inform me who the lady was.
+He undertook to ascertain."
+
+"But," interposed the Marquis, "he did not ascertain who she was; he
+only ascertained where she lived, and that she and an elder companion
+were Italians;--whom he suspected, without sufficient ground, to be
+professional singers."
+
+"True; but since then I ascertained more detailed particulars from two
+acquaintances of mine who happen to know her,--M. Savarin, the
+distinguished writer, and Mrs. Morley, an accomplished and beautiful
+American lady, who is more than an acquaintance.  I may boast the honour
+of ranking among her friends.  As Savarin's villa is at A------, I asked
+him incidentally if he knew the fair neighbour whose face had so
+attracted me; and Mrs. Morley being present, and overhearing me,
+I learned from both what I now repeat to you.
+
+"The young lady is a Signorina Cicogna,--at Paris, exchanging (except
+among particular friends), as is not unusual, the outlandish designation
+of Signorina for the more conventional one of Mademoiselle.  Her father
+was a member of the noble Milanese family of the same name, therefore the
+young lady is well born.  Her father has been long dead; his widow
+married again an English gentleman settled in Italy, a scholar and
+antiquarian; his name was Selby.  This gentleman, also dead, bequeathed
+the Signorina a small but sufficient competence.  She is now an orphan,
+and residing with a companion, a Signora Venosta, who was once a singer
+of some repute at the Neapolitan Theatre, in the orchestra of which her
+husband was principal performer; but she relinquished the stage several
+years ago on becoming a widow, and gave lessons as a teacher.  She has
+the character of being a scientific musician, and of unblemished private
+respectability.  Subsequently she was induced to give up general
+teaching, and undertake the musical education and the social charge of
+the young lady with her.  This girl is said to have early given promise
+of extraordinary excellence as a singer, and excited great interest among
+a coterie of literary critics and musical _cognoscenti_.  She was to have
+come out at the Theatre of Milan a year or two ago, but her career has
+been suspended in consequence of ill-health, for which she is now at
+Paris under the care of an English physician, who has made remarkable
+cures in all complaints of the respiratory organs.   ------, the great
+composer, who knows her, says that in expression and feeling she has no
+living superior, perhaps no equal since Malibran."
+
+"You seem, dear Monsieur, to have taken much pains to acquire this
+information."
+
+"No great pains were necessary; but had they been I might have taken
+them, for, as I have owned to you, Mademoiselle Cicogna, while she was
+yet a mystery to me, strangely interested my thoughts or my fancies.
+That interest has now ceased.  The world of actresses and singers lies
+apart from mine."
+
+"Yet," said Alain, in a tone of voice that implied doubt, "if I
+understand Lemercier aright, you were going with him to the Bois on the
+chance of seeing again the lady in whom your interest has ceased."
+
+"Lemercier's account was not strictly accurate.  He stopped his carriage
+to speak to me on quite another subject, on which I have consulted him,
+and then proposed to take me on to the Bois.  I assented; and it was not
+till we were in the carriage that he suggested the idea of seeing whether
+the pearly-robed lady had resumed her walk in the allee.  You may judge
+how indifferent I was to that chance when I preferred turning back with
+you to going on with him.  Between you and me, Marquis, to men of our
+age, who have the business of life before them, and feel that if there be
+aught in which noblesse oblige it is a severe devotion to noble objects,
+there is nothing more fatal to such devotion than allowing the heart to
+be blown hither and thither at every breeze of mere fancy, and dreaming
+ourselves into love with some fair creature whom we never could marry
+consistently with the career we have set before our ambition.  I could
+not marry an actress,--neither, I presume, could the Marquis de
+Rochebriant; and the thought of a courtship which excluded the idea of
+marriage to a young orphan of name unblemished, of virtue unsuspected,
+would certainly not be compatible with 'devotion to noble objects.'"
+
+Alain involuntarily bowed his head in assent to the proposition, and, it
+may be, in submission to an implied rebuke.
+
+The two men walked in silence for some minutes, and Graham first spoke,
+changing altogether the subject of conversation.  "Lemercier tells me you
+decline going much into this world of Paris, the capital of capitals,
+which appears so irresistibly attractive to us foreigners."
+
+"Possibly; but, to borrow your words, I have the business of life before
+me."
+
+"Business is a good safeguard against the temptations to excess in
+pleasure, in which Paris abounds.  But there is no business which does
+not admit of some holiday, and all business necessitates commerce with
+mankind.  A propos, I was the other evening at the Duchese de
+Tarascon's,--a brilliant assembly, filled with ministers, senators, and
+courtiers.  I heard your name mentioned."
+
+"Mine?"
+
+"Yes; Duplessis, the rising financier--who rather to my surprise was not
+only present among these official and decorated celebrities, but
+apparently quite at home among them--asked the Duchess if she had not
+seen you since your arrival at Paris.  She replied, 'No; that though you
+were among her nearest connections, you had not called on her;' and bade
+Duplessis tell you that you were a monstre for not doing so.  Whether or
+not Duplessis will take that liberty I know not; but you must pardon me
+if I do.  She is a very charming woman, full of talent; and that stream
+of the world which reflects the stars, with all their mythical influences
+on fortune, flows through her salons."
+
+"I am not born under those stars.  I am a Legitimist."
+
+"I did not forget your political creed; but in England the leaders of
+opposition attend the salons of the Prime Minister.  A man is not
+supposed to compromise his opinions because he exchanges social
+courtesies with those to whom his opinions are hostile.  Pray excuse me
+if I am indiscreet, I speak as a traveller who asks for information: but
+do the Legitimists really believe that they best serve their cause by
+declining any mode of competing with its opponents?  Would there not be a
+fairer chance of the ultimate victory of their principles if they made
+their talents and energies individually prominent; if they were known as
+skilful generals, practical statesmen, eminent diplomatists, brilliant
+writers?  Could they combine,--not to sulk and exclude themselves from
+the great battle-field of the world, but in their several ways to render
+themselves of such use to their country that some day or other, in one of
+those revolutionary crises to which France, alas! must long be subjected,
+they would find themselves able to turn the scale of undecided councils
+and conflicting jealousies."
+
+"Monsieur, we hope for the day when the Divine Disposer of events will
+strike into the hearts of our fickle and erring countrymen the conviction
+that there will be no settled repose for France save under the sceptre of
+her rightful kings.  But meanwhile we are,--I see it more clearly since I
+have quitted Bretagne,--we are a hopeless minority."
+
+"Does not history tell us that the great changes of the world have been
+wrought by minorities,--but on the one condition that the minorities
+shall not be hopeless?  It is almost the other day that the Bonapartists
+were in a minority that their adversaries called hopeless, and the
+majority for the Emperor is now so preponderant that I tremble for his
+safety.  When a majority becomes so vast that intellect disappears in the
+crowd, the date of its destruction commences; for by the law of reaction
+the minority is installed against it.  It is the nature of things that
+minorities are always more intellectual than multitudes, and intellect is
+ever at work in sapping numerical force.  What your party want is hope;
+because without hope there is no energy.  I remember hearing my father
+say that when he met the Count de Chambord at Ems, that illustrious
+personage delivered himself of a _belle phrase_ much admired by his
+partisans.  The Emperor was then President of the Republic, in a very
+doubtful and dangerous position.  France seemed on the verge of another
+convulsion.  A certain distinguished politician recommended the Count de
+Chambord to hold himself ready to enter at once as a candidate for the
+throne.  And the Count, with a benignant smile on his handsome face,
+answered, 'All wrecks come to the shore: the shore does not go to the
+wrecks.'"
+
+"Beautifully said!" exclaimed the Marquis.
+
+"Not if 'Le beau est toujours le vrai.'  My father, no inexperienced nor
+unwise politician, in repeating the royal words, remarked: 'The fallacy
+of the Count's argument is in its metaphor.  A man is not a shore.  Do
+you not think that the seamen on board the wrecks would be more grateful
+to him who did not complacently compare himself to a shore, but
+considered himself a human being like themselves, and risked his own life
+in a boat, even though it were a cockleshell, in the chance of saving
+theirs?"
+
+Alain de Rochebriant was a brave man, with that intense sentiment of
+patriotism which characterizes Frenchmen of every rank and persuasion,
+unless they belong to the Internationalists; and, without pausing to
+consider, he cried, "Your father was right."
+
+The Englishman resumed: "Need I say, my dear Marquis, that I am not a
+Legitimist?  I am not an Imperialist, neither am I an Orleanist nor a
+Republican.  Between all those political divisions it is for Frenchmen
+to make their choice, and for Englishmen to accept for France that
+government which France has established.  I view things here as a simple
+observer.  But it strikes me that if I were a Frenchman in your position,
+I should think myself unworthy my ancestors if I consented to be an
+insignificant looker-on."
+
+"You are not in my position," said the Marquis, half mournfully, half
+haughtily, "and you can scarcely judge of it even in imagination."
+
+"I need not much task my imagination; I judge of it by analogy.  I was
+very much in your position when I entered upon what I venture to call my
+career; and it is the curious similarity between us in circumstances,
+that made me wish for your friendship when that similarity was made known
+to me by Lemercier, who is not less garrulous than the true Parisian
+usually is.  Permit me to say that, like you, I was reared in some pride
+of no inglorious ancestry.  I was reared also in the expectation of great
+wealth.  Those expectations were not realized: my father had the fault of
+noble natures,--generosity pushed to imprudence: he died poor and in
+debt.  You retain the home of your ancestors; I had to resign mine."
+
+The Marquis had felt deeply interested in this narrative, and as Graham
+now paused, took his hand and pressed it.  "One of our most eminent
+personages said to me about that time, 'Whatever a clever man of your age
+determines to do or to be, the odds are twenty to one that he has only to
+live on in order to do or to be it.'  Don't you think he spoke truly?  I
+think so."
+
+"I scarcely know what to think," said Rochebriant; "I feel as if you had
+given me so rough a shake when I was in the midst of a dull dream, that I
+am not yet quite sure whether I am asleep or awake."
+
+Just as he said this, and towards the Paris end of the Champs Elysees,
+there was a halt, a sensation among the loungers round them; many of them
+uncovered in salute.
+
+A man on the younger side of middle age, somewhat inclined to corpulence,
+with a very striking countenance, was riding slowly by.  He returned the
+salutations he received with the careless dignity of a Personage
+accustomed to respect, and then reined in his horse by the side of a
+barouche, and exchanged some words with a portly gentleman who was its
+sole occupant.  The loungers, still halting, seemed to contemplate this
+parley--between him on horseback and him in the carriage--with very eager
+interest.  Some put their hands behind their ears and pressed forward, as
+if trying to overhear what was said.
+
+"I wonder," quoth Graham, "whether, with all his cleverness, the Prince
+has in any way decided what he means to do or to be."
+
+"The Prince!" said Rochebriant, rousing himself from revery; "what
+Prince?"
+
+"Do you not recognize him by his wonderful likeness to the first
+Napoleon,--him on horseback talking to Louvier, the great financier."
+
+"Is that stout bourgeois in the carriage Louvier,--my mortgagee,
+Louvier?"
+
+"Your mortgagee, my dear Marquis?  Well, he is rich enough to be a very
+lenient one upon pay-day."
+
+"_Hein_!--I doubt his leniency," said Alain.  "I have promised my _avoue_
+to meet him at dinner.  Do you think I did wrong?"
+
+"Wrong! of course not; he is likely to overwhelm you with civilities.
+Pray don't refuse if he gives you an invitation to his soiree next
+Saturday; I am going to it.  One meets there the notabilities most
+interesting to study,--artists, authors, politicians, especially those
+who call themselves Republicans.  He and the Prince agree in one thing;
+namely, the cordial reception they give to the men who would destroy the
+state of things upon which Prince and financier both thrive.  Hillo!
+here comes Lemercier on return from the Bois."
+
+Lemercier's _coupe_ stopped beside the footpath.  "What tidings of the
+_Belle Inconnue_?" asked the Englishman.  "None; she was not there.  But
+I am rewarded: such an adventure! a dame of the _haute volee_; I believe
+she is a duchess.  She was walking with a lap-dog, a pure Pomeranian.  A
+strange poodle flew at the Pomeranian, I drove off the poodle, rescued
+the Pomeranian, received the most gracious thanks, the sweetest smile:
+_femme superbe_, middle aged.  I prefer women of forty. _Au revoir_, I am
+due at the club."
+
+Alain felt a sensation of relief that Lemercier had not seen the lady in
+the pearl-coloured dress, and quitted the Englishman with a lightened
+heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+"_Piccola, piccola! com e cortese_!  another invitation from M. Louvier
+for next Saturday,--conversazione."  This was said in Italian by an
+elderly lady bursting noisily into the room,--elderly, yet with a
+youthful expression of face, owing perhaps to a pair of very vivacious
+black eyes.  She was dressed, after a somewhat slatternly fashion, in a
+wrapper of crimson merino much the worse for wear, a blue handkerchief
+twisted turban-like round her head, and her feet encased in list
+slippers.  The person to whom she addressed herself was a young lady with
+dark hair, which, despite its evident repugnance, was restrained into
+smooth glossy braids over the forehead, and at the crown of the small
+graceful head into the simple knot which Horace has described as
+"Spartan."  Her dress contrasted the speaker's by an exquisite neatness.
+
+We have seen her before as the lady in the pearl-coloured robe; but seen
+now at home she looks much younger.  She was one of those whom,
+encountered in the streets or in society, one might guess to be married,
+--probably a young bride; for thus seen there was about her an air of
+dignity and of self-possession which suits well with the ideal of chaste
+youthful matronage; and in the expression of the face there was a pensive
+thoughtfulness beyond her years.  But as she now sat by the open window
+arranging flowers in a glass bowl, a book lying open on her lap, you
+would never have said, "What a handsome woman!" you would have said,
+"What a charming girl!"  All about her was maidenly, innocent, and fresh.
+The dignity of her bearing was lost in household ease, the pensiveness of
+her expression in an untroubled serene sweetness.
+
+Perhaps many of my readers may have known friends engaged in some
+absorbing cause of thought, and who are in the habit when they go out,
+especially if on solitary walks, to take that cause of thought with them.
+The friend may be an orator meditating his speech, a poet his verses, a
+lawyer a difficult case, a physician an intricate malady.  If you have
+such a friend, and you observe him thus away from his home, his face will
+seem to you older and graver.  He is absorbed in the care that weighs on
+him.  When you see him in a holiday moment at his own fireside, the care
+is thrown aside; perhaps he mastered while abroad the difficulty that had
+troubled him; he is cheerful, pleasant, sunny.  This appears to be very
+much the case with persons of genius.  When in their own houses we
+usually find them very playful and childlike.  Most persons of real
+genius, whatever they may seem out of doors, are very sweet-tempered at
+home, and sweet temper is sympathizing and genial in the intercourse of
+private life.  Certainly, observing this girl as she now bends over the
+flowers, it would be difficult to believe her to be the Isaura Cicogna
+whose letters to Madame de Grantinesnil exhibit the doubts and struggles
+of an unquiet, discontented, aspiring mind.  Only in one or two passages
+in those letters would you have guessed at the writer in the girl as we
+now see her.  It is in those passages where she expresses her love of
+harmony, and her repugnance to contest: those were characteristics you
+might have read in her face.
+
+Certainly the girl is very lovely: what long dark eyelashes! what soft,
+tender, dark-blue eyes! now that she looks up and smiles, what a
+bewitching smile it is! by what sudden play of rippling dimples the smile
+is enlivened and redoubled!  Do you notice one feature?  In very showy
+beauties it is seldom noticed; but I, being in my way a physiognomist,
+consider that it is always worth heeding as an index of character.  It is
+the ear.  Remark how delicately it is formed in her: none of that
+heaviness of lobe which is a sure sign of sluggish intellect and coarse
+perception.  Hers is the artist's ear.  Note next those hands: how
+beautifully shaped! small, but not doll-like hands,--ready and nimble,
+firm and nervous hands, that could work for a helpmate.  By no means very
+white, still less red, but somewhat embrowned as by the sun, such as you
+may see in girls reared in southern climes, and in her perhaps betokening
+an impulsive character which had not accustomed itself, when at sport in
+the open air, to the thraldom of gloves,--very impulsive people even in
+cold climates seldom do.
+
+In conveying to us by a few bold strokes an idea of the sensitive, quick-
+moved, warm-blooded Henry II., the most impulsive of the Plantagenets,
+his contemporary chronicler tells us that rather than imprison those
+active hands of his, even in hawking-gloves, he would suffer his falcon
+to fix its sharp claws into his wrist.  No doubt there is a difference as
+to what is befitting between a burly bellicose creature like Henry II.
+and a delicate young lady like Isaura Cicogna; and one would not wish to
+see those dainty wrists of hers seamed and scarred by a falcon's claws.
+But a girl may not be less exquisitely feminine for slight heed of
+artificial prettiness.  Isaura had no need of pale bloodless hands to
+seem one of Nature's highest grade of gentlewomen even to the most
+fastidious eyes.  About her there was a charm apart from her mere beauty,
+and often disturbed instead of heightened by her mere intellect: it
+consisted in a combination of exquisite artistic refinement, and of a
+generosity of character by which refinement was animated into vigour and
+warmth.
+
+The room, which was devoted exclusively to Isaura, had in it much that
+spoke of the occupant.  That room, when first taken furnished, had a good
+deal of the comfortless showiness which belongs to ordinary furnished
+apartments in France, especially in the Parisian suburbs, chiefly let
+for the summer: thin limp muslin curtains that decline to draw; stiff
+mahogany chairs covered with yellow Utrecht velvet; a tall secretaire in
+a dark corner; an oval buhl-table set in tawdry ormolu, islanded in the
+centre of a poor but gaudy Scotch carpet; and but one other table of dull
+walnut-wood, standing clothless before a sofa to match the chairs; the
+eternal ormolu clock flanked by the two eternal ormolu candelabra on the
+dreary mantelpiece.  Some of this garniture had been removed, others
+softened into cheeriness and comfort.  The room somehow or other--thanks
+partly to a very moderate expenditure in pretty twills with pretty
+borders, gracefully simple table-covers, with one or two additional small
+tables and easy-chairs, two simple vases filled with flowers; thanks
+still more to a nameless skill in re-arrangement, and the disposal of the
+slight knick-knacks and well-bound volumes, which, even in travelling,
+women who have cultivated the pleasures of taste carry about them--had
+been coaxed into that quiet harmony, that tone of consistent subdued
+colour, which corresponded with the characteristics of the inmate.  Most
+people might have been puzzled where to place the piano, a semi-grand,
+so as not to take up too much space in the little room; but where it was
+placed it seemed so at home that you might have supposed the room had
+been built for it.
+
+There are two kinds of neatness,--one is too evident, and makes
+everything about it seem trite and cold and stiff; and another kind of
+neatness disappears from our sight in a satisfied sense of completeness,
+--like some exquisite, simple, finished style of writing, an Addison's or
+a St. Pierre's.
+
+This last sort of neatness belonged to Isaura, and brought to mind the
+well-known line of Catullus when on recrossing his threshold he invokes
+its welcome,--a line thus not inelegantly translated by Leigh Hunt,
+
+               "Smile every dimple on the cheek of Home."
+
+I entreat the reader's pardon for this long descriptive digression; but
+Isaura is one of those characters which are called many-sided, and
+therefore not very easy to comprehend.  She gives us one side of her
+character in her correspondence with Madame de Grantmesnil, and another
+side of it in her own home with her Italian companion,--half nurse, half
+chaperon.
+
+"Monsieur Louvier is indeed very courteous," said Isaura, looking up from
+the flowers with the dimpled smile we have noticed.  "But I think, Madre,
+that we should do well to stay at home on Saturday,--not peacefully, for
+I owe you your revenge at Euchre."
+
+"You can't mean it, Piecola!" exclaimed the Signora, in evident
+consternation.  "Stay at home!--why stay at home?  Euchre is very well
+when there is nothing else to do: but change is pleasant; le bon Dieu
+likes it,
+
+                       "'Ne caldo ne gelo
+                         Resta mai in cielo.'
+
+"And such beautiful ices one gets at M. Louvier's!  Did you taste the
+pistachio ice?  What fine rooms, and so well lit up!  I adore light.  And
+the ladies so beautifully dressed: one sees the fashions.  Stay at home!
+play at Euchre indeed!  Piccola, you cannot be so cruel to yourself: you
+are young."
+
+"But, dear Madre, just consider; we are invited because we are considered
+professional singers: your reputation as such is of course established,--
+mine is not; but still I shall be asked to sing, as I was asked before;
+and you know Dr. C. forbids me to do so except to a very small audience;
+and it is so ungracious always to say 'No;' and besides, did you not
+yourself say, when we came away last time from M. Louvier's, that it was
+very dull, that you knew nobody, and that the ladies had such superb
+toilets that you felt mortified--and--"
+
+"Zitto! zitto! you talk idly, Piccola,--very idly.  I was mortified then
+in my old black Lyons silk; but have I not bought since then my beautiful
+Greek jacket,--scarlet and gold lace? and why should I buy it if I am not
+to show it?"
+
+"But, dear Madre, the jacket is certainly very handsome, and will make an
+effect in a little dinner at the Savarins or Mrs. Morley's; but in a
+great formal reception like M. Louvier's will it not look--"
+
+"Splendid!" interrupted the Signora.
+
+"But _singolare_."
+
+"So much the better; did not that great English Lady wear such a jacket,
+and did not every one admire her, _piu tosto invidia the compassione_?"
+
+Isaura sighed.  Now the jacket of the Signora was a subject of
+disquietude to her friend.  It so happened that a young English lady of
+the highest rank and the rarest beauty had appeared at M. Louvier's, and
+indeed generally in the _beau monde_ of Paris, in a Greek jacket that
+became her very much.  The jacket had fascinated, at M. Louvier's, the
+eyes of the Signora.  But of this Isaura was unaware.  The Signora, on
+returning home from M. Louvier's, had certainly lamented much over the
+_mesquin_ appearance of her old-fashioned Italian habiliments compared
+with the brilliant toilette of the gay Parisiennes; and Isaura--quite
+woman enough to sympathize with woman in such womanly vanities--proposed
+the next day to go with the Signora to one of the principal couturieres
+of Paris, and adapt the Signora's costume to the fashions of the place.
+But the Signora having predetermined on a Greek jacket, and knowing
+by instinct that Isaura would be disposed to thwart that splendid
+predilection, had artfully suggested that it would be better to go
+to the couturiere with Madame Savarin, as being a more experienced
+adviser,--and the coupe only held two.
+
+As Madame Savarin was about the same age as the Signora, and dressed as
+became her years and in excellent taste, Isaura thought this an admirable
+suggestion; and pressing into her chaperon's hand a _billet de banque_
+sufficient to re-equip her _cap-a pie_, dismissed the subject from her
+mind.  But the Signora was much too cunning to submit her passion for the
+Greek jacket to the discouraging comments of Madame Savarin.
+Monopolizing the _coupe_, she became absolute mistress of the situation.
+She went to no fashionable couturiere's.  She went to a magasin that she
+had seen advertised in the _Petites Afiches_ as supplying superb costumes
+for fancy-balls and amateur performers in private theatricals.  She
+returned home triumphant, with a jacket still more dazzling to the eye
+than that of the English lady.
+
+When Isaura first beheld it, she drew back in a sort of superstitious
+terror, as of a comet or other blazing portent.
+
+"_Cosa stupenda_!" (stupendous thing!)  She might well be dismayed when
+the Signora proposed to appear thus attired in M. Louvier's salon.  What
+might be admired as coquetry of dress in a young beauty of rank so great
+that even a vulgarity in her would be called distinguee, was certainly an
+audacious challenge of ridicule in the elderly _ci-devant_ music-teacher.
+
+But how could Isaura, how can any one of common humanity, say to a woman
+resolved upon wearing a certain dress, "You are not young and handsome
+enough for that?" Isaura could only murmur, "For many reasons I would
+rather stay at home, dear Madre."
+
+"Ah! I see you are ashamed of me," said the Signora, in softened tones:
+"very natural.  When the nightingale sings no more, she is only an ugly
+brown bird;" and therewith the Signora Venosta seated herself
+submissively, and began to cry.
+
+On this Isaura sprang up, wound her arms round the Signora's neck,
+soothed her with coaxing, kissed and petted her, and ended by saying, "Of
+course we will go;" and, "but let me choose you another dress,--a dark-
+green velvet trimmed with blonde: blonde becomes you so well."
+
+"No, no: I hate green velvet; anybody can wear that.  Piccola, I am not
+clever like thee; I cannot amuse myself like thee with books.  I am in a
+foreign land.  I have a poor head, but I have a big heart" (another burst
+of tears); "and that big heart is set on my beautiful Greek jacket."
+
+"Dearest Madre," said Isaura, half weeping too, "forgive me, you are
+right.  The Greek jacket is splendid; I shall be so pleased to see you
+wear it: poor Madre!  so pleased to think that in the foreign land you
+are not without something that pleases you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONFORMABLY with his engagement to meet M. Louvier, Alain found himself
+on the day and at the hour named in M. Gandrin's salon.  On this occasion
+Madame Gandrin did not appear.  Her husband was accustomed to give
+_diners d'hommes_.  The great man had not yet arrived.  "I think,
+Marquis," said M. Gandrin, "that you will not regret having followed my
+advice: my representations have disposed Louvier to regard you with much
+favour, and he is certainly flattered by being permitted to make your
+personal acquaintance."
+
+The _avoue_ had scarcely finished this little speech, when M. Louvier was
+announced.  He entered with a beaming smile, which did not detract from
+his imposing presence.  His flatterers had told him that he had a look of
+Louis Philippe; therefore he had sought to imitate the dress and the
+bonhomie of that monarch of the middle class.  He wore a wig, elaborately
+piled up, and shaped his whiskers in royal harmony with the royal wig.
+Above all, he studied that social frankness of manner with which the
+able sovereign dispelled awe of his presence or dread of his astuteness.
+Decidedly he was a man very pleasant to converse and to deal with--so
+long as there seemed to him something to gain and nothing to lose by
+being pleasant.  He returned Alain's bow by a cordial offer of both
+expansive hands, into the grasp of which the hands of the aristocrat
+utterly disappeared.  "Charmed to make your acquaintance, Marquis; still
+more charmed if you will let me be useful during your _sejour_ at Paris.
+_Ma foi_, excuse my bluntness, but you are a _fort beau garcon_.
+Monsieur your father was a handsome man, but you beat him hollow.
+Gandrin, my friend, would not you and I give half our fortunes for one
+year of this fine fellow's youth spent at Paris? _Peste_! what love-
+letters we should have, with no need to buy them by _billets de banque_!"
+Thus he ran on, much to Alain's confusion, till dinner was announced.
+Then there was something grandiose in the frank _bourgeois_ style
+wherewith he expanded his napkin and twisted one end into his waistcoat;
+it was so manly a renunciation of the fashions which a man so _repandu_
+in all circles might be supposed to follow,--as if he were both too great
+and too much in earnest for such frivolities.  He was evidently a sincere
+_bon vivant_, and M. Gandrin had no less evidently taken all requisite
+pains to gratify his taste.  The Montrachet served with the oysters was
+of precious vintage; that _vin de madere_ which accompanied the _potage a
+la bisque_ would have contented an American.  And how radiant became
+Louvier's face when amongst the _entrees_ he came upon _laitances de
+carpes_!  "The best thing in the world," he cried, "and one gets it so
+seldom since the old Rocher de Cancale has lost its renown.  At private
+houses, what does one get now? _blanc de poulet_, flavourless trash.
+After all, Gandrin, when we lose the love-letters, it is some consolation
+that _laitances de carpes_ and _sautes de foie gras_ are still left to
+fill up the void in our hearts.  Marquis, heed my counsel; cultivate
+betimes the taste for the table,--that and whist are the sole resources
+of declining years.  You never met my old friend Talleyrand--ah, no! he
+was long before your time.  He cultivated both, but he made two mistakes.
+No man's intellect is perfect on all sides.  He confined himself to one
+meal a day, and he never learned to play well at whist.  Avoid his
+errors, my young friend,--avoid them.  Gandrin, I guess this pineapple is
+English,--it is superb."
+
+"You are right,--a present from the Marquis of H-------."
+
+"Ah!  instead of a fee, I wager.  The Marquis gives nothing for nothing,
+dear man!  Droll people the English.  You have never visited England, I
+presume, _cher_ Rochebriant?"  The affable financier had already made
+vast progress in familiarity with his silent fellow-guest.
+
+When the dinner was over and the three men had reentered the salon for
+coffee and liqueurs, Gandrin left Louvier and Alain alone, saying he was
+going to his cabinet for cigars which he could recommend.  Then Louvier,
+lightly patting the Marquis on the shoulder, said with what the French
+call effusion, "My dear Rochebriant, your father and I did not quite
+understand each other.  He took a tone of grand seigneur that sometimes
+wounded me; and I in turn was perhaps too rude in asserting my rights--as
+creditor, shall I say?--no, as fellow-citizen; and Frenchmen are so vain,
+so over-susceptible; fire up at a word; take offence when none is meant.
+We two, my dear boy, should be superior to such national foibles. _Bref_
+--I have a mortgage on your lands.  Why should that thought mar our
+friendship?  At my age, though I am not yet old, one is flattered if the
+young like us, pleased if we can oblige them, and remove from their
+career any little obstacle in its way.  Gandrin tells me you wish to
+consolidate all the charges on your estate into one on a lower rate of
+interest.  Is it so?"
+
+"I am so advised," said the Marquis.
+
+"And very rightly advised; come and talk with me about it some day next
+week.  I hope to have a large sum of money set free in a few days.  Of
+course, mortgages on land don't pay like speculations at the Bourse; but
+I am rich enough to please myself.  We will see, we will see."
+
+Here Gandrin returned with the cigars; but Alain at that time never
+smoked, and Louvier excused himself, with a laugh and a sly wink, on the
+plea that he was going to pay his respects--as doubtless that _joli
+garcon_ was going to do likewise--to a belle dame who did not reckon the
+smell of tobacco among the perfumes of Houbigant or Arabia.
+
+"Meanwhile," added Louvier, turning to Gandrin, "I have something to say
+to you on business about the contract for that new street of mine.  No
+hurry,--after our young friend has gone to his 'assignation.'"
+
+Alain could not misinterpret the hint; and in a few moments took leave of
+his host, more surprised than disappointed that the financier had not
+invited him, as Graham had assumed he would, to his soiree the following
+evening.
+
+When Alain was gone, Louvier's jovial manner disappeared also, and became
+bluffly rude rather than bluntly cordial.  "Gandrin, what did you mean by
+saying that that young man was no _muscadin_! _Muscadin, aristocrate_,
+offensive from top to toe."
+
+"You amaze me; you seemed to take to him so cordially."
+
+"And pray, were you too blind to remark with what cold reserve he
+responded to my condescensions; how he winced when I called him
+Rochebriant; how he coloured when I called him 'dear boy'?  These
+aristocrats think we ought to thank them on our knees when they take our
+money, and" here Louvier's face darkened--"seduce our women."  "Monsieur
+Louvier, in all France I do not know a greater aristocrat than yourself."
+
+I don't know whether M. Gandrin meant that speech as a compliment, but M.
+Louvier took it as such,--laughed complacently and rubbed his hands.
+"Ay, ay, _millionnaires_ are the real aristocrats, for they have power,
+as my _beau Marquis_ will soon find.  I must bid you good night.  Of
+course I shall see Madame Gandrin and yourself to-morrow.  Prepare for a
+motley gathering,--lots of democrats and foreigners, with artists and
+authors, and such creatures."
+
+"Is that the reason why you did not invite the Marquis?"
+
+"To be sure; I would not shock so pure a Legitimist by contact with the
+sons of the people, and make him still colder to myself.  No; when he
+comes to my house he shall meet lions and _viveurs_ of the _haut ton_,
+who will play into my hands by teaching him how to ruin himself in the
+quickest manner and in the _genre Regence_.  _Bon soir, mon vieux._"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The next night Graham in vain looked round for Alain in M. Louvier's
+salons, and missed his high-bred mien and melancholy countenance.
+M. Louvier had been for some four years a childless widower, but his
+receptions were not the less numerously attended, nor his establishment
+less magnificently monde for the absence of a presiding lady: very much
+the contrary; it was noticeable how much he had increased his status and
+prestige as a social personage since the death of his unlamented spouse.
+
+To say truth, she had been rather a heavy drag on his triumphal car.  She
+had been the heiress of a man who had amassed a great deal of money,--not
+in the higher walks of commerce, but in a retail trade.
+
+Louvier himself was the son of a rich money-lender; he had entered life
+with an ample fortune and an intense desire to be admitted into those
+more brilliant circles in which fortune can be dissipated with _eclat_.
+He might not have attained this object but for the friendly countenance
+of a young noble who was then--
+
+               "The glass of fashion and the mould of form;"
+
+but this young noble, of whom later we shall hear more, came suddenly to
+grief, and when the money-lender's son lost that potent protector, the
+dandies, previously so civil, showed him a very cold shoulder.
+
+Louvier then became an ardent democrat, and recruited the fortune he had
+impaired by the aforesaid marriage, launched into colossal speculations,
+and became enormously rich.  His aspirations for social rank now revived,
+but his wife sadly interfered with them.  She was thrifty by nature;
+sympathized little with her husband's genius for accumulation; always
+said he would end in a hospital; hated Republicans; despised authors and
+artists, and by the ladies of the _beau monde_ was pronounced common and
+vulgar.
+
+So long as she lived, it was impossible for Louvier to realize his
+ambition of having one of the salons which at Paris establish celebrity
+and position.  He could not then command those advantages of wealth which
+he especially coveted.  He was eminently successful in doing this now.
+As soon as she was safe in Pere la Chaise, he enlarged his hotel by the
+purchase and annexation of an adjoining house; redecorated and
+refurnished it, and in this task displayed, it must be said to his
+credit, or to that of the administrators he selected for the purpose, a
+nobleness of taste rarely exhibited nowadays.  His collection of pictures
+was not large, and consisted exclusively of the French school, ancient
+and modern, for in all things Louvier affected the patriot.  But each of
+those pictures was a gem; such Watteaus, such Greuzes, such landscapes by
+Patel, and, above all, such masterpieces by Ingres, Horace Vernet, and
+Delaroche were worth all the doubtful originals of Flemish and Italian
+art which make the ordinary boast of private collectors.
+
+These pictures occupied two rooms of moderate size, built for their
+reception, and lighted from above.  The great salon to which they led
+contained treasures scarcely less precious; the walls were covered with
+the richest silks which the looms of Lyons could produce.  Every piece of
+furniture here was a work of art in its way: console-tables of Florentine
+mosaic, inlaid with pearl and lapis-lazuli; cabinets in which the
+exquisite designs of the Renaissance were carved in ebony; colossal vases
+of Russian malachite, but wrought by French artists.  The very knick-
+knacks scattered carelessly about the room might have been admired in the
+cabinets of the Palazzo Pitti.  Beyond this room lay the _salle de
+danse_, its ceiling painted by ------, supported by white marble columns,
+the glazed balcony and the angles of the room filled with tiers of
+exotics.  In the dining-room, on the same floor, on the other side of the
+landing-place, were stored in glazed buffets not only vessels and salvers
+of plate, silver and gold, but, more costly still, matchless specimens of
+Sevres and Limoges, and mediaeval varieties of Venetian glass.  On the
+ground-floor, which opened on the lawn of a large garden, Louvier had his
+suite of private apartments, furnished, as he said, "simply, according to
+English notions of comfort;"--Englishmen would have said, "according to
+French notions of luxury."  Enough of these details, which a writer
+cannot give without feeling himself somewhat vulgarized in doing so, but
+without a loose general idea of which a reader would not have an accurate
+conception of something not vulgar,--of something grave, historical,
+possibly tragical,--the existence of a Parisian millionaire at the date
+of this narrative.
+
+The evidence of wealth was everywhere manifest at M. Louvier's, but it
+was everywhere refined by an equal evidence of taste.  The apartments
+devoted to hospitality ministered to the delighted study of artists, to
+whom free access was given, and of whom two or three might be seen daily
+in the "show-rooms," copying pictures or taking sketches of rare articles
+of furniture or effects for palatian interiors.
+
+Among the things which rich English visitors of Paris most coveted to see
+was M. Louvier's hotel, and few among the richest left it without a sigh
+of envy and despair.  Only in such London houses as belong to a
+Sutherland or a Holford could our metropolis exhibit a splendour as
+opulent and a taste as refined.
+
+M. Louvier had his set evenings for popular assemblies.  At these were
+entertained the Liberals of every shade, from tricolor to rouge, with the
+artists and writers most in vogue, pele-mele with decorated diplomatists,
+ex-ministers, Orleanists, and Republicans, distinguished foreigners,
+plutocrats of the Bourse, and lions male and female from the arid nurse
+of that race, the Chaussee d'Antin.  Of his more select reunions
+something will be said later.
+
+"And how does this poor Paris metamorphosed please Monsieur Vane?" asked
+a Frenchman with a handsome, intelligent countenance, very carefully
+dressed though in a somewhat bygone fashion, and carrying off his tenth
+lustrum with an air too sprightly to evince any sense of the weight.
+This gentleman, the Vicomte de Breze, was of good birth, and had a
+legitimate right to his title of Vicomte,--which is more than can be said
+of many vicomtes one meets at Paris.  He had no other property, however,
+than a principal share in an influential journal, to which he was a
+lively and sparkling contributor.  In his youth, under the reign of Louis
+Philippe, he had been a chief among literary exquisites; and Balzac was
+said to have taken him more than once as his model for those brilliant
+young _vauriens_ who figure in the great novelist's comedy of Human Life.
+The Vicomte's fashion expired with the Orleanist dynasty.
+
+"Is it possible, my dear Vicomte," answered Graham, "not to be pleased
+with a capital so marvellously embellished?"
+
+"Embellished it may be to foreign eyes," said the Vicomte, sighing, "but
+not improved to the taste of a Parisian like me.  I miss the dear Paris
+of old,--the streets associated with my _beaux jours_ are no more.  Is
+there not something drearily monotonous in those interminable
+perspectives?  How frightfully the way lengthens before one's eyes!  In
+the twists and curves of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain of
+seeing how far one had to go from one spot to another,--each tortuous
+street had a separate idiosyncrasy; what picturesque diversities, what
+interesting recollections,--all swept away! _Mon Dieu_!  and what for,--
+miles of florid _facades_ staring and glaring at one with goggle-eyed
+pitiless windows; house-rents trebled, and the consciousness that if you
+venture to grumble underground railways, like concealed volcanoes, can
+burst forth on you at any moment with an eruption of bayonets and
+muskets.  This _maudit_ empire seeks to keep its hold on France much as a
+_grand seigneur_ seeks to enchain a nymph of the ballet,--tricks her out
+in finery and baubles, and insures her infidelity the moment he fails to
+satisfy her whims."
+
+"Vicomte," answered Graham, "I have had the honour to know you since I
+was a small boy at a preparatory school home for the holidays, and you
+were a guest at my father's country-house.  You were then _fete_ as one
+of the most promising writers among the young men of the day, especially
+favoured by the princes of the reigning family.  I shall never forget the
+impression made on me by your brilliant appearance and your no less
+brilliant talk."
+
+"Ah! _ces beaux jours! ce bon Louis Philippe, ce cher petit Joinville_,"
+sighed the Vicomte.
+
+"But at that day you compared _le bon_ Louis Philippe to Robert Macaire.
+You described all his sons, including, no doubt, _ce cher petit
+Joinville_, in terms of resentful contempt, as so many plausible _gamins_
+whom Robert Macaire was training to cheat the public in the interest of
+the family firm.  I remember my father saying to you in answer, 'No royal
+house in Europe has more sought to develop the literature of an epoch and
+to signalize its representatives by social respect and official honours
+than that of the Orleans dynasty.  You, Monsieur de Breze, do but imitate
+your elders in seeking to destroy the dynasty under which you flourish;
+should you succeed, you _hommes de plume_ will be the first sufferers and
+the loudest complainers.'"
+
+"Cher Monsieur Vane," said the Vicomte, smiling complacently, "your
+father did me great honour in classing me with Victor Hugo, Alexandre
+Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and the other stars of the Orleanist galaxy,
+including our friend here, M. Savarin.  A very superior man was your
+father."
+
+"And," said Savarin, who, being an Orleanist, had listened to Graham's
+speech with an approving smile,--"and if I remember right, my dear De
+Breze, no one was more brilliantly severe than yourself on poor De
+Lamartine and the Republic that succeeded Louis Philippe; no one more
+emphatically expressed the yearning desire for another Napoleon to
+restore order at home and renown abroad.  Now you have got another
+Napoleon."
+
+"And I want change for my Napoleon," said De Breze, laughing.
+
+"My dear Vicomte," said Graham, "one thing we may all grant,--that in
+culture and intellect you are far superior to the mass of your fellow
+Parisians; that you are therefore a favourable type of their political
+character."
+
+"_Ah, mon cher, vous etes trop aimable_."
+
+"And therefore I venture to say this,--if the archangel Gabriel were
+permitted to descend to Paris and form the best government for France
+that the wisdom of seraph could devise, it would not be two years--I
+doubt if it would be six months--before out of this Paris, which you call
+the _Foyer des Idees_, would emerge a powerful party, adorned by yourself
+and other _hommes de plume_, in favour of a revolution for the benefit of
+_ce bon Satan_ and _ce cher petit Beelzebub_."
+
+"What a pretty vein of satire you have, _mon cher_!" said the Vicomte,
+good-humouredly; "there is a sting of truth in your witticism.  Indeed,
+I must send you some articles of mine in which I have said much the same
+thing,--_les beaux, esprits se rencontrent_.  The fault of us French is
+impatience, desire of change; but then it is that desire which keeps the
+world going and retains our place at the head of it.  However, at this
+time we are all living too fast for our money to keep up with it, and too
+slow for our intellect not to flag.  We vie with each other on the road
+to ruin, for in literature all the old paths to fame are shut up."
+
+Here a tall gentleman, with whom the Vicomte had been conversing before
+he accosted Vane, and who had remained beside De Breze listening in
+silent attention to this colloquy, interposed, speaking in the slow voice
+of one accustomed to measure his words, and with a slight but
+unmistakable German accent.  "There is that, Monsieur de Breze, which
+makes one think gravely of what you say so lightly.  Viewing things with
+the unprejudiced eyes of a foreigner, I recognize much for which France
+should be grateful to the Emperor.  Under his sway her material resources
+have been marvellously augmented; her commerce has been placed by the
+treaty with England on sounder foundations, and is daily exhibiting
+richer life; her agriculture had made a prodigious advance wherever it
+has allowed room for capitalists, and escaped from the curse of petty
+allotments and peasant-proprietors, a curse which would have ruined any
+country less blessed by Nature; turbulent factions have been quelled;
+internal order maintained; the external prestige of France, up at least
+to the date of the Mexican war, increased to an extent that might satisfy
+even a Frenchman's amour propre; and her advance in civilization has been
+manifested by the rapid creation of a naval power which should put even
+England on her mettle.  But, on the other hand--"
+
+"Ay, on the other hand," said the Vicomte.
+
+"On the other hand there are in the imperial system two causes of decay
+and of rot silently at work.  They may not be the faults of the Emperor,
+but they are such misfortunes as may cause the fall of the Empire.  The
+first is an absolute divorce between the political system and the
+intellectual culture of the nation.  The throne and the system rest on
+universal suffrage,--on a suffrage which gives to classes the most
+ignorant a power that preponderates over all the healthful elements of
+knowledge.  It is the tendency of all ignorant multitudes to personify
+themselves, as it were, in one individual.  They cannot comprehend you
+when you argue for a principle; they do comprehend you when you talk of
+a name.  The Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and the prefects and
+officials who influence their votes are paid for incorporating all
+principles in the shibboleth of that single name.  You have thus sought
+the well-spring of a political system in the deepest stratum of popular
+ignorance.  To rid popular ignorance of its normal revolutionary bias,
+the rural peasants are indoctrinated with the conservatism that comes
+from the fear which appertains to property.  They have their roots of
+land or their shares in a national loan.  Thus you estrange the
+crassitude of an ignorant democracy still more from the intelligence of
+the educated classes by combining it with the most selfish and abject of
+all the apprehensions that are ascribed to aristocracy and wealth.  What
+is thus embedded in the depths of your society makes itself shown on the
+surface.  Napoleon III. has been compared to Augustus; and there are
+many startling similitudes between them in character and in fate.  Each
+succeeds to the heritage of a great name that had contrived to unite
+autocracy with the popular cause; each subdued all rival competitors,
+and inaugurated despotic rule in the name of freedom; each mingled
+enough of sternness with ambitious will to stain with bloodshed the
+commencement of his power,--but it would be an absurd injustice to fix
+the same degree of condemnation on the _coup d'etat_ as humanity fixes
+on the earlier cruelties of Augustus; each, once firm in his seat,
+became mild and clement,--Augustus perhaps from policy, Napoleon III.
+from a native kindliness of disposition which no fair critic of
+character can fail to acknowledge. Enough of similitudes; now for one
+salient difference.  Observe how earnestly Augustus strove, and how
+completely he succeeded in the task, to rally round him all the leading
+intellects in every grade and of every party,--the followers of Antony,
+the friends of Brutus; every great captain, every great statesman, every
+great writer, every mail who could lend a ray of mind to his own Julian
+constellation, and make the age of Augustus an era in the annals of
+human intellect and genius.  But this has not been the good fortune of
+your Emperor.  The result of his system has been the, suppression of
+intellect in every department.  He has rallied round him not one great
+statesman; his praises are hymned by not one great poet.  The celebrates
+of a former day stand aloof; or, preferring exile to constrained
+allegiance, assail him with unremitting missiles from their asylum in
+foreign shores.  His reign is sterile of new celebrites. The few that
+arise enlist themselves against him.  Whenever he shall venture to give
+full freedom to the press and to the legislature, the intellect thus
+suppressed or thus hostile will burst forth in collected volume.  His
+partisans have not been trained and disciplined to meet such assailants.
+They will be as weak as no doubt they will be violent.  And the worst
+is, that the intellect thus rising in mass against him will be warped
+and distorted, like captives who, being kept in chains, exercise their
+limbs on escaping in vehement jumps without definite object.  The
+directors of emancipated opinion may thus be terrible enemies to the
+Imperial Government, but they will be very unsafe councillors to France.
+Concurrently with this divorce between the Imperial system and the
+national intellect,--a divorce so complete that even your salons have
+lost their wit, and even your caricatures their point,--a corruption of
+manners which the Empire, I own, did not originate, but inherit, has
+become so common that every one owns and nobody blames it.  The gorgeous
+ostentation of the Court has perverted the habits of the people.  The
+intelligence abstracted from other vents betakes itself to speculating
+for a fortune; and the greed of gain and the passion for show are
+sapping the noblest elements of the old French manhood.  Public opinion
+stamps with no opprobrium a minister or favourite who profits by a job;
+and I fear you will find that jobbing pervades all your administrative
+departments."
+
+"All very true," said De Breze, with a shrug of the shoulders and in a
+tone of levity that seemed to ridicule the assertion he volunteered;
+"Virtue and Honour banished from courts and salons and the cabinet of
+authors ascend to fairer heights in the attics of _ouvriers_."
+
+"The _ouvriers_, _ouvriers_ of Paris!"  cried this terrible German.
+
+"Ay, Monsieur le Comte, what can you say against our _ouvriers_?  A
+German count cannot condescend to learn anything about _ces petites
+gens_."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the German, "in the eyes of a statesman there are no
+_petites gens_, and in those of a philosopher no _petites choses_.  We in
+Germany have too many difficult problems affecting our working classes to
+solve, not to have induced me to glean all the information I can as to
+the _ouvriers_ of Paris.  They have among them men of aspirations as
+noble as can animate the souls of philosophers and poets, perhaps not the
+less noble because common-sense and experience cannot follow their
+flight; but as a body the _ouvriers_ of Paris have not been elevated in
+political morality by the benevolent aim of the Emperor to find them
+ample work and good wages independent of the natural laws that regulate
+the markets of labour.  Accustomed thus to consider the State bound to
+maintain them, the moment the State fails in that impossible task, they
+will accommodate their honesty to a rush upon property under the name of
+social reform.
+
+"Have you not noticed how largely increased within the last few years is
+the number of those who cry out, 'La Propriete, cest le vol'?  Have you
+considered the rapid growth of the International Association?  I do not
+say that for all these evils--the Empire is exclusively responsible.  To
+a certain degree they are found in all rich communities, especially where
+democracy is more or less in the ascendant.  To a certain extent they
+exist in the large towns of Germany; they are conspicuously increasing in
+England; they are acknowledged to be dangerous in the United States of
+America; they are, I am told on good authority, making themselves visible
+with the spread of civilization in Russia.  But under the French Empire
+they have become glaringly rampant, and I venture to predict that the day
+is not far off when the rot at work throughout all layers and strata of
+French society will insure a fall of the fabric at the sound of which the
+world will ring.
+
+"There is many a fair and stately tree which continues to throw out its
+leaves and rear its crest till suddenly the wind smites it, and then, and
+not till then, the trunk which seems so solid is found to be but the rind
+to a mass of crumbled powder."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte," said the Vicomte, "you are a severe critic and a
+lugubrious prophet; but a German is so safe from revolution that he takes
+alarm at the stir of movement which is the normal state of the French
+esprit."
+
+"French esprit may soon evaporate into Parisian _betise_.  As to Germany
+being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a saying of Goethe's_-but
+has Monsieur le Vicomte ever heard of Goethe?"
+
+"Goethe, of course,--_tres joli ecrivain_."
+
+"Goethe said to some one who was making much the same remark as yourself,
+'We Germans are in a state of revolution now, but we do things so slowly
+that it will be a hundred years before we Germans shall find it out; but
+when completed, it will be the greatest revolution society has yet seen,
+and will last like the other revolutions that, beginning, scarce noticed,
+in Germany, have transformed the world.'"
+
+"Diable, Monsieur le Comte!  Germans transformed the world!  What
+revolutions do you speak of?"
+
+"The invention of gunpowder, the invention of printing, and the expansion
+of a monk's quarrel with his Pope into the Lutheran revolution."
+
+Here the German paused, and asked the Vicomte to introduce him to Vane,
+which De Breze did by the title of Count von Rudesheim.  On hearing
+Vane's name, the Count inquired if he were related to the orator and
+statesman, George Graham Vane, whose opinions, uttered in Parliament,
+were still authoritative among German thinkers.  This compliment to his
+deceased father immensely gratified but at the same time considerably
+surprised the Englishman.  His father, no doubt, had been a man of much
+influence in the British House of Commons,--a very weighty speaker, and,
+while in office, a first-rate administrator; but Englishmen know what a
+House of Commons reputation is,--how fugitive, how little cosmopolitan;
+and that a German count should ever have heard of his father delighted
+but amazed him.  In stating himself to be the son of George Graham Vane,
+he intimated not only the delight but the amaze, with the frank _savoir
+vivre_ which was one of his salient characteristics.
+
+"Sir," replied the German, speaking in very correct English, but still
+with his national accent, "every German reared to political service
+studies England as the school for practical thought distinct from
+impracticable theories.  Long may you allow us to do so!  Only excuse me
+one remark,--never let the selfish element of the practical supersede the
+generous element.  Your father never did so in his speeches, and
+therefore we admired him.  At the present day we don't so much care to
+study English speeches; they may be insular,--they are not European.  I
+honour England; Heaven grant that you may not be making sad mistakes in
+the belief that you can long remain England if you cease to be European."
+Herewith the German bowed, not uncivilly,--on the contrary, somewhat
+ceremoniously,--and disappeared with a Prussian Secretary of Embassy,
+whose arm he linked in his own, into a room less frequented.
+
+"Vicomte, who and what is your German count?" asked Vane.
+
+"A solemn pedant," answered the lively Vicomte,--"a German count, _que
+voulez-vous de plus?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A LITTLE later Graham found himself alone amongst the crowd.  Attracted
+by the sound of music, he had strayed into one of the rooms whence it
+came, and in which, though his range of acquaintance at Paris was for an
+Englishman large and somewhat miscellaneous, he recognized no familiar
+countenance.  A lady was playing the pianoforte--playing remarkably well
+--with accurate science, with that equal lightness and strength of finger
+which produces brilliancy of execution; but to appreciate her music one
+should be musical one's self.  It wanted the charm that fascinates the
+uninitiated.  The guests in the room were musical connoisseurs,--a class
+with whom Graham Vane had nothing in common.  Even if he had been more
+capable of enjoying the excellence of the player's performance, the
+glance he directed towards her would have sufficed to chill him into
+indifference.  She was not young, and with prominent features and
+puckered skin, was twisting her face into strange sentimental grimaces,
+as if terribly overcome by the beauty and pathos of her own melodies.
+To add to Vane's displeasure, she was dressed in a costume wholly
+antagonistic to his views of the becoming,--in a Greek jacket of gold and
+scarlet, contrasted by a Turkish turban.
+
+Muttering "What she-mountebank have we here?" he sank into a chair behind
+the door, and fell into an absorbed revery.  From this he was aroused by
+the cessation of the music and the hum of subdued approbation by which it
+was followed.  Above the hum swelled the imposing voice of M. Louvier as
+he rose from a seat on the other side of the piano, by which his bulky
+form had been partially concealed.
+
+"Bravo! perfectly played! excellent!  Can we not persuade your charming
+young countrywoman to gratify us even by a single song?"  Then turning
+aside and addressing some one else invisible to Graham he said, "Does
+that tyrannical doctor still compel you to silence, Mademoiselle?"
+
+A voice so sweetly modulated that if there were any sarcasm in the words
+it was lost in the softness of pathos, answered, "Nay, Monsieur Louvier,
+he rather overtasks the words at my command in thankfulness to those who
+like yourself, so kindly regard me as something else than a singer."
+
+It was not the she-mountebank who thus spoke.  Graham rose and looked
+round with instinctive curiosity.  He met the face that he said had
+haunted him.  She too had risen, standing near the piano, with one hand
+tenderly resting on the she-mountebank's scarlet and gilded shoulder,--
+the face that haunted him, and yet with a difference.  There was a faint
+blush on the clear pale cheek, a soft yet playful light in the grave
+dark-blue eyes, which had not been visible in the countenance of the
+young lady in the pearl-coloured robe.  Graham did not hear Louvier's
+reply, though no doubt it was loud enough for him to hear.  He sank again
+into revery.  Other guests now came into the room, among them Frank
+Morley, styled Colonel,--eminent military titles in the United States do
+not always denote eminent military services,--a wealthy American, and his
+sprightly and beautiful wife.  The Colonel was a clever man, rather stiff
+in his deportment, and grave in speech, but by no means without a vein of
+dry humour.  By the French he was esteemed a high-bred specimen of the
+kind of grand seigneur which democratic republics engender.  He spoke
+French like a Parisian, had an imposing presence, and spent a great deal
+of money with the elegance of a man of taste and the generosity of a man
+of heart.  His high breeding was not quite so well understood by the
+English, because the English are apt to judge breeding by little
+conventional rules not observed by the American Colonel.  He had a slight
+nasal twang, and introduced "sir" with redundant ceremony in addressing
+Englishmen, however intimate he might be with them, and had the habit
+(perhaps with a sly intention to startle or puzzle them) of adorning his
+style of conversation with quaint Americanisms.
+
+Nevertheless, the genial amiability and the inherent dignity of his
+character made him acknowledged as a thorough gentleman by every
+Englishman, however conventional in tastes, who became admitted into his
+intimate acquaintance.
+
+Mrs. Morley, ten or twelve years younger than her husband, had no nasal
+twang, and employed no Americanisms in her talk, which was frank, lively,
+and at times eloquent.  She had a great ambition to be esteemed of a
+masculine understanding; Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition in
+rendering her a model of feminine grace.  Graham was intimately
+acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one
+of those cordial friendships, which, perfectly free alike from polite
+flirtation and Platonic attachment, do sometimes spring up between
+persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing their
+honest character into morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion.  The
+Morleys stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had scarcely said three
+words to him, before, catching sight of the haunting face, she darted
+towards it.  Her husband, less emotional, bowed at the distance, and
+said, "To my taste, sir, the Signorina Cicogna is the loveliest girl in
+the present bee,* and full of mind, sir."
+
+     [*Bee, a common expression in "the West" for a meeting or gathering
+     ]of people.
+
+"Singing mind," said Graham, sarcastically, and in the ill-natured
+impulse of a man striving to check his inclination to admire.
+
+"I have not heard her sing," replied the American, dryly; "and the words
+'singing mind' are doubtless accurately English, since you employ them;
+but at Boston the collocation would be deemed barbarous.  You fly off the
+handle.  The epithet, sir, is not in concord with the substantive."
+
+"Boston would be in the right, my dear Colonel.  I stand rebuked; mind
+has little to do with singing."
+
+"I take leave to deny that, sir.  You fire into the wrong flock, and
+would not hazard the remark if you had conversed as I have with Signorina
+Cicogna"
+
+Before Graham could answer, Signorina Cicogna stood before him, leaning
+lightly on Mrs. Morley's arm.
+
+"Frank, you must take us into the refreshment-room," said Mrs. Morley to
+her husband; and then, turning to Graham, added, "Will you help to make
+way for us?"
+
+Graham bowed, and offered his arm to the fair speaker.  "No," said she,
+taking her husband's.  "Of course you know the Signorina, or, as we
+usually call her, Mademoiselle Cicogna.  No?  Allow me to present you.
+Mr. Graham Vane, Mademoiselle Cicogna.  Mademoiselle speaks English like
+a native."
+
+And thus abruptly Graham was introduced to the owner of the haunting
+face.  He had lived too much in the great world all his life to retain
+the innate shyness of an Englishman; but he certainly was confused and
+embarrassed when his eyes met Isaura's, and he felt her hand on his arm.
+Before quitting the room she paused and looked back.  Graham's look
+followed her own, and saw behind them the lady with the scarlet jacket
+escorted by some portly and decorated connoisseur.  Isaura's face
+brightened to another kind of brightness,--a pleased and tender light.
+
+"Poor dear Madre," she murmured to herself in Italian.  "Madre!" echoed
+Graham, also in Italian.  "I have been misinformed, then; that lady is
+your mother."
+
+Isaura laughed a pretty, low, silvery laugh, and replied in English, "She
+is not my mother; but I call her Madre, for I know no name more loving."
+
+Graham was touched, and said gently, "Your own mother was evidently very
+dear to you."
+
+Isaura's lip quivered, and she made a slight movement as if she would
+have withdrawn her hand from his arm.  He saw that he had offended or
+wounded her, and with the straightforward frankness natural to him,
+resumed quickly, "My remark was impertinent in a stranger; forgive it."
+
+"There is nothing to forgive, Monsieur."
+
+The two now threaded their way through the crowd, both silent.  At last
+Isaura, thinking she ought to speak first in order to show that Graham
+had not offended her, said,
+
+"How lovely Mrs. Morley is!"
+
+"Yes; and I like the spirit and ease of her American manner.  Have you
+known her long, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"No; we met her for the first time some weeks ago at M. Savarin's."
+
+"Was she very eloquent on the rights of women?"
+
+"What! you have heard her on that subject?"
+
+"I have rarely heard her on any other, though she is the best and perhaps
+the cleverest friend I have at Paris; but that may be my fault, for I
+like to start it.  It is a relief to the languid small-talk of society to
+listen to any one thoroughly in earnest upon turning the world topsy-
+turvy."
+
+"Do you suppose poor Mrs. Morley would seek to do that if she had her
+rights?" asked Isaura, with her musical laugh.
+
+"Not a doubt of it; but perhaps you share her opinions."
+
+"I scarcely know what her opinions are, but--"
+
+"Yes?--but--"
+
+"There is a--what shall I call it?--a persuasion, a sentiment, out of
+which the opinions probably spring, that I do share."
+
+"Indeed?  a persuasion, a sentiment, for instance, that a woman should
+have votes in the choice of legislators, and, I presume, in the task of
+legislation?"
+
+"No, that is not what I mean.  Still, that is an opinion, right or wrong,
+which grows out of the sentiment I speak of."
+
+"Pray explain the sentiment."
+
+"It is always so difficult to define a sentiment; but does it not strike
+you that in proportion as the tendency of modern civilization has been to
+raise women more and more to an intellectual equality with men, in
+proportion as they read and study and think, an uneasy sentiment, perhaps
+querulous, perhaps unreasonable, grows up within their minds that the
+conventions of the world are against the complete development of the
+faculties thus aroused and the ambition thus animated; that they cannot
+but rebel, though it may be silently, against the notions of the former
+age, when women were not thus educated, notions that the aim of the sex
+should be to steal through life unremarked; that it is a reproach to be
+talked of; that women are plants to be kept in a hothouse and forbidden
+the frank liberty of growth in the natural air and sunshine of heaven?
+This, at least, is a sentiment which has sprung up within myself; and I
+imagine that it is the sentiment which has given birth to many of the
+opinions or doctrines that seem absurd, and very likely are so, to the
+general public.  I don't pretend even to have considered those doctrines;
+I don't pretend to say what may be the remedies for the restlessness and
+uneasiness I feel.  I doubt if on this earth there be any remedies; all I
+know is, that I feel restless and uneasy."
+
+Graham gazed on her countenance as she spoke with an astonishment not
+unmingled with tenderness and compassion, astonishment at the contrast
+between a vein of reflection so hardy, expressed in a style of language
+that seemed to him so masculine, and the soft velvet dreamy eyes, the
+gentle tones, and delicate purity of hues rendered younger still by the
+blush that deepened their bloom.
+
+At this moment they had entered the refreshment-room; but a dense group
+being round the table, and both perhaps forgetting the object for which
+Mrs. Morley had introduced them to each other, they had mechancially
+seated themselves on an ottoman in a recess while Isaura was yet
+speaking.  It must seem as strange to the reader as it did to Graham that
+such a speech should have been spoken by so young a girl to an
+acquaintance so new; but in truth Isaura was very little conscious of
+Graham's presence.  She had got on a subject that perplexed and tormented
+her solitary thoughts; she was but thinking aloud.
+
+"I believe," said Graham, after a pause, "that I comprehend your
+sentiment much better than I do Mrs. Morley's opinions; but permit me one
+observation.  You say truly that the course of modern civilization has
+more or less affected the relative position of woman cultivated beyond
+that level on which she was formerly contented to stand,--the nearer
+perhaps to the heart of man because not lifting her head to his height,
+--and hence a sense of restlessness, uneasiness; but do you suppose that,
+in this whirl and dance of the atoms which compose the rolling ball of
+the civilized world, it is only women that are made restless and uneasy?
+Do you not see amid the masses congregated in the wealthiest cities of
+the world, writhings and struggles against the received order of things?
+In this sentiment of discontent there is a certain truthfulness, because
+it is an element of human nature, and how best to deal with it is a
+problem yet unsolved; but in the opinions and doctrines to which, among
+the masses, the sentiment gives birth, the wisdom of the wisest detects
+only the certainty of a common ruin, offering for reconstruction the same
+building-materials as the former edifice,--materials not likely to be
+improved because they may be defaced.  Ascend from the working classes to
+all others in which civilized culture prevails, and you will find that
+same restless feeling,--the fluttering of untried wings against the bars
+between wider space and their longings.  Could you poll all the educated
+ambitious young men in England,--perhaps in Europe,--at least half of
+them, divided between a reverence for the past and a curiosity as to the
+future, would sigh, 'I am born a century too late or a century too
+soon!'"
+
+Isaura listened to this answer with a profound and absorbing interest.
+It was the first time that a clever young man talked thus sympathetically
+to her, a clever young girl.
+
+Then, rising, he said, "I see your Madre and our American friends are
+darting angry looks at me.  They have made room for us at the table, and
+are wondering why I should keep you thus from the good things of this
+little life.  One word more ere we join them,--consult your own mind,
+and consider whether your uneasiness and unrest are caused solely by
+conventional shackles on your sex.  Are they not equally common to the
+youth of ours,--common to all who seek in art, in letters, nay, in the
+stormier field of active life, to clasp as a reality some image yet seen
+but as a dream?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+No further conversation in the way of sustained dialogue took place that
+evening between Graham and Isaura.
+
+The Americans and the Savarins clustered round Isaura when they quitted
+the refreshment-room.  The party was breaking up.  Vane would have
+offered his arm again to Isaura, but M. Savarin had forestalled him.  The
+American was despatched by his wife to see for the carriage; and Mrs.
+Morley said, with her wonted sprightly tone of command,
+
+"Now, Mr. Vane, you have no option but to take care of me to the shawl-
+room."
+
+Madame Savarin and Signora Venosta had each found their cavaliers, the
+Italian still retaining hold of the portly connoisseur, and the
+Frenchwoman accepting the safeguard of the Vicomte de Breze.  As they
+descended the stairs, Mrs. Morley asked Graham what he thought of the
+young lady to whom she had presented him.
+
+"I think she is charming," answered Graham.
+
+"Of course; that is the stereotyped answer to all such questions,
+especially by you Englishmen.  In public or in private, England is the
+mouthpiece of platitudes."
+
+"It is natural for an American to think so.  Every child that has just
+learned to speak uses bolder expressions than its grandmamma; but I am
+rather at a loss to know by what novelty of phrase an American would have
+answered your question."
+
+"An American would have discovered that Isaura Cicogna had a soul, and
+his answer would have confessed it."
+
+"It strikes me that he would then have uttered a platitude more stolid
+than mine.  Every Christian knows that the dullest human being has a
+soul.  But, to speak frankly, I grant that my answer did not do justice
+to the Signorina, nor to the impression she makes on me; and putting
+aside the charm of the face, there is a charm in a mind that seems to
+have gathered stores of reflection which I should scarcely have expected
+to find in a young lady brought up to be a professional singer."
+
+"You add prejudice to platitude, and are horribly prosaic to-night; but
+here we are in the shawl-room.  I must take another opportunity of
+attacking you.  Pray dine with us tomorrow; you will meet our Minister
+and a few other pleasant friends."
+
+"I suppose I must not say, 'I shall be charmed,'" answered Vane; "but I
+shall be."
+
+"Bon Dieu!  that horrid fat man has deserted Signora Venosta,--looking
+for his own cloak, I dare say; selfish monster!  Go and hand her to her
+carriage; quick, it is announced!"
+
+Graham, thus ordered, hastened to offer his arm to the she-mountebank.
+Somehow she had acquired dignity in his eyes, and he did not feel the
+least ashamed of being in contact with the scarlet jacket.
+
+The Signora grappled to him with a confiding familiarity.  "I am afraid,"
+she said in Italian, as they passed along the spacious hall to the porte
+cochere,--"I am afraid that I did not make a good effect to-night.  I was
+nervous; did not you perceive it?"
+
+"No, indeed; you enchanted us all;" replied the dissimulator.
+
+"How amiable you are to say so!  You must think that I sought for a
+compliment.  So I did; you gave me more than I deserved.  Wine is the
+milk of old men, and praise of old women; but an old man may be killed by
+too much wine, and an old woman lives all the longer for too much praise.
+Buona notte."
+
+Here she sprang, lithesomely enough, into the carriage, and Isaura
+followed, escorted by M. Savarin.  As the two men returned towards the
+shawl-room, the Frenchman said, "Madame Savarin and I complain that you
+have not let us see so much of you as we ought.  No doubt you are greatly
+sought after; but are you free to take your soup with us the day after
+to-morrow?  You will meet the Count von Rudesheim, and a few others more
+lively if less wise."
+
+"The day after to-morrow I will mark with a white stone.  To dine with M.
+Savarin is an event to a man who covets distinction."
+
+"Such compliments reconcile an author to his trade.  You deserve the best
+return I can make you.  You will meet la belle Isaura.  I have just
+engaged her and her chaperon.  She is a girl of true genius; and genius
+is like those objects of virtu which belong to a former age, and become
+every day more scarce and more precious."
+
+Here they encountered Colonel Morley and his wife hurrying to their
+carriage.  The American stopped Vane, and whispered, "I am glad, sir,
+to hear from my wife that you dine with us to-morrow.  Sir, you will meet
+Mademoiselle Cicogna, and I am not without a kinkle [notion] that you
+will be enthused."
+
+"This seems like a fatality," soliloquized Vane as he walked through the
+deserted streets towards his lodging.  "I strove to banish that haunting
+face from my mind.  I had half forgotten it, and now--"  Here his murmur
+sank into silence.  He was deliberating in very conflicted thought
+whether or not he should write to refuse the two invitations he had
+accepted.
+
+"Pooh!" he said at last, as he reached the door of his lodging, "is my
+reason so weak that it should be influenced by a mere superstition?
+Surely I know myself too well, and have tried myself too long, to fear
+that I should be untrue to the duty and ends of my life, even if I found
+my heart in danger of suffering."
+
+Certainly the Fates do seem to mock our resolves to keep our feet from
+their ambush, and our hearts from their snare!  How our lives may be
+coloured by that which seems to us the most trivial accident, the merest
+chance!  Suppose that Alain de Rochebriant had been invited to that
+reunion at M. Louvier's, and Graham Vane had accepted some other
+invitation and passed his evening elsewhere, Alain would probably have
+been presented to Isaura--what then might have happened?  The impression
+Isaura had already made upon the young Frenchman was not so deep as that
+made upon Graham; but then, Alain's resolution to efface it was but
+commenced that day, and by no means yet confirmed.  And if he had been
+the first clever young man to talk earnestly to that clever young girl,
+who can guess what impression he might have made upon her?  His
+conversation might have had less philosophy and strong sense than
+Graham's, but more of poetic sentiment and fascinating romance.
+
+However, the history of events that do not come to pass is not in the
+chronicle of the Fates.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, B2, LYTTON ***
+
+****** This file should be named 7738.txt or 7738.zip ********
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+https://gutenberg.org or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
diff --git a/7738.zip b/7738.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbfbb52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/7738.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f6a76a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #7738 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7738)