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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Parisians, by E. B. Lytton, Complete
+#176 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+[Contains: EBooks #7737-7748]
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+Title: The Parisians, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7749]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, COMPLETE ***
+
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+
+Produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE PARISIANS
+
+                         By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE.
+
+(BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.)
+
+"The Parisians" and "Kenelm Chillingly" were begun about the same time,
+and had their common origin in the same central idea.  That idea first
+found fantastic expression in "The Coming Race;" and the three books,
+taken together, constitute a special group, distinctly apart from all the
+other works of their author.
+
+The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social
+respectabilities; the humour of his later ones is a protest against the
+disrespect of social realities.  By the first he sought to promote social
+sincerity and the free play of personal character; by the last, to
+encourage mutual charity and sympathy amongst all classes, on whose
+interrelation depends the character of society itself.  But in these
+three books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and
+exclusive.  Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed to him
+the perilous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a
+warning against the influence of certain intellectual tendencies upon
+individual character and national life.  This purpose, however, though
+common to the three fictions, is worked out in each of them by a
+different method.  "The Coming Race" is a work of pure fancy, and the
+satire of it is vague and sportive.  The outlines of a definite purpose
+are more distinctly drawn in "Chillingly,"--a romance which has the
+source of its effect in a highly wrought imagination.  The humour and
+pathos of "Chillingly" are of a kind incompatible with the design of "The
+Parisians," which is a work of dramatized observation.  "Chillingly" is a
+romance; "The Parisians" is a novel.  The subject of "Chillingly" is
+psychological; that of "The  Parisians"  is social.  The author's  object
+in  "Chillingly"  being to illustrate the effects of "modern ideas" upon
+an individual character, he has confined his narrative to the biography
+of that one character; hence the simplicity of plot and small number of
+dramatis personae, whereby the work gains in height and depth what it
+loses in breadth of surface.  "The Parisians," on the contrary, is
+designed to illustrate the effect of "modern ideas" upon a whole
+community.  This novel is therefore panoramic in the profusion and
+variety of figures presented by it to the reader's imagination.  No
+exclusive prominence is vouchsafed to any of these figures.  All of them
+are drawn and coloured with an equal care, but by means of the bold,
+broad touches necessary for their effective presentation on a canvas so
+large and so crowded.  Such figures are, indeed, but the component
+features of one great form, and their actions only so many modes of one
+collective impersonal character,--that of the Parisian Society of
+Imperial and Democratic France; a character everywhere present and busy
+throughout the story, of which it is the real hero or heroine.  This
+society was doubtless selected for characteristic illustration as being
+the most advanced in the progress of "modern ideas."  Thus, for a
+complete perception of its writer's fundamental purpose, "The Parisians"
+should be read in connection with "Chillingly," and these two books in
+connection with "The Coming Race."  It will then be perceived that
+through the medium of alternate fancy, sentiment, and observation,
+assisted by humour and passion, these three books (in all other respects
+so different from each other) complete the presentation of the same
+purpose under different aspects, and thereby constitute a group of
+fictions which claims a separate place of its own in any thoughtful
+classification of their author's works.
+
+One last word to those who will miss from these pages the connecting and
+completing touches of the master's hand.  It may be hoped that such a
+disadvantage, though irreparable, is somewhat mitigated by the essential
+character of the work itself.  The aesthetic merit of this kind of novel
+is in the vivacity of a general effect produced by large, swift strokes
+of character; and in such strokes, if they be by a great artist, force
+and freedom of style must still be apparent, even when they are left
+rough and unfinished.  Nor can any lack of final verbal correction much
+diminish the intellectual value which many of the more thoughtful
+passages of the present work derive from a long, keen, and practical
+study of political phenomena, guided by personal experience of public
+life, and enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of the human
+heart.
+
+Such a belief is, at least, encouraged by the private communications
+spontaneously made to him who expresses it, by persons of political
+experience and social position in France, who have acknowledged the
+general accuracy of the author's descriptions, and noticed the suggestive
+sagacity and penetration of his occasional comments on the circumstances
+and sentiments he describes.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
+
+They who chance to have read the "Coming Race" may perhaps remember that
+I, the adventurous discoverer of the land without a sun, concluded the
+sketch of my adventures by a brief reference to the malady which, though
+giving no perceptible notice of its encroachments, might, in the opinion
+of my medical attendant, prove suddenly fatal.
+
+I had brought my little book to this somewhat melancholy close a few
+years before the date of its publication, and in the meanwhile I was
+induced to transfer my residence to Paris, in order to place myself under
+the care of an English physician, renowned for his successful treatment
+of complaints analogous to my own.
+
+I was the more readily persuaded to undertake this journey,--partly
+because I enjoyed a familiar acquaintance with the eminent physician
+referred to, who had commenced his career and founded his reputation in
+the United States; partly because I had become a solitary man, the ties
+of home broken, and dear friends of mine were domiciled in Paris, with
+whom I should be sure of tender sympathy and cheerful companionship.  I
+had reason to be thankful for this change of residence: the skill of Dr.
+C_____ soon restored me to health.  Brought much into contact with
+various circles of Parisian society, I became acquainted with the persons
+and a witness of the events that form the substance of the tale I am
+about to submit to the public, which has treated my former book with so
+generous an indulgence.  Sensitively tenacious of that character for
+strict and unalloyed veracity which, I flatter myself, my account of the
+abodes and manners of the Vril-ya has established, I could have wished to
+preserve the following narrative no less jealously guarded than its
+predecessor from the vagaries of fancy.  But Truth undisguised, never
+welcome in any civilized community above ground, is exposed at this time
+to especial dangers in Paris; and my life would not be worth an hour's
+purchase if I exhibited her 'in puris naturalibus' to the eyes of a
+people wholly unfamiliarized to a spectacle so indecorous.  That care
+for one's personal safety which is the first duty of thoughtful man
+compels me therefore to reconcile the appearance of 'la Verite' to the
+'bienseances' of the polished society in which 'la Liberte' admits no
+opinion not dressed after the last fashion.
+
+Attired as fiction, Truth may be peacefully received; and, despite the
+necessity thus imposed by prudence, I indulge the modest hope that I do
+not in these pages unfaithfully represent certain prominent types of the
+brilliant population which has invented so many varieties of Koom-Posh;
+
+     [Koom-Posh, Glek-Nas.  For the derivation of these terms and their
+     metaphorical signification, I must refer the reader to the "Coming
+     Race," chapter xii., on the language of the Vril-ya.  To those who
+     have not read or have forgotten that historical composition, it may
+     be convenient to state briefly that Koom-Posh with the Vril-ya is
+     the name for the government of the many, or the ascendency of the
+     most ignorant or hollow, and may be loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh.
+     When Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular
+     ferocity which precedes its decease, the name for that state of
+     things is Glek-Nas; namely, the universal strife-rot.]
+
+and even when it appears hopelessly lost in the slough of a Glek-Nas,
+re-emerges fresh and lively as if from an invigorating plunge into the
+Fountain of Youth.  O Paris, 'foyer des idees, et oeil du monde!'--
+animated contrast to the serene tranquillity of the Vril-ya, which,
+nevertheless, thy noisiest philosophers ever pretend to make the goal
+of their desires: of all communities on which shines the sun and descend
+the rains of heaven, fertilizing alike wisdom and folly, virtue and vice;
+in every city men have yet built on this earth,--mayest thou, O Paris, be
+the last to brave the wands of the Coming Race and be reduced into
+cinders for the sake of the common good!
+                                                       TISH.
+
+PARIS, August 28, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+                              THE PARISIANS.
+
+
+                                 BOOK I.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It was a bright day in the early spring of 1869.  All Paris seemed to
+have turned out to enjoy itself.  The Tuileries, the Champs Elysees, the
+Bois de Boulogne, swarmed with idlers.  A stranger might have wondered
+where Toil was at work, and in what nook Poverty lurked concealed.
+A millionaire from the London Exchange, as he looked round on the
+magasins, the equipages, the dresses of the women; as he inquired the
+prices in the shops and the rent of apartments,--might have asked
+himself, in envious wonder, How on earth do those gay Parisians live?
+What is their fortune?  Where does it come from?
+
+As the day declined, many of the scattered loungers crowded into the
+Boulevards; the cafes and restaurants began to light up.
+
+About this time a young man, who might be some five or six and twenty,
+was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, heeding little the throng
+through which he glided his solitary way: there was that in his aspect
+and bearing which caught attention.  He looked a somebody; but though
+unmistakably a Frenchman, not a Parisian.  His dress was not in the
+prevailing mode: to a practised eye it betrayed the taste and the cut
+of a provincial tailor.  His gait was not that of the Parisian,--less
+lounging, more stately; and, unlike the Parisian, he seemed indifferent
+to the gaze of others.
+
+Nevertheless there was about him that air of dignity or distinction which
+those who are reared from their cradle in the pride of birth acquire so
+unconsciously that it seems hereditary and inborn.  It must also be
+confessed that the young man himself was endowed with a considerable
+share of that nobility which Nature capriciously distributes among her
+favourites with little respect for their pedigree and blazon, the
+nobility of form and face.  He was tall and well shaped, with graceful
+length of limb and fall of shoulders; his face was handsome, of the
+purest type of French masculine beauty,--the nose inclined to be
+aquiline, and delicately thin, with finely-cut open nostrils; the
+complexion clear,--the eyes large, of a light hazel, with dark lashes,
+--the hair of a chestnut brown, with no tint of auburn,--the beard and
+mustache a shade darker, clipped short, not disguising the outline of
+lips, which were now compressed, as if smiles had of late been unfamiliar
+to them; yet such compression did not seem in harmony with the
+physiognomical character of their formation, which was that assigned
+by Lavater to temperaments easily moved to gayety and pleasure.
+
+Another man, about his own age, coming quickly out of one of the streets
+of the Chausee d'Antin, brushed close by the stately pedestrian above
+described, caught sight of his countenance, stopped short, and exclaimed,
+"Alain!"  The person thus abruptly accosted turned his eye tranquilly on
+the eager face, of which all the lower part was enveloped in black beard;
+and slightly lifting his hat, with a gesture of the head that implied,
+"Sir, you are mistaken; I have not the honour to know you," continued his
+slow indifferent way.  The would-be acquaintance was not so easily
+rebuffed.  "Peste," he said, between his teeth, "I am certainly right.
+He is not much altered: of course I AM; ten years of Paris would improve
+an orang-outang."  Quickening his step, and regaining the side of the man
+he had called "Alain," he said, with a well-bred mixture of boldness and
+courtesy in his tone and countenance,
+
+"Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong.  Put surely I accost Alain de
+Kerouec, son of the Marquis de Rochebriant."
+
+"True, sir; but--"
+
+"But you do not remember me, your old college friend, Frederic
+Lemercier?"
+
+"Is it possibly?" cried Alain, cordially, and with an animation which
+charged the whole character of his countenance.  "My dear Frederic, my
+dear friend, this is indeed good fortune!  So you, too, are at Paris?"
+
+"Of course; and you?  Just come, I perceive," he added, somewhat
+satirically, as, linking his arm in his new-found friend's, he glanced at
+the cut of that friend's coat-collar.
+
+"I have been herd a fortnight," replied Alain.
+
+"Hem!  I suppose you lodge in the old Hotel de Rochebriant.  I passed it
+yesterday, admiring its vast facade, little thinking you were its
+inmate."
+
+"Neither am I; the hotel does not belong to me; it was sold some years
+ago by my father."
+
+"Indeed!  I hope your father got a good price for it; those grand hotels
+have trebled their value within the last five years.  And how is your
+father?  Still the same polished grand seigneur?  I never saw him but
+once, you know; and I shall never forget his smile, style grand monarque,
+when he patted me on the head and tipped me ten napoleons."
+
+"My father is no more," said Alain, gravely; "he has been dead nearly
+three years."
+
+"Ciel!  forgive me; I am greatly shocked.  Hem!  so you are now the
+Marquis de Rochebriant, a great historical name, worth a large sum in the
+market.  Few such names left.  Superb place your old chateau, is it not?"
+
+"A superb place, no--a venerable ruin, yes!"
+
+"Ah, a ruin! so much the better.  All the bankers are mad after ruins: so
+charming an amusement to restore them.  You will restore yours, without
+doubt.  I will introduce you to such an architect! has the 'moyen age' at
+his fingers' ends.  Dear,--but a genius."
+
+The young Marquis smiled,--for since he had found a college friend, his
+face showed that it could smile,--smiled, but not cheerfully, and
+answered,
+
+"I have no intention to restore Rochebriant.  The walls are solid: they
+have weathered the storms of six centuries, they will last my time, and
+with me the race perishes."
+
+"Bah! the race perish, indeed! you will marry.  'Parlez moi de ca': you
+could not come to a better man.  I have a list of all the heiresses at
+Paris, bound in russia leather.  You may take your choice out of twenty.
+Ah, if I were but a Rochebriant!  It is an infernal thing to come into
+the world a Lemercier.  I am a democrat, of course.  A Lemercier would be
+in a false position if he were not.  But if any one would leave me twenty
+acres of land, with some antique right to the De and a title, faith,
+would not I be an aristocrat, and stand up for my order?  But now we have
+met, pray let us dine together.  Ah! no doubt you are engaged every day
+for a month.  A Rochebriant just new to Paris must be 'fete' by all the
+Faubourg."
+
+"No," answered Alain, simply, "I am not engaged; my range of acquaintance
+is more circumscribed than you suppose."
+
+"So much the better for me.  I am luckily disengaged today, which is not
+often the case, for I am in some request in my own set, though it is not
+that of the Faubourg.  Where shall we dine?--at the Trois Freres?"
+
+"Wherever you please.  I know no restaurant at Paris, except a very
+ignoble one, close by my lodging."
+
+"'Apropos', where do you lodge?" "Rue de l'Universite, Numero ___."
+
+"A fine street, but 'triste'.  If you have no longer your family hotel,
+you have no excuse to linger in that museum of mummies, the Faubourg St.
+Germain; you must go into one of the new quarters by the Champs Elysees.
+Leave it to me; I'll find you a charming apartment.  I know one to be had
+a bargain,--a bagatelle,--five hundred naps a-year.  Cost you about two
+or three thousand more to furnish tolerably, not showily.  Leave all to
+me.  In three days you shall be settled.  Apropos! horses!  You must have
+English ones.  How many?--three for the saddle, two for your 'coupe'?
+I'll find them for you.  I will write to London to-morrow: Reese [Rice]
+is your man."
+
+"Spare yourself that trouble, my dear Frederic.  I keep no horses and no
+coupe.  I shall not change my apartment."  As he said this, Rochebriant
+drew himself up somewhat haughtily.
+
+"Faith," thought Lemercier, "is it possible that the Marquis is poor?
+No.  I have always heard that the Rochebriants were among the greatest
+proprietors in Bretagne.  Most likely, with all his innocence of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, he knows enough of it to be aware that I, Frederic
+Lemercier, am not the man to patronize one of its greatest nobles.
+'Sacre bleu!' if I thought that; if he meant to give himself airs to me,
+his old college friend,--I would--I would call him out."
+
+Just as M. Lemercier had come to that bellicose resolution, the Marquis
+said, with a smile which, though frank, was not without a certain grave
+melancholy in its expression, "My dear Frederic, pardon me if I seem to
+receive your friendly offers ungraciously.  But I believe that I have.
+reasons you will approve for leading at Paris a life which you certainly
+will not envy;" then, evidently desirous to change the subject, he said
+in a livelier tone, "But what a marvellous city this Paris of ours is!
+Remember I had never seen it before: it burst on me like a city in the
+Arabian Nights two weeks ago.  And that which strikes me most--I say it
+with regret and a pang of conscience--is certainly not the Paris of
+former times, but that Paris which M. Buonaparte--I beg pardon, which the
+Emperor--has called up around him, and identified forever with his reign.
+It is what is new in Paris that strikes and enthrals me.  Here I see the
+life of France, and I belong to her tombs!"
+
+"I don't quite understand you," said Lemercier.  "If you think that
+because your father and grandfather were Legitimists, you have not the
+fair field of living ambition open to you under the Empire, you never
+were more mistaken.  'Moyen age,' and even rococo, are all the rage.
+You have no idea how valuable your name would be either at the Imperial
+Court or in a Commercial Company.  But with your fortune you are
+independent of all but fashion and the Jockey Club.
+
+"And 'apropos' of that, pardon me,--what villain made your coat?--let me
+know; I will denounce him to the police."  Half amused, half amazed,
+Alain Marquis de Rochebriant looked at Frederic Lemercier much as a good-
+tempered lion may look upon a lively poodle who takes a liberty with his
+mane, and after a pause he replied curtly, "The clothes I wear at Paris
+were made in Bretagne; and if the name of Rochebriant be of any value at
+all in Paris, which I doubt, let me trust that it will make me
+acknowledged as 'gentilhomme,' whatever my taste in a coat or whatever
+the doctrines of a club composed--of jockeys."
+
+"Ha, ha!" cried Lemercier, freeing himself from the arm of his friend,
+and laughing the more irresistibly as he encountered the grave look of
+the Marquis.  "Pardon me,--I can't help it,--the Jockey Club,--composed
+of jockeys!--it is too much!--the best joke.  My dear, Alain, there is
+some of the best blood of Europe in the Jockey Club; they would exclude
+a plain bourgeois like me.  But it is all the same: in one respect you
+are quite right.  Walk in a blouse if you please: you are still
+Rochebriant; you would only be called eccentric.  Alas!  I am obliged to
+send to London for my pantaloons: that comes of being a Lemercier.  But
+here we are in the Palais Royal."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The salons of the Trois Freres were crowded; our friends found a table
+with some little difficulty.  Lemercier proposed a private cabinet,
+which, for some reason known to himself, the Marquis declined.
+
+Lemercier spontaneously and unrequested ordered the dinner and the wines.
+
+While waiting for their oysters, with which, when in season, French 'bon-
+vivants' usually commence their dinner, Lemercier looked round the salon
+with that air of inimitable, scrutinizing, superb impertinence which
+distinguishes the Parisian dandy.  Some of the ladies returned his glance
+coquettishly, for Lemercier was 'beau garcon;' others turned aside
+indignantly, and muttered something to the gentlemen dining with them.
+The said gentlemen, when old, shook their heads, and continued to eat
+unmoved; when young, turned briskly round, and looked at first fiercely
+at M. Lemercier, but, encountering his eye through the glass which he had
+screwed into his socket, noticing the hardihood of his countenance and
+the squareness of his shoulders, even they turned back to the tables,
+shook their heads, and continued to eat unmoved, just like the old ones.
+
+"Ah!" cried Lemercier, suddenly, "here comes a man you should know, 'mon
+cher.'  He will tell you how to place your money,--a rising man, a coming
+man, a future minister.  Ah! 'bon jour,' Duplessis, 'bon jour,'" kissing
+his hand to a gentleman who had just entered and was looking about him
+for a seat.  He was evidently well and favourably known at the Trois
+Freres.  The waiters had flocked round him, and were pointing to a table
+by the window, which a saturnine Englishman, who had dined off a
+beefsteak and potatoes, was about to vacate.
+
+M. Duplessis, having first assured himself, like a prudent man, that his
+table was secure, having ordered his oysters, his chablis, and his
+'potage a la bisque,' now paced calmly and slowly across the salon, and
+halted before Lemercier.
+
+Here let me pause for a moment, and give the reader a rapid sketch of the
+two Parisians.
+
+Frederic Lemercier is dressed, somewhat too showily, in the extreme of
+the prevalent fashion.  He wears a superb pin in his cravat,--a pin worth
+two thousand francs; he wears rings on his fingers, 'breloques' to his
+watch-chain.  He has a warm though dark complexion, thick black eyebrows,
+full lips, a nose somewhat turned up, but not small, very fine large dark
+eyes, a bold, open, somewhat impertinent expression of countenance;
+withal decidedly handsome, thanks to colouring, youth, and vivacity of
+regard.
+
+Lucien Duplessis, bending over the table, glancing first with curiosity
+at the Marquis de Rochebriant, who leans his cheek on his hand and seems
+not to notice him, then concentrating his attention on Frederic
+Lemercier, who sits square with his hands clasped,--Lucien Duplessis
+is somewhere between forty and fifty, rather below the middle height,
+slender, but not slight,--what in English phrase is called "wiry."
+He is dressed with extreme simplicity: black frockcoat buttoned up; black
+cravat worn higher than men who follow the fashions wear their neckcloths
+nowadays; a hawk's eye and a hawk's beak; hair of a dull brown, very
+short, and wholly without curl; his cheeks thin and smoothly shaven,
+but he wears a mustache and imperial, plagiarized from those of his
+sovereign, and, like all plagiarisms, carrying the borrowed beauty to
+extremes, so that the points of mustache and imperial, stiffened and
+sharpened by cosmetics which must have been composed of iron, looked like
+three long stings guarding lip and jaw from invasion; a pale olive-brown
+complexion, eyes small, deep-sunk, calm, piercing; his expression of face
+at first glance not striking, except for quiet immovability.  Observed
+more heedfully, the expression was keenly intellectual,--determined about
+the lips, calculating about the brows: altogether the face of no ordinary
+man, and one not, perhaps, without fine and high qualities, concealed
+from the general gaze by habitual reserve, but justifying the confidence
+of those whom he admitted into his intimacy.
+
+"Ah, mon cher," said Lemercier, "you promised to call on me yesterday at
+two o'clock.  I waited in for you half an hour; you never came."
+
+"No; I went first to the Bourse.  The shares in that Company we spoke of
+have fallen; they will fall much lower: foolish to buy in yet; so the
+object of my calling on you was over.  I took it for granted you would
+not wait if I failed my appointment.  Do you go to the opera to-night?"
+
+"I think not; nothing worth going for: besides, I have found an old
+friend, to whom I consecrate this evening.  Let me introduce you to the
+Marquis de Rochebriant.  Alain, M. Duplessis."
+
+The two gentlemen bowed.
+
+"I had the honour to be known to Monsieur your father," said Duplessis.
+
+"Indeed," returned Rochebriant.  "He had not visited Paris for many years
+before he died."
+
+"It was in London I met him, at the house of the Russian Princess C____."
+
+The Marquis coloured high, inclined his head gravely, and made no reply.
+Here the waiter brought the oysters and the chablis, and Duplessis
+retired to his own table.
+
+"That is the most extraordinary man," said Frederic, as he squeezed the
+lemon over his oysters, "and very much to be admired."
+
+"How so?  I see nothing at least to admire in his face," said the
+Marquis, with the bluntness of a provincial.
+
+"His face.  Ah! you are a Legitimist,--party prejudice.  He dresses his
+face after the Emperor; in itself a very clever face, surely."
+
+"Perhaps, but not an amiable one.  He looks like a bird of prey."
+
+"All clever men are birds of prey.  The eagles are the heroes, and the
+owls the sages.  Duplessis is not an eagle nor an owl.  I should rather
+call him a falcon, except that I would not attempt to hoodwink him."
+
+"Call him what you will," said the Marquis, indifferently; "M. Duplessis
+can be nothing to me."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," answered Frederic, somewhat nettled by the
+phlegm with which the Provincial regarded the pretensions of the
+Parisian.  "Duplessis, I repeat it, is an extraordinary man.  Though
+untitled, he descends from your old aristocracy; in fact, I believe,
+as his name shows, from the same stem as the Richelieus.  His father was
+a great scholar, and I believe be has read much himself.  Might have
+distinguished himself in literature or at the bar, but his parents died
+fearfully poor; and some distant relations in commerce took charge of
+him, and devoted his talents to the 'Bourse.'  Seven years ago he lived
+in a single chamber, 'au quatrieme,' near the Luxembourg.  He has now a
+hotel, not large but charming, in the Champs Elysees, worth at least six
+hundred thousand francs.  Nor has he made his own fortune alone, but that
+of many others; some of birth as high as your own.  He has the genius of
+riches, and knocks off a million as a poet does an ode, by the force of
+inspiration.  He is hand-in-glove with the Ministers, and has been
+invited to Compiegne by the Emperor.  You will find him very useful."
+
+Alain made a slight movement of incredulous dissent, and changed the
+conversation to reminiscences of old school-boy days.
+
+The dinner at length came to a close.  Frederic rang for the bill,--
+glanced over it.  "Fifty-nine francs," said he, carelessly flinging down
+his napoleon and a half.  The Marquis silently drew forth his purse and
+extracted the same sum.  When they were out of the restaurant, Frederic
+proposed adjourning to his own rooms.  "I can promise you an excellent
+cigar, one of a box given to me by an invaluable young Spaniard attached
+to the Embassy here.  Such cigars are not to be had at Paris for money,
+nor even for love; seeing that women, however devoted and generous, never
+offer you anything better than a cigarette.  Such cigars are only to be
+had for friendship.  Friendship is a jewel."
+
+"I never smoke," answered the Marquis, "but I shall be charmed to come to
+your rooms; only don't let me encroach on your good-nature.  Doubtless
+you have engagements for the evening."
+
+"None till eleven o'clock, when I have promised to go to a soiree to
+which I do not offer to take you; for it is one of those Bohemian
+entertainments at which it would do you harm in the Faubourg to assist,
+--at least until you have made good your position.  Let me see, is not
+the Duchesse de Tarascon a relation of yours?"
+
+"Yes; my poor mother's first cousin."
+
+"I congratulate you.  'Tres grande dame.'  She will launch you in 'puro
+coelo,' as Juno might have launched one of her young peacocks."
+
+"There has been no acquaintance between our houses," returned the
+Marquis, dryly, "since the mesalliance of her second nuptials."
+
+"Mesalliance! second nuptials!  Her second husband was the Duc de
+Tarascon."
+
+"A duke of the First Empire, the grandson of a butcher."
+
+"Diable! you are a severe genealogist, Monsieur le Marquis.  How can
+you consent to walk arm-in-arm with me, whose great-grandfather supplied
+bread to the same army to which the Due de Tarascon's grandfather
+furnished the meat?"
+
+"My dear Frederic, we two have an equal pedigree, for our friendship
+dates from the same hour.  I do not blame the Duchesse de Tarascon for
+marrying the grandson of a butcher, but for marrying the son of a man
+made duke by a usurper.  She abandoned the faith of her house and the
+cause of her sovereign.  Therefore her marriage is a blot on our
+scutcheon."
+
+Frederic raised his eyebrows, but had the tact to pursue the subject
+no further.  He who interferes in the quarrels of relations must pass
+through life without a friend.
+
+The young men now arrived at Lemercier's apartment, an entresol looking
+on the Boulevard des Italiens, consisting of more rooms than a bachelor
+generally requires; low-pitched, indeed, but of good dimensions, and
+decorated and furnished with a luxury which really astonished the
+provincial, though, with the high-bred pride of an oriental, he
+suppressed every sign of surprise.
+
+Florentine cabinets, freshly retouched by the exquisite skill of Mombro;
+costly specimens of old Sevres and Limoges; pictures and bronzes and
+marble statuettes,--all well chosen and of great price, reflected from
+mirrors in Venetian frames,--made a 'coup d'oeil' very favourable to that
+respect which the human mind pays to the evidences of money.  Nor was
+comfort less studied than splendour.  Thick carpets covered the floors,
+doubled and quilted portieres excluded all draughts from chinks in the
+doors.  Having allowed his friend a few minutes to contemplate and admire
+the 'salle a manger' and 'salon' which constituted his more state
+apartments, Frederic then conducted him into a small cabinet, fitted up
+with scarlet cloth and gold fringes, whereon were artistically arranged
+trophies of Eastern weapons and Turkish pipes with amber mouthpieces.
+
+There, placing the Marquis at ease on a divan and flinging himself on
+another, the Parisian exquisite ordered a valet, well dressed as himself,
+to bring coffee and liqueurs; and after vainly pressing one of his
+matchless cigars on his friend, indulged in his own Regalia.
+
+"They are ten years old," said Frederic, with a tone of compassion at
+Alain's self-inflicted loss,--"ten years old.  Born therefore about the
+year in which we two parted--"
+
+"When you were so hastily summoned from college," said the Marquis, "by
+the news of your father's illness.  We expected you back in vain.  Have
+you been at Paris ever since?"
+
+"Ever since; my poor father died of that illness.  His fortune proved
+much larger than was suspected: my share amounted to an income from
+investments in stocks, houses, etc., to upwards of sixty thousand francs
+a-year; and as I wanted six years to my majority of course the capital on
+attaining my majority would be increased by accumulation.  My mother
+desired to keep me near her; my uncle, who was joint guardian with her,
+looked with disdain on our poor little provincial cottage; so promising
+an heir should acquire his finishing education under masters at Paris.
+Long before I was of age, I was initiated into politer mysteries of our
+capital than those celebrated by Eugene Sue.  When I took possession of
+my fortune five years ago, I was considered a Croesus; and really for
+that patriarchal time I was wealthy.  Now, alas! my accumulations have
+vanished in my outfit; and sixty thousand francs a-year is the least a
+Parisian can live upon.  It is not only that all prices have fabulously
+increased, but that the dearer things become, the better people live.
+When I first came out, the world speculated upon me; now, in order to
+keep my standing, I am forced to speculate on the world.  Hitherto I have
+not lost; Duplessis let me into a few good things this year, worth one
+hundred thousand francs or so.  Croesus consulted the Delphic Oracle.
+Duplessis was not alive in the time of Croesus, or Croesus would have
+consulted Duplessis."
+
+Here there was a ring at the outer door of the apartment, and in another
+minute the valet ushered in a gentleman somewhere about the age of
+thirty, of prepossessing countenance, and with the indefinable air of
+good-breeding and 'usage du monde.'  Frederic started up to greet
+cordially the new-comer, and introduced him to the Marquis under the name
+of "Sare Grarm Varn."
+
+"Decidedly," said the visitor, as he took off his paletot and seated
+himself beside the Marquis,--"decidedly, my dear Lemercier," said he, in
+very correct French, and with the true Parisian accent and intonation,
+"you Frenchmen merit that praise for polished ignorance of the language
+of barbarians which a distinguished historian bestows on the ancient
+Romans.  Permit me, Marquis, to submit to you the consideration whether
+Grarm Varn is a fair rendering of my name as truthfully printed on this
+card."
+
+The inscription on the card, thus drawn from its case and placed in
+Alain's hand, was--
+
+                         MR. GRAHAM VANE,
+
+                              No. __ Rue d'Anjou.
+
+The Marquis gazed at it as he might on a hieroglyphic, and passed it on
+to Lemercier in discreet silence.
+
+That gentleman made another attempt at the barbarian appellation.
+
+"'Grar--ham Varne.'  'C'est ca!'  I triumph!  all difficulties yield to
+French energy."
+
+Here the coffee and liqueurs were served; and after a short pause the
+Englishman, who had very quietly been observing the silent Marquis,
+turned to him and said, "Monsieur le Marquis, I presume it was your
+father whom I remember as an acquaintance of my own father at Ems.
+It is many years ago; I was but a child.  The Count de Chambord was then
+at that enervating little spa for the benefit of the Countess's health.
+If our friend Lemercier does not mangle your name as he does mine, I
+understand him to say that you are the Marquis de Rochebriant."
+
+"That is my name: it pleases me to hear that my father was among those
+who flocked to Ems to do homage to the royal personage who deigns to
+assume the title of Count de Chambord."
+
+"My own ancestors clung to the descendants of James II. till their claims
+were buried in the grave of the last Stuart, and I honour the gallant men
+who, like your father, revere in an exile the heir to their ancient
+kings."
+
+The Englishman said this with grace and feeling; the Marquis's heart
+warmed to him at once.
+
+"The first loyal 'gentilhome' I have met at Paris," thought the
+Legitimist; "and, oh, shame! not a Frenchman!"  Graham Vane, now
+stretching himself and accepting the cigar which Lemercier offered him,
+said to that gentleman "You who know your Paris by heart--everybody and
+everything therein worth the knowing, with many bodies and many things
+that are not worth it--can you inform me who and what is a certain lady
+who every fine day may be seen walking in a quiet spot at the outskirts
+of the Bois de Boulogne, not far from the Baron de Rothschild's villa?
+The said lady arrives at this selected spot in a dark-blue coupe without
+armorial bearings, punctually at the hour of three.  She wears always the
+same dress,--a kind of gray pearl-coloured silk, with a 'cachemire'
+shawl.  In age she may be somewhat about twenty--a year or so more or
+less--and has a face as haunting as a Medusa's; not, however, a face to
+turn a man into a stone, but rather of the two turn a stone into a man.
+A clear paleness, with a bloom like an alabaster lamp with the light
+flashing through.  I borrow that illustration from Sare Scott, who
+applied it to Milor Bee-ren."
+
+"I have not seen the lady you describe," answered Lemercier, feeling
+humiliated by the avowal; "in fact, I have not been in that sequestered
+part of the Bois for months; but I will go to-morrow: three o'clock you
+say,--leave it to me; to-morrow evening, if she is a Parisienne, you
+shall know all about her.  But, mon cher, you are not of a jealous
+temperament to confide your discovery to another."
+
+"Yes, I am of a very jealous temperament," replied the Englishman; "but
+jealousy comes after love, and not before it.  I am not in love; I am
+only haunted.  To-morrow evening, then, shall we dine at Philippe's,
+seven o'clock?"
+
+"With all my heart," said Lemercier; "and you too, Alain?"
+
+"Thank you, no," said the Marquis, briefly; and he rose, drew on his
+gloves, and took up his hat.
+
+At these signals of departure, the Englishman, who did not want tact nor
+delicacy, thought that he had made himself 'de trop' in the 'tete-a-tete'
+of two friends of the same age and nation; and, catching up his paletot,
+said hastily, "No, Marquis, do not go yet, and leave our host in
+solitude; for I have an engagement which presses, and only looked in at
+Lemercier's for a moment, seeing the light at his windows.  Permit me to
+hope that our acquaintance will not drop, and inform me where I may have
+the honour to call on you."
+
+"Nay," said the Marquis; "I claim the right of a native to pay my
+respects first to the foreigner who visits our capital, and," he added
+in a lower tone, "who speaks so nobly of those who revere its exiles."
+
+The Englishman saluted, and walked slowly towards the door; but on
+reaching the threshold turned back and made a sign to Lemercier,
+unperceived by Alain.
+
+Frederic understood the sign, and followed Graham Vane into the adjoining
+room, closing the door as he passed.
+
+"My dear Lemercier, of course I should not have intruded on you at this
+hour on a mere visit of ceremony.  I called to say that the Mademoiselle
+Duval whose address you sent me is not the right one,--not the lady whom,
+knowing your wide range of acquaintance, I asked you to aid me in finding
+out."
+
+"Not the right Duval?  Diable!  she answered your description, exactly."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"You said she was very pretty and young,--under twenty."
+
+"You forgot that I said she deserved that description twenty-one years
+ago."
+
+"Ah, so you did; but some ladies are always young.  'Age,' says a wit in
+the 'Figaro,' 'tis a river which the women compel to reascend to its
+source when it has flowed onward more than twenty years.'  Never mind:
+'soyez tranquille;' I will find your Duval yet if she is to be found.
+But why could not the friend who commissioned you to inquire choose a
+name less common?  Duval! every street in Paris has a shop-door over
+which is inscribed the name of Duval."
+
+"Quite true, there is the difficulty; however, my dear Lemercier, pray
+continue to look out for a Louise Duval who was young and pretty twenty-
+one years ago: this search ought to interest me more than that which I
+entrusted to you tonight, respecting the pearly-robed lady; for in the
+last I but gratify my own whim, in the first I discharge a promise to a
+friend.  You, so perfect a Frenchman, know the difference; honour is
+engaged to the first.  Be sure you let me know if you find any other
+Madame or Mademoiselle Duval; and of course you remember your promise not
+to mention to any one the commission of inquiry you so kindly undertake.
+I congratulate you on your friendship for M. de Rochebriant.  What a
+noble countenance and manner!"
+
+Lemercier returned to the Marquis.  "Such a pity you can't dine with us
+to-morrow.  I fear you made but a poor dinner to-day.  But it is always
+better to arrange the menu beforehand.  I will send to Philippe's
+tomorrow.  Do not be afraid."
+
+The Marquis paused a moment, and on his young face a proud struggle was
+visible.  At last he said, bluntly and manfully,
+
+"My dear Frederic, your world and mine are not and cannot be the same.
+Why should I be ashamed to own to my old schoolfellow that I am poor,
+--very poor; that the dinner I have shared with you to-day is to me a
+criminal extravagance?  I lodge in a single chamber on the fourth-story;
+I dine off a single plat at a small restaurateur's; the utmost income I
+can allow to myself does not exceed five thousand francs a year: my
+fortunes I cannot hope much to improve.  In his own country Alain de
+Rochebriant has no career."  Lemercier was so astonished by this
+confession that he remained for some moments silent, eyes and mouth both
+wide open; at length he sprang up, embraced his friend well-nigh sobbing,
+and exclaimed, "'Tant mieux pour moi!'  You must take your lodging with
+me.  I have a charming bedroom to spare.  Don't say no.  It will raise my
+own position to say 'I and Rochebriant keep house together.'  It must be
+so.  Come here to-morrow.  As for not having a career,--bah!  I and
+Duplessis will settle that.  You shall be a millionaire in two years.
+Meanwhile we will join capitals: I my paltry notes, you your grand name.
+Settled!"
+
+"My dear, dear Frederic," said the young noble, deeply affected, "on
+reflection you will see what you propose is impossible.  Poor I may be
+without dishonour; live at another man's cost I cannot do without
+baseness.  It does not require to be 'gentilhomme' to feel that: it is
+enough to be a Frenchman.  Come and see me when you can spare the time.
+There is my address.  You are the only man in Paris to whom I shall be at
+home.  Au revoir."  And breaking away from Lemercier's clasp, the Marquis
+hurried off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Alain reached the house in which he lodged.  Externally a fine house, it
+had been the hotel of a great family in the old regime.  On the first
+floor were still superb apartments, with ceilings painted by Le Brun,
+with walls on which the thick silks still seemed fresh.  These rooms were
+occupied by a rich 'agent de change;' but, like all such ancient palaces,
+the upper stories were wretchedly defective even in the comforts which
+poor men demand nowadays: a back staircase, narrow, dirty, never lighted,
+dark as Erebus, led to the room occupied by the Marquis, which might be
+naturally occupied by a needy student or a virtuous 'grisette.'  But
+there was to him a charm in that old hotel, and the richest 'locataire'
+therein was not treated with a respect so ceremonious as that which at
+tended the lodger on the fourth story.  The porter and his wife were
+Bretons; they came from the village of Rochebriant; they had known
+Alain's parents in their young days; it was their kinsman who had
+recommended him to the hotel which they served: so, when he paused at
+the lodge for his key, which he had left there, the porter's wife was in
+waiting for his return, and insisted on lighting him upstairs and seeing
+to his fire, for after a warm day the night had turned to that sharp
+biting cold which is more trying in Paris than even in London.
+
+The old woman, running up the stairs before him, opened the door of his
+room, and busied herself at the fire.  "Gently, my good Marthe," said he,
+"that log suffices.  I have been extravagant to-day, and must pinch for
+it."
+
+"M. le Marquis jests," said the old woman, laughing.
+
+"No, Marthe; I am serious.  I have sinned, but I shall reform.  'Entre
+nous,' my dear friend, Paris is very dear when one sets one's foot out
+of doors: I must soon go back to Rochebriant."
+
+"When M. le Marquis goes back to Rochebriant he must take with him a
+Madame la Marquise,--some pretty angel with a suitable dot."
+
+"A dot suitable to the ruins of Rochebriant would not suffice to repair
+them, Marthe: give me my dressing-gown, and good-night."
+
+"'Bon repos, M. le Marquis! beaux reves, et bel avenir.'"
+
+"'Bel avenir!'" murmured the young man, bitterly, leaning his cheek on
+his hand; "what fortune fairer than the present can be mine? yet inaction
+in youth is more keenly felt than in age.  How lightly I should endure
+poverty if it brought poverty's ennobling companion, Labour,--denied to
+me!  Well, well; I must go back to the old rock: on this ocean there is
+no sail, not even an oar, for me."
+
+Alain de Rochebriant had not been reared to the expectation of poverty.
+The only son of a father whose estates were large beyond those of most
+nobles in modern France, his destined heritage seemed not unsuitable to
+his illustrious birth.  Educated at a provincial academy, he had been
+removed at the age of sixteen to Rochebriant, and lived there simply and
+lonelily enough, but still in a sort of feudal state, with an aunt, an
+elder and unmarried sister to his father.
+
+His father he never saw but twice after leaving college.  That brilliant
+seigneur visited France but rarely, for very brief intervals, residing
+wholly abroad.  To him went all the revenues of Rochebriant save what
+sufficed for the manage of his son and his sister.  It was the cherished
+belief of these two loyal natures that the Marquis secretly devoted his
+fortune to the cause of the Bourbons; how, they knew not, though they
+often amused themselves by conjecturing: and, the young man, as he grew
+up, nursed the hope that he should soon hear that the descendant of Henri
+Quatre had crossed the frontier on a white charger and hoisted the old
+gonfalon with its 'fleur-de-lis.'  Then, indeed, his own career would be
+opened, and the sword of the Kerouecs drawn from its sheath.  Day after
+day he expected to hear of revolts, of which his noble father was
+doubtless the soul.  But the Marquis, though a sincere Legitimist, was
+by no means an enthusiastic fanatic.  He was simply a very proud, a very
+polished, a very luxurious, and, though not without the kindliness and
+generosity which were common attributes of the old French noblesse, a
+very selfish grand seigneur.
+
+Losing his wife (who died the first year of marriage in giving birth to
+Alain) while he was yet very young, he had lived a frank libertine life
+until he fell submissive under tho despotic yoke of a Russian Princess,
+who, for some mysterious reason, never visited her own country and
+obstinately refused to reside in France.  She was fond of travel, and
+moved yearly from London to Naples, Naples to Vienna, Berlin, Madrid,
+Seville, Carlsbad, Baden-Baden,--anywhere for caprice or change, except
+Paris.  This fair wanderer succeeded in chaining to herself the heart and
+the steps of the Marquis de Rochebriant.
+
+She was very rich; she lived semi-royally.  Hers was just the house in
+which it suited the Marquis to be the 'enfant qate.'  I suspect that,
+cat-like, his attachment was rather to the house than to the person of
+his mistress.  Not that he was domiciled with the Princess; that would
+have been somewhat too much against the proprieties, greatly too much
+against the Marquis's notions of his own dignity.  He had his own
+carriage, his own apartments, his own suite, as became so grand a
+seigneur and the lover of so grand a dame.  His estates, mortgaged before
+he came to them, yielded no income sufficient for his wants; he mortgaged
+deeper and deeper, year after year, till he could mortgage them no more.
+He sold his hotel at Paris; he accepted without scruple his sister's
+fortune; he borrowed with equal 'sang froid' the two hundred thousand
+francs which his son on coming of age inherited from his mother.
+Alain yielded that fortune to him without a murmur,--nay, with pride;
+he thought it destined to go towards raising a regiment for the
+fleur-de-lis.
+
+To do the Marquis justice, he was fully persuaded that he should shortly
+restore to his sister and son what he so recklessly took from them.  He
+was engaged to be married to his Princess so soon as her own husband
+died.  She had been separated from the Prince for many years, and every
+year it was said he could not last a year longer.  But he completed the
+measure of his conjugal iniquities by continuing to live; and one day,
+by mistake, Death robbed the lady of the Marquis instead of the Prince.
+
+This was an accident which the Marquis had never counted upon.  He was
+still young enough to consider himself young; in fact, one principal
+reason for keeping Alain secluded in Bretagne was his reluctance to
+introduce into the world a son "as old as myself" he would say
+pathetically.  The news of his death, which happened at Baden after a
+short attack of bronchitis caught in a supper 'al fresco' at the old
+castle, was duly transmitted to Rochebriant by the Princess; and the
+shock to Alain and his aunt was the greater because they had seen so
+little of the departed that they regarded him as a heroic myth, an
+impersonation of ancient chivalry, condemning himself to voluntary exile
+rather than do homage to usurpers.  But from their grief they were soon
+roused by the terrible doubt whether Rochebriant could still be retained
+in the family.  Besides the mortgagees, creditors from half the capitals
+in Europe sent in their claims; and all the movable effects transmitted
+to Alain by his father's confidential Italian valet, except sundry
+carriages and horses which were sold at Baden for what they would fetch,
+were a magnificent dressing-case, in the secret drawer of which were some
+bank-notes amounting to thirty thousand francs, and three large boxes
+containing the Marquis's correspondence, a few miniature female
+portraits, and a great many locks of hair.
+
+Wholly unprepared for the ruin that stared him in the face, the young
+Marquis evinced the natural strength of his character by the calmness
+with which he met the danger, and the intelligence with which he
+calculated and reduced it.
+
+By the help of the family notary in the neighbouring town, he made
+himself master of his liabilities and his means; and he found that, after
+paying all debts and providing for the interest of the mortgages, a
+property which ought to have realized a rental of L10,000 a year yielded
+not more than L400.  Nor was even this margin safe, nor the property out
+of peril; for the principal mortgagee, who was a capitalist in Paris
+named Louvier, having had during the life of the late Marquis more than
+once to wait for his half-yearly interest longer than suited his
+patience,--and his patience was not enduring,--plainly declared that if
+the same delay recurred he should put his right of seizure in force; and
+in France still more than in England, bad seasons seriously affect the
+security of rents.  To pay away L9,600 a year regularly out of L10,000,
+with the penalty of forfeiting the whole if not paid,--whether crops may
+fail, farmers procrastinate, and timber fall in price,--is to live with
+the sword of Damocles over one's head.
+
+For two years and more, however, Alain met his difficulties with prudence
+and vigour; he retrenched the establishment hitherto kept at the chateau,
+resigned such rural pleasures as he had been accustomed to indulge, and
+lived like one of his petty farmers.  But the risks of the future
+remained undiminished.
+
+"There is but one way, Monsieur le Marquis," said the family notary,
+M. Hebert, "by which you can put your estate in comparative safety.
+Your father raised his mortgages from time to time, as he wanted money,
+and often at interest above the average market interest.  You may add
+considerably to your income by consolidating all these mortgages into one
+at a lower percentage, and in so doing pay off this formidable mortgagee,
+M. Louvier, who, I shrewdly suspect, is bent upon becoming the proprietor
+of Rochebriant.  Unfortunately those few portions of your land which were
+but lightly charged, and, lying contiguous to small proprietors, were
+coveted by them, and could be advantageously sold, are already gone to
+pay the debts of Monsieur the late Marquis.  There are, however, two
+small farms which, bordering close on the town of S_____, I think I could
+dispose of for building purposes at high rates; but these lands are
+covered by M. Louvier's general mortgage, and he has refused to release
+them, unless the whole debt be paid.  Were that debt therefore
+transferred to another mortgagee, we might stipulate for their exception,
+and in so doing secure a sum of more than 100,000 francs, which you could
+keep in reserve for a pressing or unforeseen occasion, and make the
+nucleus of a capital devoted to the gradual liquidation of the charges on
+the estate.  For with a little capital, Monsieur le Marquis, your rent-
+roll might be very greatly increased, the forests and orchards improved,
+those meadows round S_____  drained and irrigated.  Agriculture is
+beginning to be understood in Bretagne, and your estate would soon double
+its value in the hands of a spirited capitalist.  My advice to you,
+therefore, is to go to Paris, employ a good 'avoue,' practised in such
+branch of his profession, to negotiate the consolidation of your
+mortgages upon terms that will enable you to sell outlying portions,
+and so pay off the charge by instalments agreed upon; to see if some safe
+company or rich individual can be found to undertake for a term of years
+the management of your forests, the draining of the S_____  meadows, the
+superintendence of your fisheries, etc.  They, it is true, will
+monopolize the profits for many years,--perhaps twenty; but you are a
+young man: at the end of that time you will reenter on your estate with
+a rental so improved that the mortgages, now so awful, will seem to you
+comparatively trivial."
+
+In pursuance of this advice, the young Marquis had come to Paris
+fortified with a letter from M. Hebert to an 'avoue' of eminence, and
+with many letters from his aunt to the nobles of the Faubourg connected
+with his house.  Now one reason why M. Hebert had urged his client to
+undertake this important business in person, rather than volunteer his
+own services in Paris, was somewhat extra-professional.  He had a sincere
+and profound affection for Alain; he felt compassion for that young life
+so barrenly wasted in seclusion and severe privations; he respected, but
+was too practical a man of business to share, those chivalrous sentiments
+of loyalty to an exiled dynasty which disqualified the man for the age he
+lived in, and, if not greatly modified, would cut him off from the hopes
+and aspirations of his eager generation.  He thought plausibly enough
+that the air of the grand metropolis was necessary to the mental health,
+enfeebled and withering amidst the feudal mists of Bretagne; that once in
+Paris, Alain would imbibe the ideas of Paris, adapt himself to some
+career leading to honour and to fortune, for which he took facilities
+from his high birth, an historical name too national for any dynasty not
+to welcome among its adherents, and an intellect not yet sharpened by
+contact and competition with others, but in itself vigorous, habituated
+to thought, and vivified by the noble aspirations which belong to
+imaginative natures.
+
+At the least, Alain would be at Paris in the social position which would
+afford him the opportunities of a marriage, in which his birth and rank
+would be readily accepted as an equivalent to some ample fortune that
+would serve to redeem the endangered seigneuries.  He therefore warned
+Alain that the affair for which he went to Paris might be tedious, that
+lawyers were always slow, and advised him to calculate on remaining
+several months, perhaps a year; delicately suggesting that his rearing
+hitherto had been too secluded for his age and rank, and that a year at
+Paris, even if he failed in the object which took him there, would not be
+thrown away in the knowledge of men and things that would fit him better
+to grapple with his difficulties on his return.
+
+Alain divided his spare income between his aunt and himself, and had come
+to Paris resolutely determined to live within the L200 a year which
+remained to his share.  He felt the revolution in his whole being that
+commenced when out of sight of the petty principality in which he was the
+object of that feudal reverence, still surviving in the more unfrequented
+parts of Bretagne, for the representatives of illustrious names connected
+with the immemorial legends of the province.
+
+The very bustle of a railway, with its crowd and quickness and
+unceremonious democracy of travel, served to pain and confound and
+humiliate that sense of individual dignity in which he had been nurtured.
+He felt that, once away from Rochebriant, he was but a cipher in the sum
+of human beings.  Arrived at Paris, and reaching the gloomy hotel to
+which he had been recommended, he greeted even the desolation of that
+solitude which is usually so oppressive to a stranger in the metropolis
+of his native land.  Loneliness was better than the loss of self in the
+reek and pressure of an unfamiliar throng.  For the first few days he had
+wandered over Paris without calling even on the 'avoue' to whom M. Hebert
+had directed him.  He felt with the instinctive acuteness of a mind
+which, under sounder training, would have achieved no mean distinction,
+that it was a safe precaution to imbue himself with the atmosphere of the
+place, and seize on those general ideas which in great capitals are so
+contagious that they are often more accurately caught by the first
+impressions than by subsequent habit, before he brought his mind into
+collision with those of the individuals he had practically to deal with.
+
+At last he repaired to the 'avoue,' M. Gandrin, Rue St. Florentin.  He
+had mechanically formed his idea of the abode and person of an 'avoue'
+from his association with M. Hebert.  He expected to find a dull house in
+a dull street near the centre of business, remote from the haunts of
+idlers, and a grave man of unpretending exterior and matured years.
+
+He arrived at a hotel newly fronted, richly decorated, in the fashionable
+quartier close by the Tuileries.  He entered a wide 'porte cochere,' and
+was directed by the concierge to mount 'au premier.'  There, first
+detained in an office faultlessly neat, with spruce young men at smart
+desks, he was at length admitted into a noble salon, and into the
+presence of a gentleman lounging in an easy-chair before a magnificent
+bureau of 'marqueterie, genre Louis Seize,' engaged in patting a white
+curly lapdog, with a pointed nose and a shrill bark.
+
+The gentleman rose politely on his entrance, and released the dog, who,
+after sniffing the Marquis, condescended not to bite.
+
+"Monsieur le Marquis," said M. Gandrin, glancing at the card and the
+introductory note from M. Hebert, which Alain had sent in, and which lay
+on the 'secretaire' beside heaps of letters nicely arranged and labelled,
+"charmed to make the honour of your acquaintance; just arrived at Paris?
+So M. Hebert--a very worthy person whom I have never seen, but with whom
+I have had correspondence--tells me you wish for my advice; in fact, he
+wrote to me some days ago, mentioning the business in question,--
+consolidation of mortgages.  A very large sum wanted, Monsieur le
+Marquis, and not to be had easily."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Alain, quietly, "I should imagine that there must
+be many capitalists in Paris willing to invest in good securities at fair
+interest."
+
+"You are mistaken, Marquis; very few such capitalists.  Men worth money
+nowadays like quick returns and large profits, thanks to the magnificent
+system of 'Credit Mobilier,' in which, as you are aware, a man may place
+his money in any trade or speculation without liabilities beyond his
+share.  Capitalists are nearly all traders or speculators."
+
+"Then," said the Marquis, half rising, "I am to presume, sir, that you
+are not likely to assist me."
+
+"No, I don't say that, Marquis.  I will look with care into the matter.
+Doubtless you have with you an abstract of the, necessary documents, the
+conditions of the present mortgages, the rental of the estate, its
+probable prospects, and so forth."
+
+"Sir, I have such an abstract with me at Paris; and having gone into
+it myself with M. Hebert, I can pledge you my word that it is strictly
+faithful to the facts."
+
+The Marquis said this with naive simplicity, as if his word were quite
+sufficient to set that part of the question at rest.  M. Gandrin smiled
+politely and said, "'Eh bien,' M. le Marquis: favour me with the
+abstract; in a week's time you shall have my opinion.  You enjoy Paris?
+Greatly improved under the Emperor.  'Apropos,' Madame Gandrin receives
+tomorrow evening; allow me that opportunity to present you to her."
+Unprepared for the proffered hospitality, the Marquis had no option but
+to murmur his gratification and assent.
+
+In a minute more he was in the streets.  The next evening he went to
+Madame Gandrin's,--a brilliant reception,--a whole moving flower-bed of
+"decorations" there.  Having gone through the ceremony of presentation to
+Madame Gandrin,--a handsome woman dressed to perfection, and conversing
+with the secretary to an embassy,--the young noble ensconced himself in
+an obscure and quiet corner, observing all and imagining that he escaped
+observation.  And as the young men of his own years glided by him, or as
+their talk reached his ears, he became aware that from top to toe, within
+and without, he was old-fashioned, obsolete, not of his race, not of his
+day.  His rank itself seemed to him a waste-paper title-deed to a
+heritage long lapsed.  Not thus the princely seigneurs of Rochebriant
+made their 'debut' at the capital of their nation.  They had had the
+'entree' to the cabinets of their kings; they had glittered in the halls
+of Versailles; they had held high posts of distinction in court and camp;
+the great Order of St. Louis had seemed their hereditary appanage.  His
+father, though a voluntary exile in manhood, had been in childhood a
+king's page, and throughout life remained the associate of princes; and
+here, in an 'avoue's soiree,' unknown, unregarded, an expectant on an
+'avoue's' patronage, stood the last lord of Rochebriant.
+
+It is easy to conceive that Alain did not stay long.  But he stayed long
+enough to convince him that on L200 a year the polite society of Paris,
+even as seen at M. Gandrin's, was not for him.  Nevertheless, a day or
+two after, he resolved to call upon the nearest of his kinsmen to whom
+his aunt had given him letters.  With the Count de Vandemar, one of his
+fellow-nobles of the sacred Faubourg, he should be no less Rochebriant,
+whether in a garret or a palace.  The Vandemars, in fact, though for many
+generations before the First Revolution a puissant and brilliant family,
+had always recognized the Rochebriants as the head of their house,--the
+trunk from which they had been slipped in the fifteenth century, when a
+younger son of the Rochebriants married a wealthy heiress and took the
+title with the lands of Vandemar.
+
+Since then the two families had often intermarried.  The present count
+had a reputation for ability, was himself a large proprietor, and might
+furnish advice to guide Alain in his negotiations with M. Gandrin.  The
+Hotel do Vandemar stood facing the old Hotel de Rochebriant; it was less
+spacious, but not less venerable, gloomy, and prison-like.
+
+As he turned his eyes from the armorial scutcheon which still rested,
+though chipped and mouldering, over the portals of his lost ancestral
+house, and was about to cross the street, two young men, who seemed two
+or three years older than himself, emerged on horseback from the Hotel
+de Vandemar.
+
+Handsome young men, with the lofty look of the old race, dressed with the
+punctilious care of person which is not foppery in men of birth, but
+seems part of the self-respect that appertains to the old chivalric point
+of honour.  The horse of one of these cavaliers made a caracole which
+brought it nearly upon Alain as he was about to cross.  The rider,
+checking his steed, lifted his hat to Alain and uttered a word of apology
+in the courtesy of ancient high-breeding, but still with condescension as
+to an inferior.  This little incident, and the slighting kind of notice
+received from coevals of his own birth, and doubtless his own blood,--for
+he divined truly that they were the sons of the Count de Vandemar,--
+disconcerted Alain to a degree which perhaps a Frenchman alone can
+comprehend.  He had even half a mind to give up his visit and turn back.
+However, his native manhood prevailed over that morbid sensitiveness
+which, born out of the union of pride and poverty, has all the effects
+of vanity, and yet is not vanity itself.
+
+The Count was at home, a thin spare man with a narrow but high forehead,
+and an expression of countenance keen, severe, and 'un peu moqueuse.'
+
+He received the Marquis, however, at first with great cordiality,
+kissed him on both sides of his cheek, called him "cousin," expressed
+immeasurable regret that the Countess was gone out on one of the missions
+of charity in which the great ladies of the Faubourg religiously interest
+themselves, and that his sons had just ridden forth to the Bois.
+
+As Alain, however, proceeded, simply and without false shame,
+to communicate the object of his visit at Paris, the extent of his
+liabilities, and the penury of his means, the smile vanished from
+the Count's face.  He somewhat drew back his fauteuil in the movement
+common to men who wish to estrange themselves from some other man's
+difficulties; and when Alain came to a close, the Count remained some
+moments seized with a slight cough; and, gazing intently on the carpet,
+at length he said, "My dear young friend, your father behaved extremely
+ill to you,--dishonourably, fraudulently."
+
+"Hold!" said the Marquis, colouring high.  "Those are words no man can
+apply to my father in my presence."
+
+The Count stared, shrugged his shoulders, and replied with 'sang froid,'
+"Marquis, if you are contented with your father's conduct, of course it
+is no business of mine: he never injured me.  I presume, however, that,
+considering my years and my character, you come to me for advice: is it
+so?"
+
+Alain bowed his head in assent.
+
+"There are four courses for one in your position to take," said the
+Count, placing the index of the right hand successively on the thumb and
+three fingers of the left,--"four courses, and no more.
+
+"First.  To do as your notary recommended: consolidate your mortgages,
+patch up your income as you best can, return to Rochebriant, and devote
+the rest of your existence to the preservation of your property.  By that
+course your life will be one of permanent privation, severe struggle; and
+the probability is that you will not succeed: there will come one or two
+bad seasons, the farmers will fail to pay, the mortgagee will foreclose,
+and you may find yourself, after twenty years of anxiety and torment,
+prematurely old and without a sou.
+
+"Course the second.  Rochebriant, though so heavily encumbered as to
+yield you some such income as your father gave to his chef de cuisine,
+is still one of those superb 'terres' which bankers and Jews and stock-
+jobbers court and hunt after, for which they will give enormous sums.
+If you place it in good hands, I do not doubt that you could dispose
+of the property within three months, on terms that would leave you a
+considerable surplus, which, invested with judgment, would afford you
+whereon you could live at Paris in a way suitable to your rank and age.
+Need we go further?--does this course smile to you?"
+
+"Pass on, Count; I will defend to the last what I take from my ancestors,
+and cannot voluntarily sell their roof-tree and their tombs."
+
+"Your name would still remain, and you would be just as well received
+in Paris, and your 'noblesse' just as implicitly conceded, if all Judaea
+encamped upon Rochebriant.  Consider how few of us 'gentilshommes' of the
+old regime have any domains left to us.  Our names alone survive: no
+revolution can efface them."
+
+"It may be so, but pardon me; there are subjects on which we cannot
+reason,--we can but feel.  Rochebriant may be torn from me, but I cannot
+yield it."
+
+"I proceed to the third course.  Keep the chateau and give up its
+traditions; remain 'de facto' Marquis of Rochebriant, but accept the new
+order of things.  Make yourself known to the people in power.  They will
+be charmed to welcome you a convert from the old noblesse is a guarantee
+of stability to the new system.  You will be placed in diplomacy;
+effloresce into an ambassador, a minister,--and ministers nowadays
+have opportunities to become enormously rich."
+
+"That course is not less impossible than the last.  Till Henry V.
+formally resign his right to the throne of Saint Louis, I can be servant
+to no other man seated on that throne."
+
+"Such, too, is my creed," said the Count, "and I cling to it; but my
+estate is not mortgaged, and I have neither the tastes nor the age for
+public employments.  The last course is perhaps better than the rest; at
+all events it is the easiest.  A wealthy marriage; even if it must be a
+'mesalliance.'  I think at your age, with your appearance, that your name
+is worth at least two million francs in the eyes of a rich 'roturier'
+with an ambitious daughter."
+
+"Alas!" said the young man, rising, "I see I shall have to go back to
+Rochebriant.  I cannot sell my castle, I cannot sell my creed, and I
+cannot sell my name and myself."
+
+"The last all of us did in the old 'regime,' Marquis.  Though I still
+retain the title of Vandemar, my property comes from the Farmer-General's
+daughter, whom my great-grandfather, happily for us, married in the days
+of Louis Quinze.  Marriages with people of sense and rank have always
+been 'marriages de convenance' in France.  It is only in 'le petit monde'
+that men having nothing marry girls having nothing, and I don't believe
+they are a bit the happier for it.  On the contrary, the 'quarrels de
+menage' leading to frightful crimes appear by the 'Gazette des Tribunaux'
+to be chiefly found among those who do not sell themselves at the altar."
+
+The old Count said this with a grim 'persiflage.'  He was a Voltairian.
+
+Voltairianism, deserted by the modern Liberals of France, has its chief
+cultivation nowadays among the wits of the old 'regime.'  They pick up
+its light weapons on the battle-field on which their fathers perished,
+and re-feather against the 'canaille' the shafts which had been pointed
+against the 'noblesse.'
+
+"Adieu, Count," said Alain, rising; "I do not thank you less for your
+advice because I have not the wit to profit by it."
+
+"'Au revoir,' my cousin; you will think better of it when you have been
+a month or two at Paris.  By the way, my wife receives every Wednesday;
+consider our house yours."
+
+"Count, can I enter into the world which Madame la Comtesse receives, in
+the way that becomes my birth, on the income I take from my fortune?"
+
+The Count hesitated.  "No," said he at last, frankly; "not because you
+will be less welcome or less respected, but because I see that you have
+all the pride and sensitiveness of a 'seigneur de province.'  Society
+would therefore give you pain, not pleasure.  More than this, I know,
+by the remembrance of my own youth and the sad experience of my own
+sons, that you would be irresistibly led into debt, and debt in your
+circumstances would be the loss of Rochebriant.  No; I invite you to
+visit us.  I offer you the most select but not the most brilliant circles
+of Paris, because my wife is religious, and frightens away the birds of
+gay plumage with the scarecrows of priests and bishops.  But if you
+accept my invitation and my offer, I am bound, as an old man of the world
+to a young kinsman, to say that the chances are that you will be ruined."
+
+"I thank you, Count, for your candour; and I now acknowledge that I have
+found a relation and a guide," answered the Marquis, with nobility of
+mien that was not without a pathos which touched the hard heart of the
+old man.
+
+"Come at least whenever you want a sincere if a rude friend;" and though
+he did not kiss his cousin's cheek this time, he gave him, with more
+sincerity, a parting shake of the hand.
+
+And these made the principal events in Alain's Paris life till he met
+Frederic Lemercier.  Hitherto he had received no definite answer from
+M. Gandrin, who had postponed an interview, not having had leisure to
+make himself master of all the details in the abstract sent to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The next day, towards the afternoon, Frederic Lemercier, somewhat
+breathless from the rapidity at which he had ascended to so high an
+eminence, burst into Alain's chamber.
+
+"'Br-r!  mon cher;' what superb exercise for the health--how it must
+strengthen the muscles and expand the chest!  After this who should
+shrink from scaling Mont Blanc?  Well, well.  I have been meditating on
+your business ever since we parted.  But I would fain know more of its
+details.  You shall confide them to me as we drive through the Bois.  My
+coupe is below, and the day is beautiful; come."
+
+To the young Marquis, the gayety, the heartiness of his college friend
+were a cordial.  How different from the dry counsels of the Count de
+Vandemar!  Hope, though vaguely, entered into his heart.  Willingly he
+accepted Frederic's invitation, and the young men were soon rapidly borne
+along the Champs Elysees.  As briefly as he could Alain described the
+state of his affairs, the nature of his mortgages, and the result of his
+interview with M. Gandrin.
+
+Frederic listened attentively.  "Then Gandrin has given you as yet no
+answer?"
+
+"None; but I have a note from him this morning asking me to call
+to-morrow."
+
+"After you have seen him, decide on nothing,--if he makes you any offer.
+Get back your abstract, or a copy of it, and confide it to me.  Gandrin
+ought to help you; he transacts affairs in a large way.  'Belle
+clientele' among the millionnaires.  But his clients expect fabulous
+profits, and so does he.  As for your principal mortgagee, Louvier, you
+know, of course, who he is."
+
+"No, except that M. Hebert told me that he was very rich."
+
+"'Rich'  I should think so; one of the Kings of Finance, Ah! observe
+those young men on horseback."
+
+Alain looked forth and recognized the two cavaliers whom he had
+conjectured to be the sons of the Count de Vandemar.
+
+"Those 'beaux garcons' are fair specimens of your Faubourg," said
+Frederic; "they would decline my acquaintance because my grandfather kept
+a shop, and they keep a shop between them."
+
+"A shop!  I am mistaken, then.  Who are they?"
+
+"Raoul and Enguerrand, sons of that mocker of man, the Count de
+Vandemar."
+
+"And they keep a shop!  You are jesting."
+
+"A shop at which you may buy gloves and perfumes, Rue de la Chaussee
+d'Antin.  Of course they don't serve at the counter; they only invest
+their pocket-money in the speculation; and, in so doing, treble at least
+their pocket-money, buy their horses, and keep their grooms."
+
+"Is it possible! nobles of such birth!  How shocked the Count would be
+if he knew it!"
+
+"Yes, very much shocked if he was supposed to know it.  But he is too
+wise a father not to give his sons limited allowances and unlimited
+liberty, especially the liberty to add to the allowances as they please.
+Look again at them; no better riders and more affectionate brothers since
+the date of Castor and Pollux.  Their tastes indeed differ--Raoul is
+religious and moral, melancholy and dignified; Enguerrand is a lion of
+the first water,--elegant to the tips of his nails.  These demigods
+nevertheless are very mild to mortals.  Though Enguerrand is the best
+pistol-shot in Paris, and Raoul the best fencer, the first is so good-
+tempered that you would be a brute to quarrel with him, the last so true
+a Catholic, that if you quarrelled with him you need not fear his sword.
+He would not die in the committal of what the Church holds a mortal sin."
+
+"Are you speaking ironically?  Do you mean to imply that men of the name
+of Vandemar are not brave?"
+
+On the contrary, I believe that, though masters of their weapons, they
+are too brave to abuse their skill; and I must add that, though they are
+sleeping partners in a shop, they would not cheat you of a farthing.
+Benign stars on earth, as Castor and Pollux were in heaven."
+
+"But partners in a shop!"
+
+"Bah! when a minister himself, like the late M. de M______, kept a shop,
+and added the profits of 'bons bons' to his revenue, you may form some
+idea of the spirit of the age.  If young nobles are not generally
+sleeping partners in shops, still they are more or less adventurers in
+commerce.  The Bourse is the profession of those who have no other
+profession.  You have visited the Bourse?"
+
+"No."
+
+"No! this is just the hour.  We have time yet for the Bois.  Coachman,
+drive to the Bourse."
+
+"The fact is," resumed Frederic, "that gambling is one of the wants of
+civilized men.  The 'rouge-et-noir' and 'roulette' tables are forbidden;
+the hells closed: but the passion for making money without working for it
+must have its vent, and that vent is the Bourse.  As instead of a hundred
+wax-lights you now have one jet of gas, so instead of a hundred hells you
+have now one Bourse, and--it is exceedingly convenient; always at hand;
+no discredit being seen there as it was to be seen at Frascati's; on the
+contrary, at once respectable, and yet the mode."
+
+The coupe stops at the Bourse, our friends mount the steps, glide through
+the pillars, deposit their canes at a place destined to guard them, and
+the Marquis follows Frederic up a flight of stairs till he gains the open
+gallery round a vast hall below.  Such a din! such a clamour!
+disputations, wrangling, wrathful.
+
+Here Lemercier distinguished some friends, whom he joined for a few
+minutes.
+
+Alain left alone, looked down into the hall.  He thought himself in some
+stormy scene of the First Revolution.  An English contested election in
+the market-place of a borough when the candidates are running close on
+each other--the result doubtful, passions excited, the whole borough in
+civil war--is peaceful compared to the scene at the Bourse.
+
+Bulls and bears screaming, bawling, gesticulating, as if one were about
+to strangle the other; the whole, to an uninitiated eye, a confusion, a
+Babel, which it seems absolutely impossible to reconcile to the notion of
+quiet mercantile transactions, the purchase and sale of shares and
+stocks.  As Alain gazed bewildered, he felt himself gently touched, and,
+looking round, saw the Englishman.
+
+"A lively scene!" whispered Mr. Vane.  "This is the heart of Paris: it
+beats very loudly."
+
+"Is your Bourse in London like this?"
+
+"I cannot tell you: at our Exchange the general public are not admitted:
+the privileged priests of that temple sacrifice their victims in closed
+penetralia, beyond which the sounds made in the operation do not travel
+to ears profane.  But had we an Exchange like this open to all the world,
+and placed, not in a region of our metropolis unknown to fashion, but in
+some elegant square in St. James's or at Hyde Park Corner, I suspect that
+our national character would soon undergo a great change, and that all
+our idlers and sporting-men would make their books there every day,
+instead of waiting long months in 'ennui' for the Doncaster and the
+Derby.  At present we have but few men on the turf; we should then have
+few men not on Exchange, especially if we adopt your law, and can
+contrive to be traders without risk of becoming bankrupts.  Napoleon I.
+called us a shopkeeping nation.  Napoleon III. has taught France to excel
+us in everything, and certainly he has made Paris a shopkeeping city."
+
+Alain thought of Raoul and Enguerrand, and blushed to find that what he
+considered a blot on his countrymen was so familiarly perceptible to a
+foreigner's eye.
+
+"And the Emperor has done wisely, at least for the time," continued the
+Englishman, with a more thoughtful accent.  "He has found vent thus for
+that very dangerous class in Paris society to which the subdivision of
+property gave birth; namely the crowd of well-born, daring young men
+without fortune and without profession.  He has opened the 'Bourse' and
+said, 'There, I give you employment, resource, an 'avenir.''  He has
+cleared the byways into commerce and trade, and opened new avenues of
+wealth to the noblesse, whom the great Revolution so unwisely beggared.
+What other way to rebuild a 'noblesse' in France, and give it a chance
+of power be side an access to fortune? But to how many sides of your
+national character has the Bourse of Paris magnetic attraction!  You
+Frenchmen are so brave that you could not be happy without facing
+danger, so covetous of distinction that you would pine yourselves away
+without a dash, coute quo coute, at celebrity and a red ribbon.  Danger!
+look below at that arena: there it is; danger daily, hourly.  But there
+also is celebrity; win at the Bourse, as of old in a tournament, and
+paladins smile on you, and ladies give you their scarves, or, what is
+much the same, they allow you to buy their cachemires.  Win at the
+Bourse,--what follows?  the Chamber, the Senate, the Cross, the
+Minister's 'portefeuille.'  I might rejoice in all this for the sake of
+Europe,--could it last, and did it not bring the consequences that
+follow the demoralization which attends it.  The Bourse and the Credit
+Mobilier keep Paris quiet, at least as quiet as it can be. These are the
+secrets of this reign of splendour; these the two lions couchants on
+which rests the throne of the Imperial reconstructor."
+
+Alain listened surprised and struck.  He had not given the Englishman
+credit for the cast of mind which such reflections evinced.
+
+Here Lemercier rejoined them, and shook hands with Graham Vane, who,
+taking him aside, said, "But you promised to go to the Bois, and indulge
+my insane curiosity about the lady in the pearl-coloured robe?"
+
+"I have not forgotten; it is not half-past two yet; you said three.
+'Soyez tranquille;' I drive thither from the Bourse with Rochebriant."
+
+"Is it necessary to take with you that very good-looking Marquis?"
+
+"I thought you said you were not jealous, because not yet in love.
+However, if Rochebriant occasions you the pang which your humble servant
+failed to inflict, I will take care that he do not see the lady."
+
+"No," said the Englishman; "on consideration, I should be very much
+obliged to any one with whom she would fall in love.  That would
+disenchant me.  Take the Marquis by all means."
+
+Meanwhile Alain, again looking down, saw just under him, close by one
+of the pillars, Lucien Duplessis.  He was standing apart from the throng,
+a small space cleared round himself, and two men who had the air of
+gentlemen of the 'beau monde,' with whom he was conferring.  Duplessis,
+thus seen, was not like the Duplessis at the restaurant.  It would be
+difficult to explain what the change was, but it forcibly struck Alain:
+the air was more dignified, the expression keener; there was a look of
+conscious power and command about the man even at that distance; the
+intense, concentrated intelligence of his eye, his firm lip, his marked
+features, his projecting, massive brow, would have impressed a very
+ordinary observer.  In fact, the man was here in his native element; in
+the field in which his intellect gloried, commanded, and had signalized
+itself by successive triumphs.  Just thus may be the change in the great
+orator whom you deemed insignificant in a drawing-room, when you see his
+crest rise above a reverential audience; or the great soldier, who was
+not distinguishable from the subaltern in a peaceful club, could you see
+him issuing the order to his aids-de-camp amidst the smoke and roar of
+the battle-field.
+
+"Ah, Marquis!" said Graham Vane, "are you gazing at Duplessis?  He is the
+modern genius of Paris.  He is at once the Cousin, the Guizot, and the
+Victor Hugo of speculation.  Philosophy, Eloquence, audacious Romance,--
+all Literature now is swallowed up in the sublime epic of 'Agiotage,' and
+Duplessis is the poet of the Empire."
+
+"Well said, M. Grarm Varn," cried Frederic, forgetting his recent lesson
+in English names.  "Alain underrates that great man.  How could an
+Englishman appreciate him so well?"
+
+"'Ma foi!'" returned Graham, quietly.  "I am studying to think at Paris,
+in order some day or other to know how to act in London.  Time for the
+Bois.  Lemercier, we meet at seven,--Philippe's."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+"What do you think of the Bourse?" asked Lemercier, as their carriage
+took the way to the Bois.
+
+"I cannot think of it yet; I am stunned.  It seems to me as if I had been
+at a 'Sabbat,' of which the wizards were 'agents de change,' but not less
+bent upon raising Satan."
+
+"Pooh!  the best way to exorcise Satan is to get rich enough not to be
+tempted by him.  The fiend always loved to haunt empty places; and of all
+places nowadays he prefers empty purses and empty stomachs."
+
+"But do all people get rich at the Bourse? or is not one man's wealth
+many men's ruin?"
+
+"That is a question not very easy to answer; but under our present system
+Paris gets rich, though at the expense of individual Parisians.  I will
+try and explain.  The average luxury is enormously increased even in my
+experience; what were once considered refinements and fopperies are now
+called necessary comforts.  Prices are risen enormously, house-rent
+doubled within the last five or six years; all articles of luxury are
+very much dearer; the very gloves I wear cost twenty per cent more than I
+used to pay for gloves of the same quality.  How the people we meet live,
+and live so well, is an enigma that would defy AEdipus if AEdipus were
+not a Parisian.  But the main explanation is this: speculation and
+commerce, with the facilities given to all investments, have really
+opened more numerous and more rapid ways to fortune than were known a few
+years ago.
+
+"Crowds are thus attracted to Paris, resolved to venture a small capital
+in the hope of a large one; they live on that capital, not on their
+income, as gamesters do.  There is an idea among us that it is necessary
+to seem rich in order to become rich.  Thus there is a general
+extravagance and profusion.  English milords marvel at our splendour.
+Those who, while spending their capital as their income, fail in their
+schemes of fortune, after one, two, three, or four years, vanish.  What
+becomes of them, I know no more than I do what becomes of the old moons.
+Their place is immediately supplied by new candidates.  Paris is thus
+kept perennially sumptuous and splendid by the gold it engulfs.  But then
+some men succeed,--succeed prodigiously, preternaturally; they make
+colossal fortunes, which are magnificently expended.  They set an example
+of show and pomp, which is of course the more contagious because so many
+men say, 'The other day those millionnaires were as poor as we are; they
+never economized; why should we?'  Paris is thus doubly enriched,--by the
+fortunes it swallows up, and by the fortunes it casts up; the last being
+always reproductive, and the first never lost except to the individuals."
+
+"I understand: but what struck me forcibly at the scene we have left was
+the number of young men there; young men whom I should judge by their
+appearance to be gentlemen, evidently not mere spectators,--eager,
+anxious, with tablets in their hands.  That old or middle-aged men should
+find a zest in the pursuit of gain I can understand, but youth and
+avarice seem to me a new combination, which Moliere never divined in his
+'Avare.'"
+
+"Young men, especially if young gentlemen, love pleasure; and pleasure in
+this city is very dear.  This explains why so many young men frequent the
+Bourse.  In the old gaining now suppressed, young men were the majority;
+in the days of your chivalrous forefathers it was the young nobles, not
+the old, who would stake their very mantles and swords on a cast of the
+die.  And, naturally enough, _mon cher_; for is not youth the season of
+hope, and is not hope the goddess of gaming, whether at _rouge-et-noir_
+or the Bourse?"
+
+Alain felt himself more and more behind his generation.  The acute
+reasoning of Lemercier humbled his _amour propre_.  At college Lemercier
+was never considered Alain's equal in ability or book-learning.  What a
+stride beyond his school-fellow had Lemercier now made!  How dull and
+stupid the young provincial felt himself to be as compared with the easy
+cleverness and half-sportive philosophy of the Parisian's fluent talk!
+
+He sighed with a melancholy and yet with a generous envy.  He had too
+fine a natural perception not to acknowledge that there is a rank of mind
+as well as of birth, and in the first he felt that Lemercier might well
+walk before a Rochebriant; but his very humility was a proof that he
+underrated himself.
+
+Lemercier did not excel him in mind, but in experience.  And just as the
+drilled soldier seems a much finer fellow than the raw recruit, because
+he knows how to carry himself, but after a year's discipline the raw
+recruit may excel in martial air the upright hero whom he now
+despairingly admires, and never dreams he can rival; so set a mind from a
+village into the drill of a capital, and see it a year after; it may
+tower a head higher than its recruiting-sergeant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+"I believe," said Lemercier, as the _coupe_ rolled through the lively
+alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, "that Paris is built on a loadstone, and
+that every Frenchman with some iron globules in his blood is irresistibly
+attracted towards it.  The English never seem to feel for London the
+passionate devotion that we feel for Paris.  On the contrary, the London
+middle class, the commercialists, the shopkeepers, the clerks, even the
+superior artisans compelled to do their business in the capital, seem
+always scheming and pining to have their home out of it, though but in a
+suburb."
+
+"You have been in London, Frederic?"
+
+"Of course; it is the mode to visit that dull and hideous metropolis."
+
+"If it be dull and hideous, no wonder the people who are compelled to do
+business in it seek the pleasures of home out of it."
+
+"It is very droll that though the middle class entirely govern the
+melancholy Albion, it is the only country in Europe in which the middle
+class seem to have no amusements; nay, they legislate against amusement.
+They have no leisure-day but Sunday; and on that day they close all their
+theatres, even their museums and picture-galleries.  What amusements
+there may be in England are for the higher classes and the lowest."
+
+"What are the amusements of the lowest class?"
+
+"Getting drunk."
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"Yes.  I was taken at night under protection of a policeman to some
+cabarets, where I found crowds of that class which is the stratum below
+the working class; lads who sweep crossings and hold horses, mendicants,
+and, I was told, thieves, girls whom a servant-maid would not speak to,
+very merry, dancing quadrilles and waltzes, and regaling themselves on
+sausages,--the happiest-looking folks I found in all London; and, I must
+say, conducting themselves very decently."
+
+"Ah!" Here Lemercier pulled the check-string.  "Will you object to a walk
+in this quiet alley?  I see some one whom I have promised the Englishman
+to--But heed me, Alain, don't fall in love with her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The lady in the pearl-coloured dress!  Certainly it was a face that might
+well arrest the eye and linger long on the remembrance.
+
+There are certain "beauty-women" as there are certain "beauty-men," in
+whose features one detects no fault, who are the show figures of any
+assembly in which they appear, but who, somehow or other, inspire no
+sentiment and excite no interest; they lack some expression, whether of
+mind, or of soul, or of heart, without which the most beautiful face is
+but a beautiful picture.  This lady was not one of those "beauty-women."
+Her features taken singly were by no means perfect, nor were they set off
+by any brilliancy of colouring.  But the countenance aroused and
+impressed the imagination with a belief that there was some history
+attached to it, which you longed to learn.  The hair, simply parted over
+a forehead unusually spacious and high for a woman, was of lustrous
+darkness; the eyes, of a deep violet blue, were shaded with long lashes.
+
+Their expression was soft and mournful, but unobservant.  She did not
+notice Alain and Lemercier as the two men slowly passed her.  She seemed
+abstracted, gazing into space as one absorbed in thought or revery.  Her
+complexion was clear and pale, and apparently betokened delicate health.
+
+Lemercier seated himself on a bench beside the path, and invited Alain to
+do the same.  "She will return this way soon," said the Parisian, "and we
+can observe her more attentively and more respectfully thus seated than
+if we were on foot; meanwhile, what do you think of her?  Is she French?
+is she Italian? can she be English?"
+
+"I should have guessed Italian, judging by the darkness of the hair and
+the outline of the features; but do Italians have so delicate a fairness
+of complexion?"
+
+"Very rarely; and I should guess her to be French, judging by the
+intelligence of her expression, the simple neatness of her dress, and by
+that nameless refinement of air in which a Parisienne excels all the
+descendants of Eve,--if it were not for her eyes.  I never saw a
+Frenchwoman with eyes of that peculiar shade of blue; and if a
+Frenchwoman had such eyes, I flatter myself she would have scarcely
+allowed us to pass without making some use of them."
+
+"Do you think she is married?" asked Alain.
+
+"I hope so; for a girl of her age, if _comme il faut_, can scarcely walk
+alone in the Bois, and would not have acquired that look so intelligent,
+--more than intelligent,--so poetic."
+
+"But regard that air of unmistakable distinction; regard that expression
+of face,-so pure, so virginal: _comme il faut_ she must be."
+
+As Alain said these last words, the lady, who had turned back, was
+approaching them, and in full view of their gaze.  She seemed unconscious
+of their existence as before, and Lemercier noticed that her lips moved
+as if she were murmuring inaudibly to herself.
+
+She did not return again, but continued her walk straight on till at the
+end of the alley she entered a carriage in waiting for her, and was
+driven off.
+
+"Quick, quick!" cried Lemercier, running towards his own coupe; "we must
+give chase."
+
+Alain followed somewhat less hurriedly, and, agreeably to instructions
+Lemercier had already given to his coachman, the Parisian's coupe set off
+at full speed in the track of the strange lady's, which was still in
+sight.
+
+In less than twenty minutes the carriage in chase stopped at the grille
+of one of those charming little villas to be found in the pleasant suburb
+of A-----; a porter emerged from the lodge, opened the gate; the carriage
+drove in, again stopped at the door of the house, and the two gentlemen
+could not catch even a glimpse of the lady's robe as she descended from
+the carriage and disappeared within the house.
+
+"I see a cafe yonder," said Lemercier; "let us learn all we can as to the
+fair unknown, over a _sorbet_ or a _petit verre_."  Alain silently, but
+not reluctantly, consented.  He felt in the fair stranger an interest new
+to his existence.
+
+They entered the little cafe, and in a few minutes Lemercier, with the
+easy _savoir vivre_ of a Parisian, had extracted from the _garcon_ as
+much as probably any one in the neighbourhood knew of the inhabitants of
+the villa.
+
+It had been hired and furnished about two months previously in the name
+of Signora Venosta; but, according to the report of the servants, that
+lady appeared to be the gouvernante or guardian of a lady much younger,
+out of whose income the villa was rented and the household maintained.
+
+It was for her the _coupe_ was hired from Paris.  The elder lady very
+rarely stirred out during the day, but always accompanied the younger in
+any evening visits to the theatre or the houses of friends.
+
+It was only within the last few weeks that such visits had been made.
+
+The younger lady was in delicate health, and under the care of an English
+physician famous for skill in the treatment of pulmonary complaints.  It
+was by his advice that she took daily walking exercise in the Bois.  The
+establishment consisted of three servants, all Italians, and speaking but
+imperfect French.  The _garcon_ did not know whether either of the ladies
+was married, but their mode of life was free from all scandal or
+suspicion; they probably belonged to the literary or musical world, as
+the _garcon_ had observed as their visitors the eminent author M. Savarin
+and his wife; and, still more frequently, an old man not less eminent as
+a musical composer.
+
+"It is clear to me now," said Lemercier, as the two friends reseated
+themselves in the carriage, "that our pearly _ange_ is some Italian
+singer of repute enough in her own country to have gained already a
+competence; and that, perhaps on account of her own health or her
+friend's, she is living quietly here in the expectation of some
+professional engagement, or the absence of some foreign lover."
+
+"Lover! do you think that?" exclaimed Alain, in a tone of voice that
+betrayed pain.
+
+"It is possible enough; and in that case the Englishman may profit little
+by the information I have promised to give him."
+
+"You have promised the Englishman?"
+
+"Do you not remember last night that he described the lady, and said that
+her face haunted him: and I--"
+
+"Ah! I remember now.  What do you know of this Englishman?  He is rich, I
+suppose."
+
+"Yes, I hear he is very rich now; that an uncle lately left him an
+enormous sum of money.  He was attached to the English Embassy many years
+ago, which accounts for his good French and his knowledge of Parisian
+life.  He comes to Paris very often, and I have known him some time.
+Indeed he has intrusted to me a difficult and delicate commission.  The
+English tell me that his father was one of the most eminent members of
+their Parliament, of ancient birth, very highly connected, but ran out
+his fortune and died poor; that our friend had for some years to maintain
+himself, I fancy, by his pen; that he is considered very able; and, now
+that his uncle has enriched him, likely to enter public life and run a
+career as distinguished as his father's."
+
+"Happy man! happy are the English," said the Marquis, with a sigh; and as
+the carriage now entered Paris, he pleaded the excuse of an engagement,
+bade his friend goodby, and went his way musing through the crowded
+streets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LETTER FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
+
+                                                 VILLA D'-----, A------.
+
+I can never express to you, my beloved Eulalie, the strange charm which a
+letter from you throws over my poor little lonely world for days after it
+is received.  There is always in it something that comforts, something
+that sustains, but also a something that troubles and disquiets me.  I
+suppose Goethe is right, "that it is the property of true genius to
+disturb all settled ideas," in order, no doubt, to lift them into a
+higher level when they settle down again.
+
+Your sketch of the new work you are meditating amid the orange groves of
+Provence interests me intensely; yet, do you forgive me when I add that
+the interest is not without terror?  I do not find myself able to
+comprehend how, amid those lovely scenes of Nature, your mind voluntarily
+surrounds itself with images of pain and discord.  I stand in awe of the
+calm with which you subject to your analysis the infirmities of reason
+and the tumults of passion.  And all those laws of the social state which
+seem to me so fixed and immovable you treat with so quiet a scorn, as if
+they were but the gossamer threads which a touch of your slight woman's
+hand could brush away.  But I cannot venture to discuss such subjects
+with you.  It is only the skilled enchanter who can stand safely in the
+magic circle, and compel the spirits that he summons, even if they are
+evil, to minister to ends in which he foresees a good.
+
+We continue to live here very quietly, and I do not as yet feel the worse
+for the colder climate.  Indeed, my wonderful doctor, who was recommended
+to me as American, but is in reality English, assures me that a single
+winter spent here under his care will suffice for my complete
+re-establishment.  Yet that career, to the training for which so many
+years have been devoted, does not seem to me so alluring as it once did.
+
+I have much to say on this subject, which I defer till I can better
+collect my own thoughts on it; at present they are confused and
+struggling.  The great Maestro has been most gracious.
+
+In what a radiant atmosphere his genius lives and breathes!  Even in his
+cynical moods, his very cynicism has in it the ring of a jocund music,--
+the laugh of Figaro, not of Mephistopheles.
+
+We went to dine with him last week.  He invited to meet us Madame S-----,
+who has this year conquered all opposition, and reigns alone, the great
+S-----; Mr. T--------, a pianist of admirable promise; your friend
+M. Savarin, wit, critic, and poet, with his pleasant, sensible wife;
+and a few others, who, the Maestro confided to me in a whisper, were
+authorities in the press.  After dinner S----- sang to us, magnificently,
+of course.  Then she herself graciously turned to me, said how much she
+had heard from the Maestro in my praise, and so and so.  I was persuaded
+to sing after her.  I need not say to what disadvantage.  But I forgot my
+nervousness; I forgot my audience; I forgot myself, as I always do when
+once my soul, as it were, finds wing in music, and buoys itself in the
+air, relieved from the sense of earth.  I knew not that I had succeeded
+till I came to a close, and then my eyes resting on the face of the grand
+prima donna, I was seized with an indescribable sadness, with a keen pang
+of remorse.  Perfect artiste though she be, and with powers in her own
+realm of art which admit of no living equal, I saw at once that I had
+pained her: she had grown almost livid; her lips were quivering, and it
+was only with a great effort that she muttered out some faint words
+intended for applause.  I comprehended by an instinct how gradually there
+can grow upon the mind of an artist the most generous that jealousy which
+makes the fear of a rival annihilate the delight in art.  If ever I
+should achieve S-----'s fame as a singer, should I feel the same.
+jealousy?--I think not now, but I have not been tested.  She went away
+abruptly.  I spare you the recital of the compliments paid to me by my
+other auditors, compliments that gave me no pleasure; for on all lips,
+except those of the Maestro, they implied, as the height of eulogy, that
+I had inflicted torture upon S-----.  "If so," said he, "she would be as
+foolish as a rose that was jealous of the whiteness of a lily.  You would
+do yourself great wrong, my child, if you tried to vie with the rose in
+its own colour."
+
+He patted my bended head as he spoke, with that kind of fatherly
+king-like fondness with which he honours me; and I took his hand in mine,
+and kissed it gratefully.  "Nevertheless," said Savarin, "when the lily
+comes out there will be a furious attack on it, made by the clique that
+devotes itself to the rose: a lily clique will be formed en revanche, and
+I foresee a fierce paper war.  Do not be frightened at its first
+outburst: every fame worth having must be fought for."
+
+Is it so? have you had to fight for your fame, Eulalie?  and do you hate
+all contests as much as I do?
+
+Our only other gayety since I last wrote was a soiree at M. Louvier's.
+That republican millionaire was not slow in attending to the kind letter
+you addressed to him recommending us to his civilities.  He called at
+once, placed his good offices at our disposal, took charge of my modest
+fortune, which he has invested, no doubt, as safely as it is
+advantageously in point of interest, hired our carriage for us, and in
+short has been most amiably useful.
+
+At his house we met many to me most pleasant, for they spoke with such
+genuine appreciation of your works and yourself.  But there were others
+whom I should never have expected to meet under the roof of a Croesus who
+has so great a stake in the order of things established.  One young man--
+a noble whom he specially presented to me, as a politician who would be
+at the head of affairs when the Red Republic was established--asked me
+whether I did not agree with him that all private property was public
+spoliation, and that the great enemy to civilization was religion, no
+matter in what form.
+
+He addressed to me these tremendous questions with an effeminate lisp,
+and harangued on them with small feeble gesticulations of pale dirty
+fingers covered with rings.
+
+I asked him if there were many who in France shared his ideas.
+
+"Quite enough to carry them some day," he answered with a lofty smile.
+"And the day may be nearer than the world thinks, when my confreres will
+be so numerous that they will have to shoot down each other for the sake
+of cheese to their bread."
+
+That day nearer than the world thinks!  Certainly, so far as one may
+judge the outward signs of the world at Paris, it does not think of such
+things at all.  With what an air of self-content the beautiful city
+parades her riches!  Who can gaze on her splendid palaces, her gorgeous
+shops, and believe that she will give ear to doctrines that would
+annihilate private rights of property; or who can enter her crowded
+churches, and dream that she can ever again install a republic too
+civilized for religion?
+
+Adieu.  Excuse me for this dull letter.  If I have written on much that
+has little interest even for me, it is that I wish to distract my mind
+from brooding over the question that interests me most, and on which I
+most need your counsel.  I will try to approach it in my next.
+
+                                                 ISAURA.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+Eulalie, Eulalie!--What mocking spirit has been permitted in this modern
+age of ours to place in the heart of woman the ambition which is the
+prerogative of men?  You indeed, so richly endowed with a man's genius,
+have a right to man's aspirations.  But what can justify such ambition in
+me?  Nothing but this one unintellectual perishable gift of a voice that
+does but please in uttering the thoughts of others.  Doubtless I could
+make a name familiar for its brief time to the talk of Europe,--a name,
+what name? a singer's name.  Once I thought that name a glory.  Shall I
+ever forget the day when you first shone upon me; when, emerging from
+childhood as from a dim and solitary bypath, I stood forlorn on the great
+thoroughfare of life, and all the prospects before me stretched sad in
+mists and in rain?  You beamed on me then as the sun coming out from the
+cloud and changing the face of earth; you opened to my sight the fairy-
+land of poetry and art; you took me by the hand and said, "Courage!
+there is at each step some green gap in the hedgerows, some, soft escape
+from the stony thoroughfare.  Beside the real life expands the ideal life
+to those who seek it.  Droop not, seek it: the ideal life has its
+sorrows, but it never admits despair; as on the ear of him who follows
+the winding course of a stream, the stream ever varies the note of its
+music,--now loud with the rush of the falls; now low and calm as it
+glides by the level marge of smooth banks; now sighing through the stir
+of the reeds; now babbling with a fretful joy as some sudden curve on the
+shore stays its flight among gleaming pebbles,--so to the soul of the
+artist is the voice of the art ever fleeting beside and before him.
+Nature gave thee the bird's gift of song: raise the gift into art, and
+make the art thy companion.
+
+"Art and Hope were twin-born, and they die together."  See how faithfully
+I remember, methinks, your very words.  But the magic of the words, which
+I then but dimly understood, was in your smile and in your eye, and the
+queen-like wave of your hand as if beckoning to a world which lay before
+you, visible and familiar as your native land.  And how devotedly, with
+what earnestness of passion, I gave myself up to the task of raising my
+gift into an art!  I thought of nothing else, dreamed of nothing else;
+and oh, now sweet to me then were words of praise!  "Another year yet,"
+at length said the masters, "and you ascend your throne among the queens
+of song."  Then--then--I would have changed for no other throne on earth
+my hope of that to be achieved in the realms of my art.  And then came
+that long fever: my strength broke down, and the Maestro said, "Rest, or
+your voice is gone, and your throne is lost forever."  How hateful that
+rest seemed to me!  You again came to my aid.  You said, "The time you
+think lost should be but time improved.  Penetrate your mind with other
+songs than the trash of Libretti.  The more you habituate yourself to the
+forms, the more you imbue yourself with the spirit, in which passions
+have been expressed and character delineated by great writers, the more
+completely you will accomplish yourself in your own special art of singer
+and actress."  So, then, you allured me to a new study.  Ah! in so doing
+did you dream that you diverted me from the old ambition?  My knowledge
+of French and Italian, and my rearing in childhood, which had made
+English familiar to me, gave me the keys to the treasure-houses of three
+languages.  Naturally I began with that in which your masterpieces are
+composed.  Till then I had not even read your works.  They were the first
+I chose.  How they impressed, how they startled me! what depths in the
+mind of man, in the heart of woman, they revealed to me!  But I owned to
+you then, and I repeat it now, neither they nor any of the works in
+romance and poetry which form the boast of recent French literature
+satisfied yearnings for that calm sense of beauty, that divine joy in a
+world beyond this world, which you had led me to believe it was the
+prerogative of ideal art to bestow.  And when I told you this with the
+rude frankness you had bid me exercise in talk with you, a thoughtful,
+melancholy shade fell over your face, and you said quietly, "You are
+right, child; we, the French of our time, are the offspring of
+revolutions that settled nothing, unsettled all: we resemble those
+troubled States which rush into war abroad in order to re-establish peace
+at home.  Our books suggest problems to men for reconstructing some
+social system in which the calm that belongs to art may be found at last:
+but such books should not be in your hands; they are not for the
+innocence and youth of women as yet unchanged by the systems which
+exist."  And the next day you brought me 'l'asso's great poem, the
+"Gerusalemme Liberata," and said, smiling, "Art in its calm is here."
+
+You remember that I was then at Sorrento by the order of my physician.
+Never shall I forget the soft autumn day when I sat amongst the lonely
+rocklets to the left of the town,--the sea before me, with scarce a
+ripple; my very heart steeped in the melodies of that poem, so marvellous
+for a strength disguised in sweetness, and for a symmetry in which each
+proportion blends into the other with the perfectness of a Grecian
+statue.  The whole place seemed to me filled with the presence of the
+poet to whom it had given birth.  Certainly the reading of that poem
+formed an era in my existence: to this day I cannot acknowledge the
+faults or weaknesses which your criticisms pointed out; I believe because
+they are in unison with my own nature, which yearns for harmony, and,
+finding that, rests contented.  I shrink from violent contrasts, and can
+discover nothing tame and insipid in a continuance of sweetness and
+serenity.  But it was not till after I had read "La Gerusalemme" again
+and again, and then sat and brooded over it, that I recognized the main
+charm of the poem in the religion which clings to it as the perfume
+clings to a flower,--a religion sometimes melancholy, but never to me
+sad.  Hope always pervades it.  Surely if, as you said, "Hope is twin-
+born with art," it is because art at its highest blends itself
+unconsciously with religion, and proclaims its affinity with hope by its
+faith in some future good more perfect than it has realized in the past.
+
+Be this as it may, it was in this poem so pre-eminently Christian that I
+found the something which I missed and craved for in modern French
+masterpieces; even yours,--a something spiritual, speaking to my own
+soul, calling it forth; distinguishing it as an essence apart from mere
+human reason; soothing, even when it excited; making earth nearer to
+heaven.  And when I ran on in this strain to you after my own wild
+fashion, you took my head between your hands and kissed me, and said,
+"Happy are those who believe! long may that happiness be thine!"  Why did
+I not feel in Dante the Christian charm that I felt in Tasso?  Dante in
+your eyes, as in those of most judges, is infinitely the greater genius;
+but reflected on the dark stream of that genius the stars are so
+troubled, the heaven so threatening.
+
+Just as my year of holiday was expiring, I turned to English literature;
+and Shakspeare, of course, was the first English poet put into my hands.
+It proves how childlike my mind still was, that my earliest sensation in
+reading him was that of disappointment.  It was not only that, despite my
+familiarity with English (thanks chiefly to the care of him whom I call
+my second father), there is much in the metaphorical diction of
+Shakspeare which I failed to comprehend; but he seemed to me so far like
+the modern French writers who affect to have found inspiration in his
+muse, that he obtrudes images of pain and suffering without cause or
+motive sufficiently clear to ordinary understandings, as I had taught
+myself to think it ought to be in the drama.
+
+He makes Fate so cruel that we lose sight of the mild deity behind her.
+Compare, in this, Corneille's "Polyeucte," with the "Hamlet."  In the
+first an equal calamity befalls the good, but in their calamity they are
+blessed.  The death of the martyr is the triumph of his creed.  But when
+we have put down the English tragedy,--when Hamlet and Ophelia are
+confounded in death with Polonius and the fratricidal king, we see not
+what good end for humanity is achieved.  The passages that fasten on our
+memory do not make us happier and holier: they suggest but terrible
+problems, to which they give us no solution.
+
+In the "Horaces" of Corneille there are fierce contests, rude passions,
+tears drawn from some of the bitterest sources of human pity; but then
+through all stands out, large and visible to the eyes of all spectators,
+the great ideal of devoted patriotism.  How much of all that has been
+grandest in the life of France, redeeming even its worst crimes of
+revolution in the love of country, has had its origin in the "Horaces" of
+Corneille.  But I doubt if the fates of Coriolanus and Caesar and Brutus
+and Antony, in the giant tragedies of Shakspeare, have made Englishmen
+more willing to die for England.  In fine, it was long before--I will not
+say I understood or rightly appreciated Shakspeare, for no Englishman
+would admit that I or even you could ever do so, but before I could
+recognize the justice of the place his country claims for him as the
+genius without an equal in the literature of Europe.  Meanwhile the
+ardour I had put into study, and the wear and tear of the emotions which
+the study called forth, made themselves felt in a return of my former
+illness, with symptoms still more alarming; and when the year was out I
+was ordained to rest for perhaps another year before I could sing in
+public, still less appear on the stage.  How I rejoiced when I heard that
+fiat! for I emerged from that year of study with a heart utterly
+estranged from the profession in which I had centred my hopes before--
+Yes, Eulalie, you had bid me accomplish myself for the arts of utterance;
+by the study of arts in which thoughts originate the words they employ;
+and in doing so I had changed myself into another being.  I was forbidden
+all fatigue of mind: my books were banished, but not the new self which
+the books had formed.  Recovering slowly through the summer, I came
+hither two months since, ostensibly for the advice of Dr. C-------, but
+really in the desire to commune with my own heart and be still.
+
+And now I have poured forth that heart to you, would you persuade me
+still to be a singer?  If you do, remember at least how jealous and
+absorbing the art of the singer and the actress is,--how completely I
+must surrender myself to it, and live among books or among dreams no
+more.  Can I be anything else but singer? and if not, should I be
+contented merely to read and to dream?
+
+I must confide to you one ambition which during the lazy Italian summer
+took possession of me; I must tell you the ambition, and add that I have
+renounced it as a vain one.  I had hoped that I could compose, I mean in
+music.  I was pleased with some things I did: they expressed in music
+what I could not express in words; and one secret object in coming here
+was to submit them to the great Maestro.  He listened to them patiently:
+he complimented me on my accuracy in the mechanical laws of composition;
+he even said that my favourite airs were "touchants et gracieux."
+
+And so he would have left me, but I stopped him timidly, and said, "Tell
+me frankly, do you think that with time and study I could compose music
+such as singers equal to myself would sing to?"
+
+"You mean as a professional composer?"
+
+"Well, yes."
+
+"And to the abandonment of your vocation as a singer?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"My dear child, I should be your worst enemy if I encouraged such a
+notion: cling to the career in which you call be greatest; gain but
+health, and I wager my reputation on your glorious success on the stage.
+What can you be as a composer?  You will set pretty music to pretty
+words, and will be sung in drawing-rooms with the fame a little more or
+less that generally attends the compositions of female amateurs.  Aim at
+something higher, as I know you would do, and you will not succeed.  Is
+there any instance in modern times, perhaps in any times, of a female
+composer who attains even to the eminence of a third-rate opera-writer?
+Composition in letters may be of no sex.  In that Madame Dudevant and
+your friend Madame de Grantmesnil can beat most men; but the genius of
+musical composition is _homme_, and accept it as a compliment when I say
+that you are essentially _femme_."
+
+He left me, of course, mortified and humbled; but I feel he is right as
+regards myself, though whether in his depreciation of our whole sex I
+cannot say.  But as this hope has left me, I have become more disquieted,
+still more restless.  Counsel me, Eulalie; counsel, and, if possible,
+comfort me.
+                                                  ISAURA.
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+No letter from you yet, and I have left you in peace for ten days.  How
+do you think I have spent them?  The Maestro called on us with
+M. Savarin, to insist on our accompanying them on a round of the
+theatres.  I had not been to one since my arrival.  I divined that the
+kind-hearted composer had a motive in this invitation.  He thought that
+in witnessing the applauses bestowed on actors, and sharing in the
+fascination in which theatrical illusion holds an audience, my old
+passion for the stage, and with it the longing for an artiste's fame,
+would revive.
+
+In my heart I wished that his expectations might be realized.  Well for
+me if I could once more concentrate all my aspirations on a prize within
+my reach!
+
+We went first to see a comedy greatly in vogue, and the author thoroughly
+understands the French stage of our day.  The acting was excellent in its
+way.  The next night we went to the Odeon, a romantic melodrama in six
+acts, and I know not how many tableaux.  I found no fault with the acting
+there.  I do not give you the rest of our programme.  We visited all the
+principal theatres, reserving the opera and Madame S------  for the last.
+Before I speak of the opera, let me say a word or two on the plays.
+
+There is no country in which the theatre has so great a hold on the
+public as in France; no country in which the successful dramatist has so
+high a fame; no country perhaps in which the state of the stage so
+faithfully represents the moral and intellectual condition of the people.
+I say this not, of course, from my experience of countries which I have
+not visited, but from all I hear of the stage in Germany and in England.
+
+The impression left on my mind by the performances I witnessed is, that
+the French people are becoming dwarfed.  The comedies that please them
+are but pleasant caricatures of petty sections in a corrupt society.
+They contain no large types of human nature; their witticisms convey no
+luminous flashes of truth; their sentiment is not pure and noble,--it is
+a sickly and false perversion of the impure and ignoble into travesties
+of the pure and noble.
+
+Their melodramas cannot be classed as literature: all that really remains
+of the old French genius is its vaudeville.  Great dramatists create
+great parts.  One great part, such as a Rachel would gladly have
+accepted, I have not seen in the dramas of the young generation.
+
+High art has taken refuge in the opera; but that is not French opera.
+I do not complain so much that French taste is less refined.  I complain
+that French intellect is lowered.  The descent from "Polyeucte" to "Ruy
+Blas" is great, not so much in the poetry of form as in the elevation of
+thought; but the descent from "Ruy Blas" to the best drama now produced
+is out of poetry altogether, and into those flats of prose which give not
+even the glimpse of a mountain-top.
+
+But now to the opera.  S------ in Norma!  The house was crowded, and its
+enthusiasm as loud as it was genuine.  You tell me that S------ never
+rivalled Pasta, but certainly her Norma is a great performance.  Her
+voice has lost less of its freshness than I had been told, and what is
+lost of it her practised management conceals or carries off.
+
+The Maestro was quite right: I could never vie with her in her own line;
+but conceited and vain as I may seem even to you in saying so, I feel in
+my own line that I could command as large an applause,--of course taking
+into account my brief-lived advantage of youth.  Her acting, apart from
+her voice, does not please me.  It seems to me to want intelligence of
+the subtler feelings, the under-current of emotion which constitutes the
+chief beauty of the situation and the character.  Am I jealous when I say
+this?  Read on and judge.
+
+On our return that night, when I had seen the Venosta to bed, I went into
+my own room, opened the window, and looked out.  A lovely night, mild as
+in spring at Florence,--the moon at her full, and the stars looking so
+calm and so high beyond our reach of their tranquillity.  The evergreens
+in the gardens of the villas around me silvered over, and the summer
+boughs, not yet clothed with leaves, were scarcely visible amid the
+changeless smile of the laurels.  At the distance lay Paris, only to be
+known by its innumerable lights.  And then I said to myself,
+
+"No, I cannot be an actress; I cannot resign my real self for that
+vamped-up hypocrite before the lamps.  Out on those stage-robes and
+painted cheeks!  Out on that simulated utterance of sentiments learned by
+rote and practised before the looking-glass till every gesture has its
+drill!"
+
+Then I gazed on those stars which provoke our questionings, and return no
+answer, till my heart grew full,--so full,--and I bowed my head and wept
+like a child.
+
+
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+And still no letter from you!  I see in the journals that you have left
+Nice.  Is it that you are too absorbed in your work to have leisure to
+write to me?  I know you are not ill, for if you were, all Paris would
+know of it.  All Europe has an interest in your health.  Positively I
+will write to you no more till a word from yourself bids me do so.
+
+I fear I must give up my solitary walks in the Bois de Boulogne: they
+were very dear to me, partly because the quiet path to which I confined
+myself was that to which you directed me as the one you habitually
+selected when at Paris, and in which you had brooded over and revolved
+the loveliest of your romances; and partly because it was there that,
+catching, alas! not inspiration but enthusiasm from the genius that had
+hallowed the place, and dreaming I might originate music, I nursed my own
+aspirations and murmured my own airs.  And though so close to that world
+of Paris to which all artists must appeal for judgment or audience, the
+spot was so undisturbed, so sequestered.  But of late that path has lost
+its solitude, and therefore its charm.
+
+Six days ago the first person I encountered in my walk was a man whom I
+did not then heed.  He seemed in thought, or rather in revery, like
+myself; we passed each other twice or thrice, and I did not notice
+whether he was young or old, tall or short; but he came the next day, and
+a third day, and then I saw that he was young, and, in so regarding him,
+his eyes became fixed on mine.  The fourth day he did not come, but two
+other men came, and the look of one was inquisitive and offensive.  They
+sat themselves down on a bench in the walk, and though I did not seem to
+notice them, I hastened home; and the next day, in talking with our kind
+Madame Savarin, and alluding to these quiet walks of mine, she hinted,
+with the delicacy which is her characteristic, that the customs of Paris
+did not allow demoiselles _comme il faut_ to walk alone even in the most
+sequestered paths of the Bois.
+
+I begin now to comprehend your disdain of customs which impose chains so
+idly galling on the liberty of our sex.
+
+We dined with the Savarins last evening: what a joyous nature he has!
+Not reading Latin, I only know Horace by translations, which I am told
+are bad; but Savarin seems to me a sort of half Horace,--Horace on his
+town-bred side, so playfully well-bred, so good-humoured in his
+philosophy, so affectionate to friends, and so biting to foes.  But
+certainly Savarin could not have lived in a country farm upon endives and
+mallows.  He is town-bred and Parisian, _jusqu'au bout des ongles_.  How
+he admires you, and how I love him for it!  Only in one thing he
+disappoints me there.  It is your style that he chiefly praises:
+certainly that style is matchless; but style is only the clothing of
+thought, and to praise your style seems to me almost as invidious as the
+compliment to some perfect beauty, not on her form and face, but on her
+taste and dress.
+
+We met at dinner an American and his wife,--a Colonel and Mrs. Morley:
+she is delicately handsome, as the American women I have seen generally
+are, and with that frank vivacity of manner which distinguishes them from
+English women.  She seemed to take a fancy to me, and we soon grew very
+good friends.
+
+She is the first advocate I have met, except yourself, of that doctrine
+upon the rights of Women, of which one reads more in the journals than
+one hears discussed in salons.  Naturally enough I felt great interest in
+that subject, more especially since my rambles in the Bois were
+forbidden; and as long as she declaimed on the hard fate of the women
+who, feeling within them powers that struggle for air and light beyond
+the close precinct of household duties, find themselves restricted from
+fair rivalry with men in such fields of knowledge and toil and glory as
+men since the world began have appropriated to themselves, I need not say
+that I went with her cordially: you can guess that by my former letters.
+But when she entered into the detailed catalogue of our exact wrongs and
+our exact rights, I felt all the pusillanimity of my sex and shrank back
+in terror.
+
+Her husband, joining us when she was in full tide of eloquence, smiled at
+me with a kind of saturnine mirth.  "Mademoiselle, don't believe a word
+she says: it is only tall talk!  In America the women are absolute
+tyrants, and it is I who, in concert with my oppressed countrymen, am
+going in for a platform agitation to restore the Rights of Men."
+
+Upon this there was a lively battle of words between the spouses, in
+which, I must own, I thought the lady was decidedly worsted.
+
+No, Eulalie, I see nothing in these schemes for altering our relations
+towards the other sex which would improve our condition.  The
+inequalities we suffer are not imposed by law,--not even by convention:
+they are imposed by nature.
+
+Eulalie, you have had an experience unknown to me: you have loved.  In
+that day did you,--you, round whom poets and sages and statesmen gather,
+listening to your words as to an oracle,--did you feel that your pride of
+genius had gone out from you, that your ambition lived in whom you loved,
+that his smile was more to you than the applause of a world?
+
+I feel as if love in a woman must destroy her rights of equality, that it
+gives to her a sovereign even in one who would be inferior to herself if
+her love did not glorify and crown him.  Ah! if I could but merge this
+terrible egotism which oppresses me, into the being of some one who is
+what I would wish to be were I man!  I would not ask him to achieve fame.
+Enough if I felt that he was worthy of it, and happier methinks to
+console him when he failed than to triumph with him when he won.  Tell
+me, have you felt this?  When you loved did you stoop as to a slave, or
+did you bow down as to a master?
+
+
+
+FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TO ISAURA CICOGNA.
+
+_Chere enfant_,--All your four letters have reached me the same day.  In
+one of my sudden whims I set off with a few friends on a rapid tour along
+the Riviera to Genoa, thence to Turin on to Milan.  Not knowing where we
+should rest even for a day, my letters were not forwarded.
+
+I came back to Nice yesterday, consoled for all fatigues in having
+insured that accuracy in description of localities which my work
+necessitates.
+
+You are, my poor child, in that revolutionary crisis through which genius
+passes in youth before it knows its own self, and longs vaguely to do or
+to be a something other than it has done or has been before.  For, not to
+be unjust to your own powers, genius you have,--that inborn undefinable
+essence, including talent, and yet distinct from it.  Genius you have,
+but genius unconcentrated, undisciplined.  I see, though you are too
+diffident to say so openly, that you shrink from the fame of singer,
+because, fevered by your reading, you would fain aspire to the thorny
+crown of author.  I echo the hard saying of the Maestro: I should be your
+worst enemy did I encourage you to forsake a career in which a dazzling
+success is so assured, for one in which, if it were your true vocation,
+you would not ask whether you were fit for it; you would be impelled to
+it by the terrible star which presides over the birth of poets.
+
+Have you, who are so naturally observant, and of late have become so
+reflective, never remarked that authors, however absorbed in their own
+craft, do not wish their children to adopt it?  The most successful
+author is perhaps the last person to whom neophytes should come for
+encouragement.  This I think is not the case with the cultivators of the
+sister arts.
+
+The painter, the sculptor, the musician, seem disposed to invite
+disciples and welcome acolytes.  As for those engaged in the practical
+affairs of life, fathers mostly wish their sons to be as they have been.
+
+The politician, the lawyer, the merchant, each says to his children,
+"Follow my steps."  All parents in practical life would at least agree
+in this,--they would not wish their sons to be poets.  There must be some
+sound cause in the world's philosophy for this general concurrence of
+digression from a road of which the travellers themselves say to those
+whom they love best, "Beware!"
+
+Romance in youth is, if rightly understood, the happiest nutriment of
+wisdom in after-years; but I would never invite any one to look upon the
+romance of youth as a thing
+
+               "To case in periods and embalm in ink."
+
+Enfant, have you need of a publisher to create romance?  Is it not in
+yourself?  Do not imagine that genius requires for its enjoyment the
+scratch of the pen and the types of the printer.  Do not suppose that the
+poet, the romancier, is most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving,
+struggling, labouring, to check the rush of his ideas, and materialize
+the images which visit him as souls into such tangible likenesses of
+flesh and blood that the highest compliment a reader can bestow on them
+is to say that they are lifelike:  No: the poet's real delight is not in
+the mechanism of composing; the best part of that delight is in the
+sympathies he has established with innumerable modifications of life and
+form, and art and Nature, sympathies which are often found equally keen
+in those who have not the same gift of language.  The poet is but the
+interpreter.  What of?--Truths in the hearts of others.  He utters what
+they feel.  Is the joy in the utterance?  Nay, it is in the feeling
+itself.  So, my dear, dark-bright child of song, when I bade thee open,
+out of the beaten thoroughfare, paths into the meads and river-banks at
+either side of the formal hedgerows, rightly dost thou add that I
+enjoined thee to make thine art thy companion.  In the culture of that
+art for which you are so eminently gifted, you will find the ideal life
+ever beside the real.  Are you not ashamed to tell me that in that art
+you do but utter the thoughts of others?  You utter them in music;
+through the music you not only give to the thoughts a new character, but
+you make them reproductive of fresh thoughts in your audience.
+
+You said very truly that you found in composing you could put into music
+thoughts which you could not put into words.  That is the peculiar
+distinction of music.  No genuine musician can explain in words exactly
+what he means to convey in his music.
+
+How little a libretto interprets an opera; how little we care even to
+read it!  It is the music that speaks to us; and how?--Through the human
+voice.  We do not notice how poor are the words which the voice warbles.
+It is the voice itself interpreting the soul of the musician which
+enchants and enthralls us.  And you who have that voice pretend to
+despise the gift.  What! despise the power of communicating delight!--the
+power that we authors envy; and rarely, if ever, can we give delight with
+so little alloy as the singer.
+
+And when an audience disperses, can you guess what griefs the singer
+may have comforted? what hard hearts he may have softened?  what high
+thoughts he may have awakened?
+
+You say, "Out on the vamped-up hypocrite!  Out on the stage-robes and
+painted cheeks!"
+
+I say, "Out on the morbid spirit which so cynically regards the mere
+details by which a whole effect on the minds and hearts and souls of
+races and nations can be produced!"
+
+There, have I scolded you sufficiently?  I should scold you more, if I
+did not see in the affluence of your youth and your intellect the cause
+of your restlessness.  Riches are always restless.  It is only to poverty
+that the gods give content.
+
+You question me about love; you ask if I have ever bowed to a master,
+ever merged my life in another's: expect no answer on this from me.
+Circe herself could give no answer to the simplest maid, who, never
+having loved, asks, "What is love?"
+
+In the history of the passions each human heart is a world in itself; its
+experience profits no others.  In no two lives does love play the same
+part or bequeath the same record.
+
+I know not whether I am glad or sorry that the word "love" now falls on
+my ear with a sound as slight and as faint as the dropping of a leaf in
+autumn may fall on thine.
+
+I volunteer but this lesson, the wisest I can give, if thou canst
+understand it: as I bade thee take art into thy life, so learn to look on
+life itself as an art.  Thou couldst discover the charm in Tasso; thou
+couldst perceive that the requisite of all art, that which pleases, is in
+the harmony of proportion.  We lose sight of beauty if we exaggerate the
+feature most beautiful.
+
+Love proportioned adorns the homeliest existence; love disproportioned
+deforms the fairest.
+
+Alas! wilt thou remember this warning when the time comes in which it may
+be needed?
+
+E----- G-------.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                BOOK III.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The next day the guests at the Morleys' had assembled when Vane entered.
+His apology for unpunctuality was cut short by the lively hostess.  "Your
+pardon is granted without the humiliation of asking for it; we know that
+the characteristic of the English is always to be a little behindhand."
+
+She then proceeded to introduce him to the American Minister, to a
+distinguished American poet, with a countenance striking for mingled
+sweetness and power, and one or two other of her countrymen sojourning at
+Paris; and this ceremony over, dinner was announced, and she bade Graham
+offer his arm to Mademoiselle Cicogna.
+
+"Have you ever visited the United States, Mademoiselle?" asked Vane, as
+they seated themselves at the table.
+
+"No."
+
+"It is a voyage you are sure to make soon."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because report says you will create a great sensation at the very
+commencement of your career; and the New World is ever eager to welcome
+each celebrity that is achieved in the Old,--more especially that which
+belongs to your enchanting art."
+
+"True, sir," said an American senator, solemnly striking into the
+conversation; "we are an appreciative people; and if that lady be as fine
+a singer as I am told, she might command any amount of dollars."
+
+Isaura coloured, and turning to Graham, asked him in a low voice if he
+were fond of music.
+
+"I ought of course to say 'yes,' answered Graham, in the same tone; "but
+I doubt if that 'yes' would be an honest one.  In some moods, music--if a
+kind of music I like--affects me very deeply; in other moods, not at all.
+And I cannot bear much at a time.  A concert wearies me shamefully; even
+an opera always seems to me a great deal too long.  But I ought to add
+that I am no judge of music; that music was never admitted into my
+education; and, between ourselves, I doubt if there be one Englishman in
+five hundred who would care for opera or concert if it were not the
+fashion to say he did.  Does my frankness revolt you?"
+
+"On the contrary, I sometimes doubt, especially of late, if I am fond of
+music myself."
+
+"Signorina,--pardon me,--it is impossible that you should not be.  Genius
+can never be untrue to itself, and must love that in which it excels,
+that by which it communicates joy, and," he added, with a half-suppressed
+sigh, "attains to glory."
+
+"Genius is a divine word, and not to be applied to a singer," said
+Isaura, with a humility in which there was an earnest sadness.
+
+Graham was touched and startled; but before he could answer, the American
+Minister appealed to him across the table, asking if he had quoted
+accurately a passage in a speech by Graham's distinguished father, in
+regard to the share which England ought to take in the political affairs
+of Europe.
+
+The conversation now became general, very political and very serious.
+Graham was drawn into it, and grew animated and eloquent.
+
+Isaura listened to him with admiration.  She was struck by what seemed to
+her a nobleness of sentiment which elevated his theme above the level of
+commonplace polemics.  She was pleased to notice, in the attentive
+silence of his intelligent listeners, that they shared the effect
+produced on herself.  In fact, Graham Vane was a born orator, and his
+studies had been those of a political thinker.  In common talk he was but
+the accomplished man of the world, easy and frank and genial, with a
+touch of good-natured sarcasm; but when the subject started drew him
+upward to those heights in which politics become the science of humanity,
+he seemed a changed being.  His cheek glowed, his eye brightened, his
+voice mellowed into richer tones, his language be came unconsciously
+adorned.  In such moments there might scarcely be an audience, even
+differing from him in opinion, which would not have acknowledged his
+spell.
+
+When the party adjourned to the salon, Isaura said softly to Graham, "I
+understand why you did not cultivate music; and I think, too, that I can
+now understand what effects the human voice can produce on human minds
+without recurring to the art of song."
+
+"Ah," said Graham, with a pleased smile, "do not make me ashamed of my
+former rudeness by the revenge of compliment; and, above all, do not
+disparage your own art by supposing that any prose effect of voice in its
+utterance of mind can interpret that which music alone can express, even
+to listeners so uncultured as myself.  Am I not told truly by musical
+composers, when I ask them to explain in words what they say in their
+music, that such explanation is impossible, that music has a language of
+its own untranslatable by words?"
+
+"Yes," said Isaura, with thoughtful brow but brightening eyes, "you are
+told truly.  It was only the other day that I was pondering over that
+truth."
+
+"But what recesses of mind, of heart, of soul, this untranslatable
+language penetrates and brightens up!  How incomplete the grand nature of
+man--though man the grandest--would be, if you struck out of his reason
+the comprehension of poetry, music, and religion!  In each are reached
+and are sounded deeps in his reason otherwise concealed from himself.
+History, knowledge, science, stop at the point in which mystery begins.
+There they meet with the world of shadow.  Not an inch of that world can
+they penetrate without the aid of poetry and religion, two necessities of
+intellectual man much more nearly allied than the votaries of the
+practical and the positive suppose.  To the aid and elevation of both
+those necessities comes in music, and there has never existed a religion
+in the world which has not demanded music as its ally.  If, as I said
+frankly, it is only in certain moods of my mind that I enjoy music, it is
+only because in certain moods of my mind I am capable of quitting the
+guidance of prosaic reason for the world of shadow; that I am so
+susceptible as at every hour, were my nature perfect, I should be to the
+mysterious influences of poetry and religion.  Do you understand what I
+wish to express?"
+
+"Yes, I do, and clearly."
+
+"Then, Signorina, you are forbidden to undervalue the gift of song.  You
+must feel its power over the heart, when you enter the opera-house; over
+the soul, when you kneel in a cathedral."
+
+"Oh," cried Isaura, with enthusiasm, a rich glow mantling over her lovely
+face, "how I thank you!  Is it you who say you do not love music?  How
+much better you understand it than I did till this moment!"
+
+Here Mrs. Morley, joined by the American poet, came to the corner in
+which the Englishman and the singer had niched themselves.  The poet
+began to talk, the other guests gathered round, and every one listened
+reverentially till the party broke up.  Colonel Morley handed Isaura to
+her carriage; the she-mountebank again fell to the lot of Graham.
+
+"Signor," said she, as he respectfully placed her shawl round her
+scarlet-and-gilt jacket, "are we so far from Paris that you cannot spare
+the time to call?  My child does not sing in public, but at home you can
+hear her.  It is not every woman's voice that is sweetest at home."
+
+Graham bowed, and said he would call on the morrow.  Isaura mused in
+silent delight over the words which had so extolled the art of the
+singer.  Alas, poor child! she could not guess that in those words,
+reconciling her to the profession of the stage, the speaker was pleading
+against his own heart.
+
+There was in Graham's nature, as I think it commonly is in that of most
+true orators, a wonderful degree of intellectual conscience which
+impelled him to acknowledge the benignant influences of song, and to set
+before the young singer the noblest incentives to the profession to which
+he deemed her assuredly destined; but in so doing he must have felt that
+he was widening the gulf between her life and his own.  Perhaps he wished
+to widen it in proportion as he dreaded to listen to any voice in his
+heart which asked if the gulf might not be overleapt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ON the morrow Graham called at the villa at A------.  The two ladies
+received him in Isaura's chosen sitting-room.
+
+Somehow or other, conversation at first languished.  Graham was reserved
+and distant, Isaura shy and embarrassed.  The Venosta had the frais of
+making talk to herself.  Probably at another time Graham would have been
+amused and interested in the observation of a character new to him, and
+thoroughly southern,--lovable not more from its naive simplicity of
+kindliness than from various little foibles and vanities, all of which
+were harmless, and some of them endearing as those of a child whom it is
+easy to make happy, and whom it seems so cruel to pain; and with all the
+Venosta's deviations from the polished and tranquil good taste of the
+beau monde, she had that indescribable grace which rarely deserts a
+Florentine, so that you might call her odd but not vulgar; while, though
+uneducated, except in the way of her old profession, and never having
+troubled herself to read anything but a libretto and the pious books
+commended to her by her confessor, the artless babble of her talk every
+now and then flashed out with a quaint humour, lighting up terse
+fragments of the old Italian wisdom which had mysteriously embedded
+themselves in the groundwork of her mind.
+
+But Graham was not at this time disposed to judge the poor Venosta kindly
+or fairly.  Isaura had taken high rank in his thoughts.  He felt an
+impatient resentment mingled with anxiety and compassionate tenderness at
+a companionship which seemed to him derogatory to the position he would
+have assigned to a creature so gifted, and unsafe as a guide amidst the
+perils and trials to which the youth, the beauty, and the destined
+profession of Isaura were exposed.  Like most Englishmen--especially
+Englishmen wise in the knowledge of life--he held in fastidious regard
+the proprieties and conventions by which the dignity of woman is fenced
+round; and of those proprieties and conventions the Venosta naturally
+appeared to him a very unsatisfactory guardian and representative.
+
+Happily unconscious of these hostile prepossessions, the elder Signora
+chatted on very gayly to the visitor.  She was in excellent spirits;
+people had been very civil to her both at Colonel Morley's and M.
+Louvier's.  The American Minister had praised the scarlet jacket.  She
+was convinced she had made a sensation two nights running.  When the
+_amour propre_ is pleased, the tongue is freed.
+
+The Venosta ran on in praise of Paris and the Parisians; of Louvier and
+his soiree and the pistachio ice; of the Americans, and a certain _creme
+de maraschino_ which she hoped the Signor Inglese had not failed to
+taste,--the _creme de maraschino_ led her thoughts back to Italy.  Then
+she grew mournful.  How she missed the native _beau ciel_!  Paris was
+pleasant, but how absurd to call it "le Paradis des Femmes,"--as if les
+Femmes could find Paradise in a _brouillard_!
+
+"But," she exclaimed, with vivacity of voice and gesticulation, "the
+Signor does not come to hear the parrot talk; he is engaged to come that
+he may hear the nightingale sing.  A drop of honey attracts the fly more
+than a bottle of vinegar."
+
+Graham could not help smiling at this adage.  "I submit," said he, "to
+your comparison as regards myself; but certainly anything less like a
+bottle of vinegar than your amiable conversation I cannot well conceive.
+However, the metaphor apart, I scarcely know how I dare ask Mademoiselle
+to sing after the confession I made to her last night."
+
+"What confession?" asked the Venosta.
+
+"That I know nothing of music and doubt if I can honestly say that I am
+fond of it."
+
+"Not fond of music!  Impossible!  You slander yourself.  He who loves not
+music would have a dull time of it in heaven.  But you are English, and
+perhaps have only heard the music of your own country.  Bad, very bad--a
+heretic's music!  Now listen."
+
+Seating herself at the piano, she began an air from the "Lucia," crying
+out to Isaura to come and sing to her accompaniment.
+
+"Do you really wish it?" asked Isaura of Graham, fixing on him
+questioning, timid eyes.
+
+"I cannot say how much I wish to hear you."
+
+Isaura moved to the instrument, and Graham stood behind her.  Perhaps he
+felt that he should judge more impartially of her voice if not subjected
+to the charm of her face.
+
+But the first note of the voice held him spell-bound.  In itself the
+organ was of the rarest order, mellow and rich, but so soft that its
+power was lost in its sweetness, and so exquisitely fresh in every note.
+
+But the singer's charm was less in voice than in feeling; she conveyed to
+the listener so much more than was said by the words, or even implied by
+the music.  Her song in this caught the art of the painter who impresses
+the mind with the consciousness of a something which the eye cannot
+detect on the canvas.
+
+She seemed to breathe out from the depths of her heart the intense pathos
+of the original romance, so far exceeding that of the opera,-the human
+tenderness, the mystic terror of a tragic love-tale more solemn in its
+sweetness than that of Verona.
+
+When her voice died away no applause came,--not even a murmur.  Isaura
+bashfully turned round to steal a glance at her silent listener, and
+beheld moistened eyes and quivering lips.  At that moment she was
+reconciled to her art.  Graham rose abruptly and walked to the window.
+
+"Do you doubt now if you are fond of music?" cried the Venosta.
+
+"This is more than music," answered Graham, still with averted face.
+Then, after a short pause, he approached Isaura, and said, with a
+melancholy half-smile,--
+
+"I do not think, Mademoiselle, that I could dare to hear you often; it
+would take me too far from the hard real world: and he who would not be
+left behindhand on the road that he must journey cannot indulge frequent
+excursions into fairyland."
+
+"Yet," said Isaura, in a tone yet sadder, "I was told in my childhood, by
+one whose genius gives authority to her words, that beside the real world
+lies the ideal.  The real world then seemed rough to me.  'Escape,' said
+my counsellor, 'is granted from that stony thoroughfare into the fields
+beyond its formal hedgerows.  The ideal world has its sorrows, but it
+never admits despair.'  That counsel then, methought, decided my choice
+of life.  I know not now if it has done so."
+
+"Fate," answered Graham, slowly and thoughtfully, "Fate, which is not
+the ruler but the servant of Providence, decides our choice of life, and
+rarely from outward circumstances.  Usually the motive power is within. 
+We apply the word 'genius' to the minds of the gifted few; but in all of
+us there is a genius that is inborn, a pervading something which
+distinguishes our very identity, and dictates to the conscience that
+which we are best fitted to do and to be.  In so dictating it compels
+our choice of life; or if we resist the dictate, we find at the close
+that we have gone astray.  My choice of life thus compelled is on the
+stony thoroughfares, yours in the green fields."
+
+As he thus said, his face became clouded and mournful.  The Venosta,
+quickly tired of a conversation in which she had no part, and having
+various little household matters to attend to, had during this dialogue
+slipped unobserved from the room; yet neither Isaura nor Graham felt the
+sudden consciousness that they were alone which belongs to lovers.
+"Why," asked Isaura, with that magic smile reflected in countless dimples
+which, even when her words were those of a man's reasoning, made them
+seem gentle with a woman's sentiment,--"why must your road through the
+world be so exclusively the stony one?  It is not from necessity, it can.
+not be from taste; and whatever definition you give to genius, surely it
+is not your own inborn genius that dictates to you a constant exclusive
+adherence to the commonplace of life."
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle, do not misrepresent me.  I did not say that I could
+not sometimes quit the real world for fairyland,--I said that I could not
+do so often.  My vocation is not that of a poet or artist."
+
+"It is that of an orator, I know," said Isaura, kindling; "so they tell
+me, and I believe them.  But is not the orator somewhat akin to the poet?
+Is not oratory an art?"
+
+"Let us dismiss the word orator; as applied to English public life, it is
+a very deceptive expression.  The Englishman who wishes to influence his
+countrymen by force of words spoken must mix with them in their beaten
+thoroughfares; must make himself master of their practical views and
+interests; must be conversant with their prosaic occupations and
+business; must understand how to adjust their loftiest aspirations to
+their material welfare; must avoid as the fault most dangerous to himself
+and to others that kind of eloquence which is called oratory in France,
+and which has helped to make the French the worst politicians in Europe.
+Alas!  Mademoiselle, I fear that an English statesman would appear to you
+a very dull orator."
+
+"I see that I spoke foolishly,--yes, you show me that the world of the
+statesman lies apart from that of the artist.  Yet--"
+
+"Yet what?"
+
+"May not the ambition of both be the same?"
+
+"How so?"
+
+"To refine the rude, to exalt the mean; to identify their own fame with
+some new beauty, some new glory, added to the treasure-house of all."
+
+Graham bowed his head reverently, and then raised it with the flush of
+enthusiasm on his cheek and brow.
+
+"Oh, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "what a sure guide and what a noble
+inspirer to a true Englishman's ambition nature has fitted you to be,
+were it not--"  He paused abruptly.
+
+This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise.  She had been accustomed
+to the language of compliment till it had begun to pall, but a compliment
+of this kind was the first that had ever reached her ear.  She had no
+words in answer to it; involuntarily she placed her hand on her heart as
+if to still its beatings.  But the unfinished exclamation, "Were it not,"
+troubled her more than the preceding words had flattered, and
+mechanically she murmured, "Were it not--what?"
+
+"Oh," answered Graham, affecting a tone of gayety, "I felt too ashamed of
+my selfishness as man to finish my sentence."
+
+"Do so, or I shall fancy you refrained lest you might wound me as woman."
+
+"Not so; on the contrary, had I gone on it would have been to say that a
+woman of your genius, and more especially of such mastery in the most
+popular and fascinating of all arts, could not be contented if she
+inspired nobler thoughts in a single breast,--she must belong to the
+public, or rather the public must belong to her; it is but a corner of
+her heart that an individual can occupy, and even that individual must
+merge his existence in hers, must be contented to reflect a ray of the
+light she sheds on admiring thousands.  Who could dare to say to you,
+'Renounce your career; confine your genius, your art, to the petty circle
+of home'?  To an actress, a singer, with whose fame the world rings, home
+would be a prison.  Pardon me, pardon--"
+
+Isaura had turned away her face to hide tears that would force their way;
+but she held out her hand to him with a childlike frankness, and said
+softly, "I am not offended."  Graham did not trust himself to continue
+the same strain of conversation.  Breaking into a new subject, he said,
+after a constrained pause, "Will you think it very impertinent in so new
+an acquaintance, if I ask how it is that you, an Italian, know our
+language as a native; and is it by Italian teachers that you have been
+trained to think and to feel?"
+
+"Mr. Selby, my second father, was an Englishman, and did not speak any
+other language with comfort to himself.  He was very fond of me; and had
+he been really my father I could not have loved him more.  We were
+constant companions till--till I lost him."
+
+"And no mother left to console you!"
+
+Isaura shook her head mournfully, and the Venosta here re-entered.
+Graham felt conscious that he had already stayed too long, and took
+leave.
+
+They knew that they were to meet that evening at the Savarins'.
+
+To Graham that thought was not one of unmixed pleasure; the more he knew
+of Isaura, the more he felt self-reproach that he had allowed himself to
+know her at all.
+
+But after he had left, Isaura sang low to herself the song which had so
+affected her listener; then she fell into abstracted revery, but she felt
+a strange and new sort of happiness.  In dressing for M. Savarin's
+dinner, and twining the classic ivy wreath in her dark locks, her Italian
+servant exclaimed, "How beautiful the Signorina looks to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+M. Savarin was one of the most brilliant of that galaxy of literary men
+which shed lustre on the reign of Louis Philippe.
+
+His was an intellect peculiarly French in its lightness and grace.
+Neither England nor Germany nor America has produced any resemblance to
+it.  Ireland has, in Thomas Moore; but then in Irish genius there is so
+much that is French.
+
+M. Savarin was free from the ostentatious extravagance which had come
+into vogue with the Empire.  His house and establishment were modestly
+maintained within the limit of an income chiefly, perhaps entirely,
+derived from literary profits.
+
+Though he gave frequent dinners, it was but to few at a time, and without
+show or pretence.  Yet the dinners, though simple, were perfect of their
+kind; and the host so contrived to infuse his own playful gayety into the
+temper of his guests, that the feasts at his house were considered the
+pleasantest at Paris.  On this occasion the party extended to ten, the
+largest number his table admitted.
+
+All the French guests belonged to the Liberal party, though in changing
+tints of the tricolor. _Place aux dames_!  first to be named were the
+Countess de Craon and Madame Vertot, both without husbands.  The Countess
+had buried the Count, Madame Vertot had separated from Monsieur.  The
+Countess was very handsome, but she was sixty; Madame Vertot was twenty
+years younger, but she was very plain.  She had quarrelled with the
+distinguished author for whose sake she had separated from Monsieur, and
+no man had since presumed to think that he could console a lady so plain
+for the loss of an author so distinguished.
+
+Both these ladies were very clever.  The Countess had written lyrical
+poems entitled "Cries of Liberty," and a drama of which Danton was the
+hero, and the moral too revolutionary for admission to the stage; but at
+heart the Countess was not at all a revolutionist,--the last person in
+the world to do or desire anything that could bring a washerwoman an inch
+nearer to a countess.  She was one of those persons who play with fire in
+order to appear enlightened.
+
+Madame Vertot was of severer mould.  She had knelt at the feet of M.
+Thiers, and went into the historico-political line.  She had written a
+remarkable book upon the modern Carthage (meaning England), and more
+recently a work that had excited much attention upon the Balance of
+Power, in which she proved it to be the interest of civilization and the
+necessity of Europe that Belgium should be added to France, and Prussia
+circumscribed to the bounds of its original margraviate.  She showed how
+easily these two objects could have been effected by a constitutional
+monarch instead of an egotistical Emperor.  Madame Vertot was a decided
+Orleanist.
+
+Both these ladies condescended to put aside authorship in general
+society.  Next amongst our guests let me place the Count de Passy and
+_Madame son espouse_.  The Count was seventy-one, and, it is needless to
+add, a type of Frenchman rapidly vanishing, and not likely to find itself
+renewed.  How shall I describe him so as to make my English reader
+understand?  Let me try by analogy.  Suppose a man of great birth and
+fortune, who in his youth had been an enthusiastic friend of Lord Byron
+and a jocund companion of George IV.; who had in him an immense degree of
+lofty romantic sentiment with an equal degree of well-bred worldly
+cynicism, but who, on account of that admixture, which is so rare, kept a
+high rank in either of the two societies into which, speaking broadly,
+civilized life divides itself,--the romantic and the cynical.  The Count
+de Passy had been the most ardent among the young disciples of
+Chateaubriand, the most brilliant among the young courtiers of Charles X.
+Need I add that he had been a terrible lady-killer?
+
+But in spite of his admiration of Chateaubriand and his allegiance to
+Charles X., the Count had been always true to those caprices of the
+French noblesse from which he descended,--caprices which destroyed them
+in the old Revolution; caprices belonging to the splendid ignorance of
+their nation in general and their order in particular.  Speaking without
+regard to partial exceptions, the French _gentilhomme_ is essentially a
+Parisian; a Parisian is essentially impressionable to the impulse or
+fashion of the moment. Is it _a la mode_ for the moment to be Liberal or
+anti-Liberal?  Parisians embrace and kiss each other, and swear through
+life and death to adhere forever to the mode of the moment.  The Three
+Days were the mode of the moment,--the Count de Passy became an
+enthusiastic Orleanist.  Louis Philippe was very gracious to him.  He was
+decorated; he was named _prefet_ of his department; he was created
+senator; he was about to be sent Minister to a German Court when Louis
+Philippe fell.  The Republic was proclaimed.  The Count caught the
+popular contagion, and after exchanging tears and kisses with patriots
+whom a week before he had called _canaille_, he swore eternal fidelity to
+the Republic.  The fashion of the moment suddenly became Napoleonic, and
+with the _coup d'etat_ the Republic was metamorphosed into an Empire.
+The Count wept on the bosoms of all the _Vieilles Moustaches_ he could
+find, and rejoiced that the sun of Austerlitz had re-arisen.  But after
+the affair of Mexico the sun of Austerlitz waxed very sickly.
+Imperialism was fast going out of fashion.  The Count transferred his
+affection to Jules Favre, and joined the ranks of the advanced Liberals.
+During all these political changes, the Count had remained very much the
+same man in private life; agreeable, good-natured, witty, and, above all,
+a devotee of the fair sex.  When he had reached the age of sixty-eight he
+was still _fort bel homme_, unmarried, with a grand presence and charming
+manner.  At that age he said, "Je me range," and married a young lady of
+eighteen.  She adored her husband, and was wildly jealous of him; while
+the Count did not seem at all jealous of her, and submitted to her
+adoration with a gentle shrug of the shoulders.
+
+The three other guests who, with Graham and the two Italian ladies, made
+up the complement of ten, were the German Count von Rudesheim, a
+celebrated French physician named Bacourt, and a young author whom
+Savarin had admitted into his clique and declared to be of rare promise.
+This author, whose real name was Gustave Rameau, but who, to prove, I
+suppose, the sincerity of that scorn for ancestry which he professed,
+published his verses under the patrician designation of Alphonse de
+Valcour, was about twenty-four, and might have passed at the first glance
+for younger; but, looking at him closely, the signs of old age were
+already stamped on his visage.
+
+He was undersized, and of a feeble slender frame.  In the eyes of women
+and artists the defects of his frame were redeemed by the extraordinary
+beauty of the face.  His black hair, carefully parted in the centre, and
+worn long and flowing, contrasted the whiteness of a high though narrow
+forehead, and the delicate pallor of his cheeks.  His feature, were very
+regular, his eyes singularly bright; but the expression of the face spoke
+of fatigue and exhaustion; the silky locks were already thin, and
+interspersed with threads of silver; the bright eyes shone out from
+sunken orbits; the lines round the mouth were marked as they are in the
+middle age of one who has lived too fast.
+
+It was a countenance that might have excited a compassionate and tender
+interest but for something arrogant and supercilious in the expression,-
+something that demanded not tender pity but enthusiastic admiration.  Yet
+that expression was displeasing rather to men than to women; and one
+could well conceive that, among the latter, the enthusiastic admiration
+it challenged would be largely conceded.
+
+The conversation at dinner was in complete contrast to that at the
+Americans' the day before.  There the talk, though animated, had been
+chiefly earnest and serious; here it was all touch and go, sally and
+repartee.  The subjects were the light on lots and lively anecdotes of
+the day, not free from literature and politics, but both treated as
+matters of persiflage, hovered round with a jest and quitted with an
+epigram.  The two French lady authors, the Count de Passy, the physician,
+and the host far outspoke all the other guests.  Now and then, however,
+the German Count struck in with an ironical remark condensing a great
+deal of grave wisdom, and the young author with ruder and more biting
+sarcasm.  If the sarcasm told, he showed his triumph by a low-pitched
+laugh; if it failed, he evinced his displeasure by a contemptuous sneer
+or a grim scowl.
+
+Isaura and Graham were not seated near each other, and were for the most
+part contented to be listeners.
+
+On adjourning to the salon after dinner, Graham, however, was approaching
+the chair in which Isaura had placed herself, when the young author,
+forestalling him, dropped into the seat next to her, and began a
+conversation in a voice so low that it might have passed for a whisper.
+The Englishman drew back and observed them.  He soon perceived, with a
+pang of jealousy not unmingled with scorn, that the author's talk
+appeared to interest Isaura.  She listened with evident attention; and
+when she spoke in return, though Graham did not hear her words, he could
+observe on her expressive countenance an increased gentleness of aspect.
+
+"I hope," said the physician, joining Graham, as most of the other guests
+gathered round Savarin, who was in his liveliest vein of anecdote and
+wit,--"I hope that the fair Italian will not allow that ink-bottle imp to
+persuade her that she has fallen in love with him."
+
+"Do young ladies generally find him so seductive?" asked Graham, with a
+forced smile.
+
+"Probably enough.  He has the reputation of being very clever and very
+wicked, and that is a sort of character which has the serpent's
+fascination for the daughters of Eve."
+
+"Is the reputation merited?"
+
+"As to the cleverness, I am not a fair judge.  I dislike that sort of
+writing which is neither manlike nor womanlike, and in which young Rameau
+excels.  He has the knack of finding very exaggerated phrases by which to
+express commonplace thoughts.  He writes verses about love in words so
+stormy that you might fancy that Jove was descending upon Semele; but
+when you examine his words, as a sober pathologist like myself is
+disposed to do, your fear for the peace of households vanishes,--they are
+Fox et proeterea nihil; no man really in love would use them.  He writes
+prose about the wrongs of humanity.  You feel for humanity; you say,
+'Grant the wrongs, now for the remedy,'--and you find nothing but
+balderdash.  Still I am bound to say that both in verse and prose Gustave
+Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste of the day, and therefore he is
+coming into vogue.  So much as to his writings; as to his wickedness, you
+have only to look at him to feel sure that he is not a hundredth part so
+wicked as he wishes to seem.  In a word, then, M. Gustave Rameau is a
+type of that somewhat numerous class among the youth of Paris, which I
+call 'the lost Tribe of Absinthe.'  There is a set of men who begin to
+live full gallop while they are still boys.  As a general rule, they are
+originally of the sickly frames which can scarcely even trot, much less
+gallop without the spur of stimulants, and no stimulant so fascinates
+their peculiar nervous system as absinthe.  The number of patients in
+this set who at the age of thirty are more worn out than septuagenarians
+increases so rapidly as to make one dread to think what will be the next
+race of Frenchmen.  To the predilection for absinthe young Rameau and the
+writers of his set add the imitation of Heine, after, indeed, the manner
+of caricaturists, who effect a likeness striking in proportion as it is
+ugly.  It is not easy to imitate the pathos and the wit of Heine; but it
+is easy to imitate his defiance of the Deity, his mockery of right and
+wrong, his relentless war on that heroic standard of thought and action
+which the writers who exalt their nation intuitively preserve.  Rameau
+cannot be a Heine, but he can be to Heine what a misshapen snarling dwarf
+is to a mangled blaspheming Titan.  Yet he interests the women in
+general, and he evidently interests the fair Signorina in especial."
+
+Just as Bacourt finished that last sentence, Isaura lifted the head which
+had hitherto bent in an earnest listening attitude that seemed to justify
+the Doctor's remarks, and looked round.  Her eyes met Graham's with the
+fearless candour which made half the charm of their bright yet soft
+intelligence; but she dropped them suddenly with a half-start and a
+change of colour, for the expression of Graham's face was unlike that
+which she had hitherto seen on it,--it was hard, stern, and somewhat
+disdainful.  A minute or so afterwards she rose, and in passing across
+the room towards the group round the host, paused at a table covered with
+books and prints near to which Graham was standing alone.  The Doctor had
+departed in company with the German Count.
+
+Isaura took up one of the prints.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed, "Sorrento, my Sorrento.  Have you ever visited
+Sorrento, Mr. Vane?"
+
+Her question and her movement were evidently in conciliation.  Was the
+conciliation prompted by coquetry, or by a sentiment more innocent and
+artless?
+
+Graham doubted, and replied coldly, as he bent over the print,--
+
+"I once stayed there a few days, but my recollection of it is not
+sufficiently lively to enable me to recognize its features in this
+design."
+
+"That is the house, at least so they say, of Tasso's father; of course
+you visited that?"
+
+"Yes, it was a hotel in my time; I lodged there."
+
+"And I too.  There I first read 'The Gerusalemine.'" The last words were
+said in Italian, with a low measured tone, inwardly and dreamily.
+
+A somewhat sharp and incisive voice speaking in French here struck in and
+prevented Graham's rejoinder: "Quel joli dessin!  What is it,
+Mademoiselle?"
+
+Graham recoiled; the speaker was Gustave Rameau, who had, unobserved,
+first watched Isaura, then rejoined her side.
+
+"A view of Sorrento, Monsieur, but it does not do justice to the place.
+I was pointing out the house which belonged to Tasso's father."
+
+"Tasso!  Hein! and which is the fair Eleonora's?"
+
+"Monsieur," answered Isaura, rather startled at that question, from a
+professed _homme de lettres_, "Eleonora did not live at Sorrento."
+
+"Tant pis pour Sorrente," said the homme de lettres, carelessly.  "No one
+would care for Tasso if it were not for Eleonora."
+
+"I should rather have thought," said Graham, "that no one would have
+cared for Eleonora if it were not for Tasso."
+
+Rameau glanced at the Englishman superciliously.  "Pardon, Monsieur, in
+every age a love-story keeps its interest; but who cares nowadays for le
+clinquant du Tasse?"
+
+"Le clinquant du Tasse!" exclaimed Isaura, indignantly.
+
+"The expression is Boileau's, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of the 'Sot de
+qualite,' who prefers--
+
+               "'Le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile.'
+
+"But for my part I have as little faith in the last as the first."
+
+"I do not know Latin, and have therefore not read Virgil," said Isaura.
+
+"Possibly," remarked Graham, "Monsieur does not know Italian, and has
+therefore not read Tasso."
+
+"If that be meant in sarcasm," retorted Rameau, "I construe it as a
+compliment.  A Frenchman who is contented to study the masterpieces of
+modern literature need learn no language and read no authors but his
+own."
+
+Isaura laughed her pleasant silvery laugh.  "I should admire the
+frankness of that boast, Monsieur, if in our talk just now you had not
+spoken as contemptuously of what we are accustomed to consider French
+masterpieces as you have done of Virgil and Tasso."
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle!  it is not my fault if you have had teachers of taste
+so _rococo_ as to bid you find masterpieces in the tiresome stilted
+tragedies of Corneille and Racine.  Poetry of a court, not of a people,
+one simple novel, one simple stanza that probes the hidden recesses of
+the human heart, reveals the sores of this wretched social state,
+denounces the evils of superstition, kingcraft, and priestcraft, is worth
+a library of the rubbish which pedagogues call 'the classics.'  We agree,
+at least, in one thing, Mademoiselle; we both do homage to the genius of
+your friend Madame de Grantmesnil."
+
+"Your friend, Signorina!" cried Graham, incredulously; "is Madame de
+Grantmesnil your friend?"
+
+"The dearest I have in the world."
+
+Graham's face darkened; he turned away in silence, and in another minute
+vanished from the room, persuading himself that he felt not one pang of
+jealousy in leaving Gustave Rameau by the side of Isaura.  "Her dearest
+friend Madame de Grantmesnil!" he muttered.
+
+A word now on Isaura's chief correspondent.  Madame de Grantmesnil was a
+woman of noble birth and ample fortune.  She had separated from her
+husband in the second year after marriage.  She was a singularly eloquent
+writer, surpassed among contemporaries of her sex in popularity and
+renown only by Georges Sand.
+
+At least as fearless as that great novelist in the frank exposition of
+her views, she had commenced her career in letters by a work of
+astonishing power and pathos, directed against the institution of
+marriage as regulated in Roman Catholic communities.  I do not know that
+it said more on this delicate subject than the English Milton has said;
+but then Milton did not write for a Roman Catholic community, nor adopt a
+style likely to captivate the working classes.  Madame de Grantmesnil's
+first book was deemed an attack on the religion of the country, and
+captivated those among the working classes who had already abjured that
+religion.  This work was followed up by others more or less in defiance
+of "received opinions,"--some with political, some with social
+revolutionary aim and tendency, but always with a singular purity of
+style.  Search all her books, and however you might revolt from her
+doctrine, you could not find a hazardous expression.  The novels of
+English young ladies are naughty in comparison.  Of late years, whatever
+might be hard or audacious in her political or social doctrines softened
+itself into charm amid the golden haze of romance.  Her writings had
+grown more and more purely artistic,--poetizing what is good and
+beautiful in the realities of life rather than creating a false ideal out
+of what is vicious and deformed.  Such a woman, separated young from her
+husband, could not enunciate such opinions and lead a life so independent
+and uncontrolled as Madame de Grantmesnil had done, without scandal,
+without calumny.  Nothing, however, in her actual life had ever been so
+proved against her as to lower the high position she occupied in right of
+birth, fortune, renown.  Wherever she went she was _fetee_, as in England
+foreign princes, and in America foreign authors, are _fetes_.  Those who
+knew her well concurred in praise of her lofty, generous, lovable
+qualities.  Madame de Grantmesnil had known Mr. Selby; and when, at his
+death, Isaura, in the innocent age between childhood and youth, had been
+left the most sorrowful and most lonely creature on the face of the
+earth, this famous woman, worshipped by the rich for her intellect,
+adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to the orphan's friendless
+side, breathing love once more into her pining heart, and waking for the
+first time the desires of genius, the aspirations of art, in the dim
+self-consciousness of a soul between sleep and waking.
+
+But, my dear Englishman, put yourself in Graham's place, and suppose that
+you were beginning to fall in love with a girl whom for many good reasons
+you ought not to marry; suppose that in the same hour in which you were
+angrily conscious of jealousy on account of a man whom it wounds your
+self-esteem to consider a rival, the girl tells you that her dearest
+friend is a woman who is famed for her hostility to the institution of
+marriage!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+On the same day in which Graham dined with the Savarins, M. Louvier
+assembled round his table the elite of the young Parisians who
+constituted the oligarchy of fashion, to meet whom he had invited his new
+friend the Marquis de Rochebriant.  Most of them belonged to the
+Legitimist party, the noblesse of the faubourg; those who did not,
+belonged to no political party at all,--indifferent to the cares of
+mortal States as the gods of Epicurus.  Foremost among this _Jeunesse
+doree_ were Alain's kinsmen, Raoul and Enguerrand de Vandemar.  To these
+Louvier introduced him with a burly parental bonhomie, as if he were the
+head of the family.  "I need not bid you, young folks, to make friends
+with each other.  A Vandemar and a Rochebriant are not made friends,--
+they are born friends."  So saying he turned to his other guests.
+
+Almost in an instant Alain felt his constraint melt away in the cordial
+warmth with which his cousins greeted him.  These young men had a
+striking family likeness to each other, and yet in feature, colouring,
+and expression, in all save that strange family likeness, they were
+contrasts.  Raoul was tall, and, though inclined to be slender, with
+sufficient breadth of shoulder to indicate no inconsiderable strength of
+frame.  His hair worn short and his silky beard worn long were dark; so
+were his eyes, shaded by curved drooping lashes; his complexion was pale,
+but clear and healthful.  In repose the expression of his face was that
+of a somewhat melancholy indolence, but in speaking it became singularly
+sweet, with a smile of the exquisite urbanity which no artificial
+politeness can bestow; it must emanate from that native high breeding
+which has its source in goodness of heart.
+
+Enguerrand was fair, with curly locks of a golden chestnut.  He wore no
+beard, only a small mustache rather darker than his hair.  His complexion
+might in itself be called effeminate, its bloom was so fresh and
+delicate; but there was so much of boldness and energy in the play of his
+countenance, the hardy outline of the lips, and the open breadth of the
+forehead, that "effeminate" was an epithet no one ever assigned to his
+aspect.  He was somewhat under the middle height, but beautifully
+proportioned, carried himself well, and somehow or other did not look
+short even by the side of tall men.  Altogether he seemed formed to be a
+mother's darling, and spoiled by women, yet to hold his own among men
+with a strength of will more evident in his look and his bearing than it
+was in those of his graver and statelier brother.
+
+Both were considered by their young co-equals models in dress, but in
+Raoul there was no sign that care or thought upon dress had been
+bestowed; the simplicity of his costume was absolute and severe.  On his
+plain shirt-front there gleamed not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled
+not a ring.  Enguerrand, on the contrary, was not without pretension in
+his attire; the broderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by the Queen of
+the Fairies.  His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and wrist-
+buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double the rental of
+Rochebriant, but probably they cost him nothing.  He was one of those
+happy Lotharios to whom Calistas make constant presents.  All about him
+was so bright that the atmosphere around seemed gayer for his presence.
+
+In one respect at least the brothers closely resembled each other,--in
+that exquisite graciousness of manner for which the genuine French noble
+is traditionally renowned; a graciousness that did not desert them even
+when they came reluctantly into contact with _roturiers_ or republicans;
+but the graciousness became _egalite, fraternite_, towards one of their
+caste and kindred.
+
+"We must do our best to make Paris pleasant to you," said Raoul, still
+retaining in his grasp the hand he had taken.
+
+"_Vilain cousin_," said the livelier Enguerrand, "to have been in Paris
+twenty-four hours, and without letting us know."
+
+"Has not your father told you that I called upon him?"
+
+"Our father," answered Raoul, "was not so savage as to conceal that fact;
+but he said you were only here on business for a day or two, had declined
+his invitation, and would not give your address. _Pauvre pere_!  we
+scolded him well for letting you escape from us thus.  My mother has not
+forgiven him yet; we must present you to her to-morrow.  I answer for
+your liking her almost as much as she will like you."
+
+Before Alain could answer dinner was announced.  Alain's place at dinner
+was between his cousins.  How pleasant they made themselves!  It was the
+first time in which Alain had been brought into such familiar
+conversation with countrymen of his own rank as well as his own age.  His
+heart warmed to them.  The general talk of the other guests was strange
+to his ear; it ran much upon horses and races, upon the opera and the
+ballet; it was enlivened with satirical anecdotes of persons whose names
+were unknown to the Provincial; not a word was said that showed the
+smallest interest in politics or the slightest acquaintance with
+literature.  The world of these well-born guests seemed one from which
+all that concerned the great mass of mankind was excluded, yet the talk
+was that which could only be found in a very polished society.  In it
+there was not much wit, but there was a prevalent vein of gayety, and the
+gayety was never violent, the laughter was never loud; the scandals
+circulated might imply cynicism the most absolute, but in language the
+most refined.  The Jockey Club of Paris has its perfume.
+
+Raoul did not mix in the general conversation; he devoted himself
+pointedly to the amusement of his cousin, explaining to him the point of
+the anecdotes circulated, or hitting off in terse sentences the
+characters of the talkers.
+
+Enguerrand was evidently of temper more vivacious than his brother, and
+contributed freely to the current play of light gossip and mirthful
+sally.
+
+Louvier, seated between a duke and a Russian prince, said little except
+to recommend a wine or an entree, but kept his eye constantly on the
+Vandemars and Alain.
+
+Immediately after coffee the guests departed.  Before they did so,
+however, Raoul introduced his cousin to those of the party most
+distinguished by hereditary rank or social position.  With these the name
+of Rochebriant was too historically famous not to insure respect of its
+owner; they welcomed him among them as if he were their brother.
+
+The French duke claimed him as a connection by an alliance in the
+fourteenth century; the Russian prince had known the late Marquis, and
+trusted that the son would allow him to improve into friendship the
+acquaintance he had formed with the father.
+
+Those ceremonials over, Raoul linked his arm in Alain's and said: "I am
+not going to release you so soon after we have caught you.  You must come
+with me to a house in which I at least spend an hour or two every
+evening.  I am at home there.  Bah!  I take no refusal.  Do not suppose I
+carry you off to Bohemia,--a country which, I am sorry to say, Enguerrand
+now and then visits, but which is to me as unknown as the mountains of
+the moon.  The house I speak of is _comme il faut_ to the utmost.  It is
+that of the Contessa di Rimini,--a charming Italian by marriage, but by
+birth and in character _on ne peut plus Francaise_.  My mother adores
+her."
+
+That dinner at M. Louvier's had already effected a great change in the
+mood and temper of Alain de Rochebriant; he felt, as if by magic, the
+sense of youth, of rank, of station, which had been so suddenly checked
+and stifled, warmed to life within his veins.  He should have deemed
+himself a boor had he refused the invitation so frankly tendered.
+
+But on reaching the _coupe_ which the brothers kept in common, and seeing
+it only held two, he drew back.
+
+"Nay, enter, mon cher," said Raoul, divining the cause of his hesitation;
+"Enguerrand has gone on to his club."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+"Tell me," said Raoul, when they were in the carriage, "how you came to
+know M. Louvier."
+
+"He is my chief mortgagee."
+
+"H'm! that explains it.  But you might be in worse hands; the man has a
+character for liberality."
+
+"Did your father mention to you my circumstances, and the reason that
+brings me to Paris?"
+
+"Since you put the question point-blank, my dear cousin, he did."
+
+"He told you how poor I am, and how keen must be my lifelong struggle to
+keep Rochebriant as the home of my race?"
+
+"He told us all that could make us still more respect the Marquis de
+Rochebriant, and still more eagerly long to know our cousin and the head
+of our house," answered Raoul, with a certain nobleness of tone and
+manner.
+
+Alain pressed his kinsman's hand with grateful emotion.  "Yet," he said
+falteringly, "your father agreed with me that my circumstances would not
+allow me to--"
+
+"Bah!" interrupted Raoul, with a gentle laugh; "my father is a very
+clever man, doubtless, but he knows only the world of his own day,
+nothing of the world of ours.  I and Enguerrand will call on you
+to-morrow, to take you to my mother, and before doing so, to consult as
+to affairs in general.  On this last matter Enguerrand is an oracle.
+Here we are at the Contessa's."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Contessa di Rimini received her visitors in a boudoir furnished with
+much apparent simplicity, but a simplicity by no means inexpensive.  The
+draperies were but of chintz, and the walls covered with the same
+material,--a lively pattern, in which the prevalents were rose-colour and
+white; but the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the china stored in the
+cabinets or arranged on the shelves, the small knickknacks scattered on
+the tables, were costly rarities of art.
+
+The Contessa herself was a woman who had somewhat passed her thirtieth
+year,--not strikingly handsome, but exquisitely pretty.  "There is," said
+a great French writer, "only one way in which a woman can be handsome,
+but a hundred thousand ways in which she can be pretty;" and it would be
+impossible to reckon up the number of ways in which Adeline di Rimini
+carried off the prize in prettiness.
+
+Yet it would be unjust to the personal attractions of the Contessa to
+class them all under the word "prettiness."  When regarded more
+attentively, there was an expression in her countenance that might almost
+be called divine, it spoke so unmistakably of a sweet nature and an
+untroubled soul.  An English poet once described her by repeating the old
+lines,
+
+          "Her face is like the milky way I' the sky,
+          --A meeting of gentle lights without a name."
+
+She was not alone; an elderly lady sat on an armchair by the fire,
+engaged in knitting; and a man, also elderly, and whose dress proclaimed
+him an ecclesiastic, sat at the opposite corner, with a large Angora cat
+on his lap.
+
+"I present to you, Madame," said Raoul, "my new-found cousin, the
+seventeenth Marquis de Rochebriant, whom I am proud to consider on the
+male side the head of our house, representing its eldest branch.  Welcome
+him for my sake,--in future he will be welcome for his own."
+
+The Contessa replied very graciously to this introduction, and made room
+for Alain on the divan from which she had risen.
+
+The old lady looked up from her knitting; the ecclesiastic removed the
+cat from his lap.  Said the old lady, "I announce myself to M. le
+Marquis.  I knew his mother well enough to be invited to his christening;
+otherwise I have no pretension to the acquaintance of a cavalier _si
+beau_, being old, rather deaf, very stupid, exceedingly poor--"
+
+"And," interrupted Raoul, "the woman in all Paris the most adored for
+_bonte_, and consulted for _savoir vivre_ by the young cavaliers whom she
+deigns to receive.  Alain, I present you to Madame de Maury, the widow of
+a distinguished author and academician, and the daughter of the brave
+Henri de Gerval, who fought for the good cause in La Vendee.  I present
+you also to the Abbe Vertpre, who has passed his life in the vain
+endeavour to make other men as good as himself."
+
+"Base flatterer!" said the Abbe, pinching Raoul's ear with one hand,
+while he extended the other to Alain.  "Do not let your cousin frighten
+you from knowing me, Monsieur le Marquis; when he was my pupil, he so
+convinced me of the incorrigibility of perverse human nature, that I now
+chiefly address myself to the moral improvement of the brute creation.
+Ask the Contessa if I have not achieved a _beau succes_ with her Angora
+cat.  Three months ago that creature had the two worst propensities of
+man,--he was at once savage and mean; he bit, he stole.  Does he ever
+bite now?  No.  Does he ever steal?  No.  Why?  I have awakened in that
+cat the dormant conscience, and that done, the conscience regulates his
+actions; once made aware of the difference between wrong and right, the
+cat maintains it unswervingly, as if it were a law of nature.  But if,
+with prodigious labour, one does awaken conscience in a human sinner, it
+has no steady effect on his conduct,--he continues to sin all the same.
+Mankind at Paris, Monsieur le Marquis, is divided between two classes,-
+one bites and the other steals.  Shun both; devote yourself to cats."
+
+The Abbe delivered this oration with a gravity of mien and tone which
+made it difficult to guess whether he spoke in sport or in earnest, in
+simple playfulness or with latent sarcasm.
+
+But on the brow and in the eye of the priest there was a general
+expression of quiet benevolence, which made Alain incline to the belief
+that he was only speaking as a pleasant humourist; and the Marquis
+replied gayly,--
+
+"Monsieur L'Abbe, admitting the superior virtue of cats when taught by so
+intelligent a preceptor, still the business of human life is not
+transacted by cats; and since men must deal with men, permit me, as a
+preliminary caution, to inquire in which class I must rank yourself.  Do
+you bite or do you steal?"
+
+This sally, which showed that the Marquis was already shaking off his
+provincial reserve, met with great success.  Raoul and the Contessa
+laughed merrily; Madame de Maury clapped her hands, and cried "Bien!"
+
+The Abbe replied, with unmoved gravity, "Both.  I am a priest; it is my
+duty to bite the bad and steal from the good, as you will see, Monsieur
+le Marquis, if you will glance at this paper."
+
+Here he handed to Alain a memorial on behalf of an afflicted family who
+had been burnt out of their home, and reduced from comparative ease to
+absolute want.  There was a list appended of some twenty subscribers, the
+last being the Contessa, fifty francs, and Madame de Maury, five.
+
+"Allow me, Marquis," said the Abbe, "to steal from you.  Bless you two-
+fold, _mon fils_!" (taking the napoleon Alain extended to him) "first for
+your charity; secondly, for the effect of its example upon the heart of
+your cousin.  Raoul de Vandemar, stand and deliver.  Bah! what! only ten
+francs."
+
+Raoul made a sign to the Abbe, unperceived by the rest, as he answered,
+"Abbe, I should excel your expectations of my career if I always continue
+worth half as much as my cousin."
+
+Alain felt to the bottom of his heart the delicate tact of his richer
+kinsman in giving less than himself, and the Abbe replied, "Niggard, you
+are pardoned.  Humility is a more difficult virtue to produce than
+charity, and in your case an instance of it is so rare that it merits
+encouragement."
+
+The "tea equipage" was now served in what at Paris is called the English
+fashion; the Contessa presided over it, the guests gathered round the
+table, and the evening passed away in the innocent gayety of a domestic
+circle.  The talk, if not especially intellectual, was at least not
+fashionable.  Books were not discussed, neither were scandals; yet
+somehow or other it was cheery and animated, like that of a happy family
+in a country-house.  Alain thought still the better of Raoul that,
+Parisian though he was, he could appreciate the charm of an evening so
+innocently spent.
+
+On taking leave, the Contessa gave Alain a general invitation to drop in
+whenever he was not better engaged.
+
+"I except only the opera nights," said she.  "My husband has gone to
+Milan on his affairs, and during his absence I do not go to parties; the
+opera I cannot resist."
+
+Raoul set Alain down at his lodgings.  "Au revoir; tomorrow at one
+o'clock expect Enguerrand and myself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Raul and Enguerrand called on Alain at the hour fixed.  "In the first
+place," said Raoul, "I must beg you to accept my mother's regrets that
+she cannot receive you to-day.  She and the Contessa belong to a society
+of ladies formed for visiting the poor, and this is their day; but to-
+morrow you must dine with us _en famille_.  Now to business.  Allow me to
+light my cigar while you confide the whole state of affairs to
+Enguerrand.  Whatever he counsels, I am sure to approve."
+
+Alain, as briefly as he could, stated his circumstances, his mortgages,
+and the hopes which his avow had encouraged him to place in the friendly
+disposition of M. Louvier.  When he had concluded, Enguerrand mused for a
+few moments before replying.  At last he said, "Will you trust me to call
+on Louvier on your behalf?  I shall but inquire if he is inclined to take
+on himself the other mortgages; and if so, on what terms.  Our
+relationship gives me the excuse for my interference; and to say truth, I
+have had much familiar intercourse with the man.  I too am a speculator,
+and have often profited by Louvier's advice.  You may ask what can be his
+object in serving me; he can gain nothing by it.  To this I answer, the
+key to his good offices is in his character.  Audacious though he be as a
+speculator, he is wonderfully prudent as a politician.  This belle France
+of ours is like a stage tumbler; one can never be sure whether it will
+stand on its head or its feet.  Louvier very wisely wishes to feel
+himself safe whatever party comes uppermost.  He has no faith in the
+duration of the Empire; and as, at all events, the Empire will not
+confiscate his millions, he takes no trouble in conciliating
+Imperialists.  But on the principle which induces certain savages to
+worship the devil and neglect the _bon Dieu_, because the devil is
+spiteful and the bon Dieu is too beneficent to injure them, Louvier, at
+heart detesting as well as dreading a republic, lays himself out to
+secure friends with the Republicans of all classes, and pretends to
+espouse their cause; next to them, he is very conciliatory to the
+Orleanists; lastly, though he thinks the Legitimists have no chance, he
+desires to keep well with the nobles of that party, because they exercise
+a considerable influence over that sphere of opinion which belongs to
+fashion,--for fashion is never powerless in Paris.  Raoul and myself are
+no mean authorities in salons and clubs, and a good word from us is worth
+having.
+
+"Besides, Louvier himself in his youth set up for a dandy; and that
+deposed ruler of dandies, our unfortunate kinsman, Victor de Mauleon,
+shed some of his own radiance on the money-lender's son.  But when
+Victor's star was eclipsed, Louvier ceased to gleam.  The dandies cut
+him.  In his heart he exults that the dandies now throng to his
+_soirees_.
+
+"Bref, the millionaire is especially civil to me,--the more so as I know
+intimately two or three eminent journalists; and Louvier takes pains to
+plant garrisons in the press.  I trust I have explained the grounds on
+which I may be a better diplomatist to employ than your _avoue_; and with
+your leave I will go to Louvier at once."
+
+"Let him go," said Raoul.  "Enguerrand never fails in anything he
+undertakes; especially," he added, with a smile half sad, half tender,
+"when one wishes to replenish one's purse."
+
+"I too gratefully grant such an ambassador all powers to treat," said
+Alain.  "I am only ashamed to consign to him a post so much beneath his
+genius," and "his birth" he was about to add, but wisely checked himself.
+Enguerrand said, shrugging his shoulders, "You can't do me a greater
+kindness than by setting my wits at work.  I fall a martyr to _ennui_
+when I am not in action;" he said, and was gone.
+
+"It makes me very melancholy at times," said Raoul, flinging away the end
+of his cigar, "to think that a man so clever and so energetic as
+Enguerrand should be as much excluded from the service of his country as
+if he were an Iroquois Indian.  He would have made a great diplomatist."
+
+"Alas!" replied Alain, with a sigh, "I begin to doubt whether we
+Legitimists are justified in maintaining a useless loyalty to a sovereign
+who renders us morally exiles in the land of our birth."
+
+"I have no doubt on the subject," said Raoul.  "We are not justified on
+the score of policy, but we have no option at present on the score of
+honour.  We should gain so much for ourselves if we adopted the State
+livery and took the State wages that no man would esteem us as patriots;
+we should only be despised as apostates.  So long as Henry V. lives, and
+does not resign his claim, we cannot be active citizens; we must be
+mournful lookers-on.  But what matters it?  We nobles of the old race are
+becoming rapidly extinct.  Under any form of government likely to be
+established in France we are equally doomed.  The French people, aiming
+at an impossible equality, will never again tolerate a race of
+gentilshommes.  They cannot prevent, without destroying commerce and
+capital altogether, a quick succession of men of the day, who form
+nominal aristocracies much more opposed to equality than any hereditary
+class of nobles; but they refuse these fleeting substitutes of born
+patricians all permanent stake in the country, since whatever estate they
+buy must be subdivided at their death my poor Alain, you are making it
+the one ambition of your life to preserve to your posterity the home and
+lands of your forefathers.  How is that possible, even supposing you
+could redeem the mortgages?  You marry some day; you have children, and
+Rochebriant must then be sold to pay for their separate portions.  How
+this condition of things, while rendering us so ineffective to perform
+the normal functions of a noblesse in public life, affects us in private
+life, may be easily conceived.
+
+"Condemned to a career of pleasure and frivolity, we can scarcely escape
+from the contagion of extravagant luxury which forms the vice of the
+time.  With grand names to keep up, and small fortunes whereon to keep
+them, we readily incur embarrassment and debt.  Then neediness conquers
+pride.  We cannot be great merchants, but we can be small gamblers on the
+Bourse, or, thanks to the Credit Mobilier, imitate a cabinet minister,
+and keep a shop under another name.  Perhaps you have heard that
+Enguerrand and I keep a shop.  Pray, buy your gloves there.  Strange fate
+for men whose ancestors fought in the first Crusade--_mais que voulez-
+vous_?"
+
+"I was told of the shop," said Alain; "but the moment I knew you I
+disbelieved the story."
+
+"Quite true.  Shall I confide to you why we resorted to that means of
+finding ourselves in pocket-money?  My father gives us rooms in his
+hotel; the use of his table, which we do not much profit by; and an
+allowance, on which we could not live as young men of our class live at
+Paris.  Enguerrand had his means of spending pocket-money, I mine; but it
+came to the same thing,--the pockets were emptied.  We incurred debts.
+Two years ago my father straitened himself to pay them, saying, 'The next
+time you come to me with debts, however small, you must pay them
+yourselves, or you must marry, and leave it to me to find you wives.'
+This threat appalled us both.  A month afterwards, Enguerrand made a
+lucky hit at the Bourse, and proposed to invest the proceeds in a shop.
+I resisted as long as I could; but Enguerrand triumphed over me, as he
+always does.  He found an excellent deputy in a _bonne_ who had nursed us
+in childhood, and married a journeyman perfumer who understands the
+business.  It answers well; we are not in debt, and we have preserved our
+freedom."
+
+After these confessions Raoul went away, and Alain fell into a mournful
+revery, from which he was roused by a loud ring at his bell.  He opened
+the door, and beheld M. Louvier.  The burly financier was much out of
+breath after making so steep an ascent.  It was in gasps that he
+muttered, "Bon jour; excuse me if I derange you."  Then entering and
+seating himself on a chair, he took some minutes to recover speech,
+rolling his eyes staringly round the meagre, unluxurious room, and then
+concentrating their gaze upon its occupier.
+
+"_Peste_, my dear Marquis!" he said at last, "I hope the next time I
+visit you the ascent may be less arduous.  One would think you were in
+training to ascend the Himalaya."
+
+The haughty noble writhed under this jest, and the spirit inborn in his
+order spoke in his answer.
+
+"I am accustomed to dwell on heights, Monsieur Louvier; the castle of
+Rochebriant is not on a level with the town."  An angry gleam shot out
+from the eyes of the millionaire, but there was no other sign of
+displeasure in his answer.  "_Bien dit, mon cher_; how you remind me of
+your father!  Now, give me leave to speak on affairs.  I have seen your
+cousin Enguerrand de Vandemar. _Homme de moyens_, though _joli garcon_.
+He proposed that you should call on me.  I said 'no' to the _cher petit_
+Enguerrand,--a visit from me was due to you.  To cut matters short, M.
+Gandrin has allowed me to look into your papers.  I was disposed to serve
+you from the first; I am still more disposed to serve you now.  I
+undertake to pay off all your other mortgages, and become sole mortgagee,
+and on terms that I have jotted down on this paper, and which I hope will
+content you."
+
+He placed a paper in Alain's hand, and took out a box, from which he
+extracted a jujube, placed it in his mouth, folded his hands, and
+reclined back in his chair, with his eyes half closed, as if exhausted
+alike by his ascent and his generosity.
+
+In effect, the terms were unexpectedly liberal.  The reduced interest on
+the mortgages would leave the Marquis an income of L1,000 a year instead
+of L400.  Louvier proposed to take on himself the legal cost of transfer,
+and to pay to the Marquis 25,000 francs, on the completion of the deed,
+as a bonus.  The mortgage did not exempt the building-land, as Hebert
+desired.  In all else it was singularly advantageous, and Alain could but
+feel a thrill of grateful delight at an offer by which his stinted income
+was raised to comparative affluence.
+
+"Well, Marquis," said Louvier, "what does the castle say to the town?"
+
+"Monsieur Louvier," answered Alain, extending his hand with cordial
+eagerness, "accept my sincere apologies for the indiscretion of my
+metaphor.  Poverty is proverbially sensitive to jests on it.  I owe it to
+you if I cannot hereafter make that excuse for any words of mine that may
+displease you.  The terms you propose are most liberal, and I close with
+them at once."
+
+"_Bon_," said Louvier, shaking vehemently the hand offered to him; "I
+will take the paper to Gandrin, and instruct him accordingly.  And now,
+may I attach a condition to the agreement which is not put down on
+paper? It may have surprised you perhaps that I should propose a
+gratuity of 25,000 francs on completion of the contract.  It is a droll
+thing to do, and not in the ordinary way of business, therefore I must
+explain. Marquis, pardon the liberty I take, but you have inspired me
+with an interest in your future.  With your birth, connections, and
+figure you should push your way in the world far and fast.  But you
+can't do so in a province.  You must find your opening at Paris.  I wish
+you to spend a year in the capital, and live, not extravagantly, like a
+nouveau riche, but in a way not unsuited to your rank, and permitting
+you all the social advantages that belong to it.  These 25,000 francs,
+in addition to your improved income, will enable you to gratify my wish
+in this respect.  Spend the money in Paris; you will want every sou of
+it in the course of the year. It will be money well spent.  Take my
+advice, _cher Marquis.  Au plaisir_."
+
+The financier bowed himself out.  The young Marquis forgot all the
+mournful reflections with which Raoul's conversation had inspired him.
+He gave a new touch to his toilette, and sallied forth with the air of a
+man on whose morning of life a sun heretofore clouded has burst forth and
+bathed the landscape in its light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Since the evening spent at the Savarins', Graham had seen no more of
+Isaura.  He had avoided all chance of seeing her; in fact, the jealousy
+with which he had viewed her manner towards Rameau, and the angry amaze
+with which he had heard her proclaim her friendship for Madame de
+Grantmesnil, served to strengthen the grave and secret reasons which made
+him desire to keep his heart yet free and his hand yet unpledged.  But
+alas! the heart was enslaved already.  It was under the most fatal of all
+spells,--first love conceived at first sight.  He was wretched; and in
+his wretchedness his resolves became involuntarily weakened.  He found
+himself making excuses for the beloved.  What cause had he, after all,
+for that jealousy of the young poet which had so offended him; and if in
+her youth and inexperience Isaura had made her dearest friend of a great
+writer by whose genius she might be dazzled, and of whose opinions she
+might scarcely be aware, was it a crime that necessitated her eternal
+banishment from the reverence which belongs to all manly love?  Certainly
+he found no satisfactory answers to such self-questionings.  And then
+those grave reasons known only to himself, and never to be confided to
+another--why he should yet reserve his hand unpledged--were not so
+imperative as to admit of no compromise.  They might entail a sacrifice,
+and not a small one to a man of Graham's views and ambition.  But what is
+love if it can think any sacrifice, short of duty and honour, too great
+to offer up unknown uncomprehended, to the one beloved?  Still, while
+thus softened in his feelings towards Isaura, he became, perhaps in
+consequence of such softening, more and more restlessly impatient to
+fulfil the object for which he had come to Paris, the great step towards
+which was the discovery of the undiscoverable Louise Duval.
+
+He had written more than once to M. Renard since the interview with that
+functionary already recorded, demanding whether Renard had not made some
+progress in the research on which he was employed, and had received short
+unsatisfactory replies preaching patience and implying hope.
+
+The plain truth, however, was that M. Renard had taken no further pains
+in the matter.  He considered it utter waste of time and thought to
+attempt a discovery to which the traces were so faint and so obsolete.
+If the discovery were effected, it must be by one of those chances which
+occur without labour or forethought of our own.  He trusted only to such
+a chance in continuing the charge he had undertaken.  But during the last
+day or two Graham had become yet more impatient than before, and
+peremptorily requested another visit from this dilatory confidant.
+
+In that visit, finding himself pressed hard, and though naturally
+willing, if possible, to retain a client unusually generous, yet being on
+the whole an honest member of his profession, and feeling it to be
+somewhat unfair to accept large remuneration for doing nothing, M. Renard
+said frankly, "Monsieur, this affair is beyond me; the keenest agent of
+our police could make nothing of it.  Unless you can tell me more than
+you have done, I am utterly without a clew.  I resign, therefore, the
+task with which you honoured me, willing to resume it again if you can
+give me information that could render me of use."
+
+"What sort of information?"
+
+"At least the names of some of the lady's relations who may yet be
+living."
+
+"But it strikes me that, if I could get at that piece of knowledge, I
+should not require the services of the police.  The relations would tell
+me what had become of Louise Duval quite as readily as they would tell a
+police agent."
+
+"Quite true, Monsieur.  It would really be picking your pockets if I did
+not at once retire from your service.  Nay, Monsieur, pardon me, no
+further payments; I have already accepted too much.  Your most obedient
+servant."
+
+Graham, left alone, fell into a very gloomy revery.  He could not but be
+sensible of the difficulties in the way of the object which had brought
+him to Paris, with somewhat sanguine expectations of success founded on a
+belief in the omniscience of the Parisian police, which is only to be
+justified when they have to deal with a murderess or a political
+incendiary.  But the name of Louise Duval is about as common in France as
+that of Mary Smith in England; and the English reader may judge what
+would be the likely result of inquiring through the ablest of our
+detectives after some Mary Smith of whom you could give little more
+information than that she was the daughter of a drawing-master who had
+died twenty years ago, that it was about fifteen years since anything had
+been heard of her, that you could not say if through marriage or for
+other causes she had changed her name or not, and you had reasons for
+declining resort to public advertisements.  In the course of inquiry so
+instituted, the probability would be that you might hear of a great many
+Mary Smiths, in the pursuit of whom your employee would lose all sight
+and scent of the one Mary Smith for whom the chase was instituted.
+
+In the midst of Graham's despairing reflections his laquais announced M.
+Frederic Lemercier.
+
+"_Cher_ Grarm-Varn.  A thousand pardons if I disturb you at this late
+hour of the evening; but you remember the request you made me when you
+first arrived in Paris this season?"
+
+"Of course I do,--in case you should ever chance in your wide round of
+acquaintance to fall in with a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval of about the
+age of forty, or a year or so less, to let me know; and you did fall in
+with two ladies of that name, but they were not the right one, not the
+person whom my friend begged me to discover; both much too young."
+
+"_Eh bien, mon cher_.  If you will come with me to the _bal champetre_ in
+the Champs Elysees to-night, I can show you a third Madame Duval,--her
+Christian name is Louise, too, of the age you mention,--though she does
+her best to look younger, and is still very handsome.  You said your
+Duval was handsome.  It was only last evening that I met this lady at a
+_soiree_ given by Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, _coryphee distinguee_, in
+love with young Rameau."
+
+"In love with young Rameau?  I am very glad to hear it.  He returns the
+love?"
+
+"I suppose so.  He seems very proud of it.  But apropos of Madame Duval,
+she has been long absent from Paris, just returned, and looking out for
+conquests.  She says she has a great penchant for the English; promises
+me to be at this ball.  Come."
+
+"Hearty thanks, my dear Lemercier.  I am at your service."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The _bal champetre_ was gay and brilliant, as such festal scenes are at
+Paris.  A lovely night in the midst of May, lamps below and stars above;
+the society mixed, of course.  Evidently, when Graham has singled out
+Frederic Lemercier from all his acquaintances at Paris to conjoin with
+the official aid of M. Renard in search of the mysterious lady, he had
+conjectured the probability that she might be found in the Bohemian world
+so familiar to Frederic; if not as an inhabitant, at least as an
+explorer.  Bohemia was largely represented at the _bal champetre_, but
+not without a fair sprinkling of what we call the "respectable classes,"
+especially English and Americans, who brought their wives there to take
+care of them.  Frenchmen, not needing such care, prudently left their
+wives at home.  Among the Frenchmen of station were the Comte de Passy
+and the Vicomte de Breze.
+
+On first entering the gardens, Graham's eye was attracted and dazzled by
+a brilliant form.  It was standing under a festoon of flowers extended
+from tree to tree, and a gas jet opposite shone full upon the face,--the
+face of a girl in all the freshness of youth.  If the freshness owed
+anything to art, the art was so well disguised that it seemed nature.
+The beauty of the countenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant; and yet
+one could not look at the girl without a sentiment of deep mournfulness.
+She was surrounded by a group of young men, and the ring of her laugh
+jarred upon Graham's ear.  He pressed Frederic's arm, and directing his
+attention to the girl, asked who she was.
+
+"Who?  Don't you know?  That is Julie Caumartin.  A little while ago her
+equipage was the most admired in the Bois, and great ladies condescended
+to copy her dress or her coiffure; but she has lost her splendour, and
+dismissed the rich admirer who supplied the fuel for its blaze, since
+she fell in love with Gustave Rameau.  Doubtless she is expecting him
+to-night.  You ought to know her; shall I present you?"
+
+"No," answered Graham, with a compassionate expression in his manly face.
+"So young; seemingly so gay.  How I pity her!"
+
+"What! for throwing herself away on Rameau?  True.  There is a great deal
+of good in that girl's nature, if she had been properly trained.  Rameau
+wrote a pretty poem on her which turned her head and won her heart, in
+which she is styled the 'Ondine of Paris,'--a nymph-like type of Paris
+itself."
+
+"Vanishing type, like her namesake; born of the spray, and vanishing soon
+into the deep," said Graham.  "Pray go and look for the Duval; you will
+find me seated yonder."
+
+Graham passed into a retired alley, and threw himself on a solitary
+bench, while Lemercier went in search of Madame Duval.  In a few minutes
+the Frenchman reappeared.  By his side was a lady well dressed, and as
+she passed under the lamps Graham perceived that, though of a certain
+age, she was undeniably handsome.  His heart beat more quickly.  Surely
+this was the Louise Duval he sought.
+
+He rose from his seat, and was presented in due form to the lady, with
+whom Frederic then discreetly left him.  "M. Lemercier tells me that you
+think that we were once acquainted with each other."
+
+"Nay, Madame; I should not fail to recognize you were that the case.  A
+friend of mine had the honour of knowing a lady of your name; and should
+I be fortunate enough to meet that lady, I am charged with a commission
+that may not be unwelcome to her.  M. Lemercier tells me your nom de
+bapteme is Louise."
+
+"Louise Corinne, Monsieur."
+
+"And I presume that Duval is the name you take from your parents?"
+
+"No; my father's name was Bernard.  I married, when I was a mere child,
+M. Duval, in the wine trade at Bordeaux."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Graham, much disappointed, but looking at her with a
+keen, searching eye, which she met with a decided frankness.  Evidently,
+in his judgment, she was speaking the truth.
+
+"You know English, I think, Madame," he resumed, addressing her in that
+language.
+
+"A leetle; speak un peu."
+
+"Only a little?"
+
+Madame Duval looked puzzled, and replied in French, with a laugh, "Is it
+that you were told that I spoke English by your countryman, Milord Sare
+Boulby? _Petit scelerat_, I hope he is well.  He sends you a commission
+for me,--so he ought; he behaved to me like a monster."
+
+"Alas!  I know nothing of Milord Sir Boulby.  Were you never in England
+yourself?"
+
+"Never," with a coquettish side-glance; "I should like so much to go.  I
+have a foible for the English in spite of that _vilain petit Boulby_.
+Who is it gave you the commission for me?  Ha!  I guess, le Capitaine
+Nelton."
+
+"No.  What year, Madame, if not impertinent, were you at Aix-la-
+Chapelle?"
+
+"You mean Baden?  I was there seven years ago, when I met le Capitaine
+Nelton, _bel homme aux cheveux rouges_."
+
+"But you have been at Aix?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"I have, then, been mistaken, Madame, and have only to offer my most
+humble apologies."
+
+"But perhaps you will favour me with a visit, and we may on further
+conversation find that you are not mistaken.  I can't stay now, for I am
+engaged to dance with the Belgian of whom, no doubt, M. Lemercier has
+told you."
+
+"No, Madame, he has not."
+
+"Well, then, he will tell you.  The Belgian is very jealous; but I am
+always at home between three and four; this is my card."
+
+Graham eagerly took the card, and exclaimed, "Is this you're your own
+handwriting, Madame?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"_Tres belle ecriture_," said Graham, and receded with a ceremonious bow.
+"Anything so unlike her handwriting!  Another disappointment," muttered
+the Englishman as the lady went back to the ball.
+
+A few minutes later Graham joined Lemercier, who was talking with De
+Passy and De Breze.
+
+"Well," said Lemercier, when his eye rested on Graham, "I hit the right
+nail on the head this time, eh?"
+
+Graham shook his head.
+
+"What! is she not the right Louise Duval?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+The Count de Passy overheard the name, and turned.  "Louise Duval," he
+said; "does Monsieur Vane know a Louise Duval?"
+
+"No; but a friend asked me to inquire after a lady of that name whom he
+had met many years ago at Paris."  The Count mused a moment, and said,
+"Is it possible that your friend knew the family De Mauleon?"
+
+"I really can't say.  What then?"
+
+"The old Vicomte de Mauleon was one of my most intimate associates.  In
+fact, our houses are connected.  And he was extremely grieved, poor man,
+when his daughter Louise married her drawing-master, Auguste Duval."
+
+"Her drawing-master, Auguste Duval?  Pray say on.  I think the Louise
+Duval my friend knew must have been her daughter.  She was the only child
+of a drawing-master or artist named Auguste Duval, and probably enough
+her Christian name would have been derived from her mother.  A
+Mademoiselle de Mauleon, then, married M. Auguste Duval?"
+
+"Yes; the old Vicomte had espoused _en premieres noces_ Mademoiselle
+Camille de Chavigny, a lady of birth equal to his own; had by her one
+daughter, Louise.  I recollect her well,--a plain girl, with a high nose
+and a sour expression.  She was just of age when the first Vicomtesse
+died, and by the marriage settlement she succeeded at once to her
+mother's fortune, which was not large.  The Vicomte was, however, so poor
+that the loss of that income was no trifle to him.  Though much past
+fifty, he was still very handsome.  Men of that generation did not age
+soon, Monsieur," said the Count, expanding his fine chest and laughing
+exultingly.
+
+"He married, _en secondes noces_, a lady of still higher birth than the
+first, and with a much larger _dot_.  Louise was indignant at this, hated
+her stepmother; and when a son was born by the second marriage she left
+the paternal roof, went to reside with an old female relative near the
+Luxembourg, and there married this drawing-master.  Her father and the
+family did all they could to prevent it; but in these democratic days a
+woman who has attained her majority can, if she persist in her
+determination, marry to please herself and disgrace her ancestors.  After
+that _mesalliance_ her father never would see her again.  I tried in vain
+to soften him.  All his parental affections settled on his handsome
+Victor.
+
+"Ah!  you are too young to have known Victor de Mauleon during his short
+reign at Paris, as _roi des viveurs_."
+
+"Yes, he was before my time; but I have heard of him as a young man of
+great fashion; said to be very clever, a duellist, and a sort of Don
+Juan."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And then I remember vaguely to have heard that he committed, or was said
+to have committed, some villanous action connected with a great lady's
+jewels, and to have left Paris in consequence."
+
+"Ah, yes; a sad scrape.  At that time there was a political crisis; we
+were under a Republic; anything against a noble was believed.  But I am
+sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny.  However, it
+is quite true that he left Paris, and I don't know what has become of him
+since."  Here he touched De Breze, who, though still near, had not been
+listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and laughter with
+Lemercier on the motley scene of the dance.
+
+"De Breze, have you ever heard what became of poor dear Victor de
+Mauleon?--you knew him."
+
+"Knew him?  I should think so.  Who could be in the great world and not
+know _le beau_ Victor?  No; after he vanished I never heard more of him;
+doubtless long since dead.  A good-hearted fellow in spite of all his
+sins."
+
+"My dear Monsieur de Breze, did you know his half-sister?" asked Graham,
+--"a Madame Duval?"
+
+"No.  I never heard he had a half-sister.  Halt there; I recollect that I
+met Victor once, in the garden at Versailles, walking arm-in-arm with the
+most beautiful girl I ever saw; and when I complimented him afterwards at
+the Jockey Club on his new conquest, he replied very gravely that the
+young lady was his niece.  'Niece!' said I; 'why, there can't be more
+than five or six years between you.'  'About that, I suppose,' said he;
+'my half-sister, her mother, was more than twenty years older than I at
+the time of my birth.'  I doubted the truth of his story at the time; but
+since you say he really had a sister, my doubt wronged him."
+
+"Have you never seen that same young lady since?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"How many years ago was this?"
+
+"Let me see, about twenty or twenty-one years ago.  How time flies!"
+
+Graham still continued to question, but could learn no further
+particulars.  He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking
+up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air; and mingled with that
+German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one
+laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted
+joy, the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound
+of which had then saddened him.  Looking towards the quarter from which
+it came, he again saw the "Ondine of Paris."  She was not now the centre
+of a group.  She had just found Gustave Rameau, and was clinging to his
+arm with a look of happiness in her face, frank and innocent as a
+child's; and so they passed amid the dancers down a solitary lamplit
+alley, till lost to the Englishman's lingering gaze.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard.  "Well," he cried, when
+that dignitary appeared and took a seat beside him, "chance has favoured
+me."
+
+"I always counted on chance, Monsieur.  Chance has more wit in its little
+finger than the Paris police in its whole body."
+
+"I have ascertained the relations, on the mother's side, of Louise Duval,
+and the only question is how to get at them."  Here Graham related what
+he had heard, and ended by saying, "This Victor de Mauleon is therefore
+my Louise Duval's uncle.  He was, no doubt, taking charge of her in the
+year that the persons interested in her discovery lost sight of her in
+Paris; and surely he must know what became of her afterwards."
+
+"Very probably; and chance may befriend us yet in the discovery of Victor
+de Mauleon.  You seem not to know the particulars of that story about the
+jewels which brought him into some connection with the police, and
+resulted in his disappearance from Paris."
+
+"No; tell me the particulars."
+
+"Victor de Mauleon was heir to some 60,000 or 70,000 francs a year,
+chiefly on the mother's side; for his father, though the representative
+of one of the most ancient houses in Normandy, was very poor, having
+little of his own except the emoluments of an appointment in the Court of
+Louis Philippe.
+
+"But before, by the death of his parents, Victor came into that
+inheritance, he very largely forestalled it.  His tastes were
+magnificent.  He took to 'sport,' kept a famous stud, was a great
+favourite with the English, and spoke their language fluently.  Indeed he
+was considered very accomplished, and of considerable intellectual
+powers.  It was generally said that some day or other, when he had sown
+his wild oats, he would, if he took to politics, be an eminent man.
+Altogether he was a very strong creature.  That was a very strong age
+under Louis Philippe.  The _viveurs_ of Paris were fine types for the
+heroes of Dumas and Sue,--full of animal life and spirits.  Victor de
+Mauleon was a romance of Dumas, incarnated."
+
+"Monsieur Renard, forgive me that I did not before do justice to your
+taste in polite literature."
+
+"Monsieur, a man in my profession does not attain even to my humble
+eminence if he be not something else than a professional.  He must study
+mankind wherever they are described, even in _les romans_.  To return to
+Victor de Mauleon.  Though he was a 'sportman,' a gambler, a Don Juan, a
+duel list, nothing was ever said against his honour.  On the contrary, on
+matters of honour he was a received oracle; and even though he had fought
+several duels (that was the age of duels), and was reported without a
+superior, almost without an equal, in either weapon, the sword or the
+pistol, he is said never to have wantonly provoked an encounter, and to
+have so used his skill that he contrived never to slay, nor even gravely
+to wound, an antagonist.
+
+"I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect; for it was
+much talked of at the time.  One of your countrymen, who had never
+handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something
+M. de Mauleon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and
+called him out.  Victor de Mauleon accepted the challenge, discharged his
+pistol, not in the air--that might have been an affront--but so as to be
+wide of the mark, walked up to the lines to be shot at, and when missed,
+said, 'Excuse the susceptibility of a Frenchman loath to believe that his
+countryman can be beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one
+gentleman can make to another for having forgotten the respect due to one
+of the most renowned of your national heroes.'  The Englishman's name was
+Vane.  Could it have been your father?"
+
+"Very probably; just like my father to call out any man who insulted the
+honour of his country, as represented by its men.  I hope the two
+combatants became friends?"
+
+"That I never heard; the duel was over; there my story ends."
+
+"Pray go on."
+
+"One day--it was in the midst of political events which would have
+silenced most subjects of private gossip--the _beau monde_ was startled
+by the news that the Vicomte (he was then, by his father's death,
+Vicomte) de Mauleon had been given into the custody of the police on the
+charge of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a
+distinguished foreigner).  It seems that some days before this event, the
+Duc, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable surprise, had
+resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to her, and which was of
+setting so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, reset for her
+birthday.  He therefore secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron
+safe in a cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more
+valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace.  Imagine his
+dismay when the jeweller in the Rue Vivienne to whom he carried it
+recognized the pretended diamonds as imitation paste which he himself had
+some days previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a
+Monsieur with whose name he was unacquainted.  The Duchesse was at that
+time in delicate health; and as the Duc's suspicions naturally fell on
+the servants, especially on the _femme de chambre_, who was in great
+favour with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to
+put the servants on their guard.  He resolved, therefore, to place the
+matter in the hands of the famous --------, who was then the pride and
+ornament of the Parisian police.  And the very night afterwards the
+Vicomte de Mauleon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the
+jewels were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at
+least a duplicate key, found in his possession.  I should observe that
+M. de Mauleon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper
+rooms were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite.  As soon as
+this charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next
+morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before
+scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the medium
+of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime of which
+he was accused.  We Parisians, Monsieur, are subject to the most
+startling reactions of feeling.  The men we adore one day we execrate the
+next.  The Vicomte passed at once from the popular admiration one bestows
+on a hero to the popular contempt with which one regards a petty
+larcener.  Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive into
+its bosom the gambler, the duellist, the Don Juan.  However, one
+compensation in the way of amusement he might still afford to society for
+the grave injuries he had done it.  Society would attend his trial,
+witness his demeanour at the bar, and watch the expression of his face
+when he was sentenced to the, galleys.  But, Monsieur, this wretch
+completed the measure of his iniquities.  He was not tried at all.  The
+Duc and Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Duc instructed his
+lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte's
+complete innocence of any other offence than that which he himself had
+confessed."
+
+"What did the Vicomte confess?  You omitted to state that."
+
+"The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten by an insane
+passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on his presuming to declare it,
+met with indignant scorn, he had taken advantage of his lodgment in the
+same house to admit himself into the cabinet adjoining her dressing-room
+by means of a key which he had procured, made from an impression of the
+key-hole taken in wax.
+
+"No evidence in support of any other charge against the Vicomte was
+forthcoming,--nothing, in short, beyond the _infraction du domicile_
+caused by the madness of youthful love, and for which there was no
+prosecution.  The law, therefore, could have little to say against him.
+But society was more rigid; and exceedingly angry to find that a man who
+had been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, insisted
+on believing that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the meaner, though not
+perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and fathers, the more heinous, of the
+two offences.  I presume that the Vicomte felt that he had got into a
+dilemma from which no pistol-shot or sword-thrust could free him, for he
+left Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared.  The sale of his stud
+and effects sufficed, I believe, to pay his debts, for I will do him the
+justice to say that they were paid."
+
+"But though the Vicomte de Mauleon has disappeared, he must have left
+relations at Paris, who would perhaps know what has become of him and of
+his niece."
+
+"I doubt it.  He had no very near relations.  The nearest was an old
+_celibataire_ of the same name, from whom he had some expectations, but
+who died shortly after this esclandre, and did not name the Vicomte in
+his will.  M. Victor had numerous connections among the highest families,
+the Rochebriants, Chavignys, Vandemars, Passys, Beauvilliers; but they
+are not likely to have retained any connection with a ruined _vaurien_,
+and still less with a niece of his who was the child of a drawing-master.
+But now you have given me a clew, I will try to follow it up.  We must
+find the Vicomte, and I am not without hope of doing so.  Pardon me if I
+decline to say more at present.  I would not raise false expectations;
+but in a week or two I will have the honour to call again upon Monsieur."
+
+"Wait one instant.  You have really a hope of discovering M. de Mauleon?"
+
+"Yes.  I cannot say more at present."
+
+M. Renard departed.  Still that hope, however faint it might prove,
+served to reanimate Graham; and with that hope his heart, as if a load
+had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to the
+thought of Isaura.  Whatever seemed to promise an early discharge of the
+commission connected with the discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring
+Isaura nearer to him, or at least to excuse his yearning desire to see
+more of her, to understand her better.  Faded into thin air was the vague
+jealousy of Gustave Rameau which he had so unreasonably conceived; he
+felt as if it were impossible that the man whom the "Ondine of Paris"
+claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope to win an Isaura.  He even
+forgot the friendship with the eloquent denouncer of the marriage-bond,
+which a little while ago had seemed to him an unpardonable offence.  He
+remembered only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelligent; only
+the sweet voice, which had for the first time breathed music into his own
+soul; only the gentle hand, whose touch had for the first time sent
+through his veins the thrill which distinguishes from all her sex the
+woman whom we love.  He went forth elated and joyous, and took his way to
+Isaura's villa.  As he went, the leaves on the trees under which he
+passed seemed stirred by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his own
+delight.  Perhaps it was rather the reverse: his own silent delight
+sympathized with all delight in awakening Nature.  The lover seeking
+reconciliation with the loved one from whom some trifle has unreasonably
+estranged him, in a cloudless day of May,--if he be not happy enough to
+feel a brotherhood in all things happy,--a leaf in bloom, a bird in
+song,--then indeed he may call himself lover, but he does not know what
+is love.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 BOOK IV.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
+
+It is many days since I wrote to you, and but for your delightful note
+just received, reproaching me for silence, I should still be under the
+spell of that awe which certain words of M. Savarin were well fitted to
+produce.  Chancing to ask him if he had written to you lately, he said,
+with that laugh of his, good-humouredly ironical, "No, Mademoiselle, I am
+not one of the _Facheux_ whom Moliere has immortalized.  If the meeting
+of lovers should be sacred from the intrusion of a third person, however
+amiable, more sacred still should be the parting between an author and
+his work.  Madame de Grantmesnil is in that moment so solemn to a genius
+earnest as hers,--she is bidding farewell to a companion with whom, once
+dismissed into the world, she can never converse familiarly again; it
+ceases to be her companion when it becomes ours.  Do not let us disturb
+the last hours they will pass together."
+
+These words struck me much.  I suppose there is truth in them.  I can
+comprehend that a work which has long been all in all to its author,
+concentrating his thoughts, gathering round it the hopes and fears of his
+inmost heart, dies, as it were, to him when he has completed its life for
+others, and launched it into a world estranged from the solitude in which
+it was born and formed.  I can almost conceive that, to a writer like
+you, the very fame which attends the work thus sent forth chills your own
+love for it.  The characters you created in a fairyland, known but to
+yourself, must lose something of their mysterious charm when you hear
+them discussed and cavilled at, blamed or praised, as if they were really
+the creatures of streets and salons.
+
+I wonder if hostile criticism pains or enrages you as it seems to do such
+other authors as I have known.  M. Savarin, for instance, sets down in
+his tablets as an enemy to whom vengeance is due the smallest scribbler
+who wounds his self-love, and says frankly, "To me praise is food,
+dispraise is poison.  Him who feeds me I pay; him who poisons me I break
+on the wheel."  M. Savarin is, indeed, a skilful and energetic
+administrator to his own reputation.  He deals with it as if it were a
+kingdom,--establishes fortifications for its defence, enlists soldiers to
+fight for it.  He is the soul and centre of a confederation in which each
+is bound to defend the territory of the others, and all those territories
+united constitute the imperial realm of M. Savarin.  Don't think me an
+ungracious satirist in what I am thus saying of our brilliant friend.  It
+is not I who here speak; it is himself.  He avows his policy with the
+_naivete_ which makes the charm of his style as writer.  "It is the
+greatest mistake," he said to me yesterday, "to talk of the Republic of
+Letters.  Every author who wins a name is a sovereign in his own domain,
+be it large or small.  Woe to any republican who wants to dethrone me!"
+Somehow or other, when M. Savarin thus talks I feel as if he were
+betraying the cause of, genius.  I cannot bring myself to regard
+literature as a craft,--to me it is a sacred mission; and in hearing this
+"sovereign" boast of the tricks by which he maintains his state, I seem
+to listen to a priest who treats as imposture the religion he professes
+to teach.  M. Savarin's favourite _eleve_ now is a young contributor to
+his journal, named Gustave Rameau.  M. Savarin said the other day in my
+hearing, "I and my set were Young France; Gustave Rameau and his set are
+New Paris."
+
+"And what is the distinction between the one and the other?" asked my
+American friend, Mrs. Morley.
+
+"The set of 'Young France,'" answered M. Savarin, "had in it the hearty
+consciousness of youth; it was bold and vehement, with abundant vitality
+and animal spirits; whatever may be said against it in other respects,
+the power of thews and sinews must be conceded to its chief
+representatives.  But the set of 'New Paris' has very bad health, and
+very indifferent spirits.  Still, in its way, it is very clever; it can
+sting and bite as keenly as if it were big and strong.  Rameau is the
+most promising member of the set.  He will be popular in his time,
+because he represents a good deal of the mind of his time,--namely, the
+mind and the time of 'New Paris.'"
+
+Do you know anything of this young Rameau's writings?  You do not know
+himself, for he told me so, expressing a desire, that was evidently very
+sincere, to find some occasion on which to render you his homage.  He
+said this the first time I met him at M. Savarin's, and before he knew
+how dear to me are yourself and your fame.  He came and sat by me after
+dinner, and won my interest at once by asking me if I had heard that you
+were busied on a new work; and then, without waiting for my answer, he
+launched forth into praises of you, which made a notable contrast to the
+scorn with which he spoke of all your contemporaries,--except indeed M.
+Savarin, who, however, might not have been pleased to hear his favourite
+pupil style him "a great writer in small things."  I spare you his
+epigrams on Dumas and Victor Hugo and my beloved Lamartine.  Though his
+talk was showy, and dazzled me at first, I soon got rather tired of it,
+even the first time we met.  Since then I have seen him very often, not
+only at M. Savarin's, but he calls here at least every other day, and we
+have become quite good friends.  He gains on acquaintance so far that one
+cannot help feeling how much he is to be pitied.  He is so envious! and
+the envious must be so unhappy.  And then he is at once so near and so
+far from all the things that he envies.  He longs for riches and luxury,
+and can only as yet earn a bare competence by his labours.  Therefore he
+hates the rich and luxurious.  His literary successes, instead of
+pleasing him, render him miserable by their contrast with the fame of the
+authors whom he envies and assails.  He has a beautiful head, of which he
+is conscious, but it is joined to a body without strength or grace.  He
+is conscious of this too,--but it is cruel to go on with this sketch.
+You can see at once the kind of person who, whether he inspire affection
+or dislike, cannot fail to create an interest, painful but compassionate.
+
+You will be pleased to hear that Dr. C. considers my health so improved
+that I may next year enter fairly on the profession for which I was
+intended and trained.  Yet I still feel hesitating and doubtful.  To give
+myself wholly up to the art in which I am told I could excel must
+alienate me entirely from the ambition that yearns for fields in which,
+alas! it may perhaps never appropriate to itself a rood for culture,--
+only wander, lost in a vague fairyland, to which it has not the fairy's
+birthright.  O thou great Enchantress, to whom are equally subject the
+streets of Paris and the realm of Faerie, thou who hast sounded to the
+deeps that circumfluent ocean called "practical human life," and hast
+taught the acutest of its navigators to consider how far its courses are
+guided by orbs in heaven,--canst thou solve this riddle which, if it
+perplexes me, must perplex so many?  What is the real distinction between
+the rare genius and the commonalty of human souls that feel to the quick
+all the grandest and divinest things which the rare genius places before
+them, sighing within themselves, "This rare genius does but express that
+which was previously familiar to us, so far as thought and sentiment
+extend"?  Nay, the genius itself, however eloquent, never does, never
+can, express the whole of the thought or the sentiment it interprets; on
+the contrary, the greater the genius is, the more it leaves a something
+of incomplete satisfaction on our minds,--it promises so much more than
+it performs; it implies so much more than it announces.  I am impressed
+with the truth of what I thus say in proportion as I re-peruse and
+re-study the greatest writers that have come within my narrow range of
+reading; and by the greatest writers I mean those who are not exclusively
+reasoners (of such I cannot judge), nor mere poets (of whom, so far as
+concerns the union of words with music, I ought to be able to judge), but
+the few who unite reason and poetry, and appeal at once to the common-
+sense of the multitude and the imagination of the few.  The highest type
+of this union to me is Shakspeare; and I can comprehend the justice of no
+criticism on him which does not allow this sense of incomplete
+satisfaction augmenting in proportion as the poet soars to his highest.
+I ask again, In what consists this distinction between the rare genius
+and the commonalty of minds that exclaim, "He expresses what we feel, but
+never the whole of what we feel"?  Is it the mere power over language, a
+larger knowledge of dictionaries, a finer ear for period and cadence, a
+more artistic craft in casing our thoughts and sentiments in well-
+selected words?  Is it true what Buffon says, "that the style is the
+man"?  Is it true what I am told Goethe said, "Poetry is form"?  I cannot
+believe this; and if you tell me it is true, then I no longer pine to be
+a writer.  But if it be not true, explain to me how it is that the
+greatest genius is popular in proportion as it makes itself akin to us by
+uttering in better words than we employ that which was already within us,
+brings to light what in our souls was latent, and does but correct,
+beautify, and publish the correspondence which an ordinary reader carries
+on privately every day between himself and his mind or his heart.  If
+this superiority in the genius be but style and form, I abandon my dream
+of being something else than a singer of words by another to the music of
+another.  But then, what then?  My knowledge of books and art is
+wonderfully small.  What little I do know I gather from very few books
+and from what I hear said by the few worth listening to whom I happen to
+meet; and out of these, in solitude and revery, not by conscious effort,
+I arrive at some results which appear to my inexperience original.
+Perhaps, indeed, they have the same kind of originality as the musical
+compositions of amateurs who effect a cantata or a quartette made up of
+borrowed details from great masters, and constituting a whole so original
+that no real master would deign to own it.  Oh, if I could get you to
+understand how unsettled, how struggling my whole nature at this moment
+is!  I wonder what is the sensation of the chrysalis which has been a
+silkworm, when it first feels the new wings stirring within its shell,--
+wings, alas! they are but those of the humblest and shortest-lived sort
+of moth, scarcely born into daylight before it dies.  Could it reason, it
+might regret its earlier life, and say, "Better be the silkworm than the
+moth."
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+Have you known well any English people in the course of your life?  I say
+well, for you must have had acquaintance with many.  But it seems to me
+so difficult to know an Englishman well.  Even I, who so loved and
+revered Mr. Selby,--I, whose childhood was admitted into his
+companionship by that love which places ignorance and knowledge, infancy
+and age, upon ground so equal that heart touches heart, cannot say that I
+understand the English character to anything like the extent to which I
+fancy I understand the Italian and the French.  Between us of the
+Continent and them of the island the British Channel always flows.  There
+is an Englishman here to whom I have been introduced, whom I have met,
+though but seldom, in that society which bounds the Paris world to me.
+Pray, pray tell me, did you ever know, ever meet him?  His name is Graham
+Vane.  He is the only son, I am told, of a man who was a _celebrite_ in
+England as an orator and statesman, and on both sides he belongs to the
+haute aristocratic.  He himself has that indescribable air and mien to
+which we apply the epithet 'distinguished.'  In the most crowded salon
+the eye would fix on him, and involuntarily follow his movements.  Yet
+his manners are frank and simple, wholly without the stiffness or reserve
+which are said to characterize the English.  There is an inborn dignity
+in his bearing which consists in the absence of all dignity assumed.  But
+what strikes me most in this Englishman is an expression of countenance
+which the English depict by the word 'open,'--that expression which
+inspires you with a belief in the existence of sincerity.  Mrs. Morley
+said of him, in that poetic extravagance of phrase by which the Americans
+startle the English, "That man's forehead would light up the Mammoth
+Cave."  Do you not know, Eulalie, what it is to us cultivators of art--
+art being the expression of truth through fiction--to come into the
+atmosphere of one of those souls in which Truth stands out bold and
+beautiful in itself, and needs no idealization through fiction?  Oh, how
+near we should be to heaven could we live daily, hourly, in the presence
+of one the honesty of whose word we could never doubt, the authority of
+whose word we could never disobey!  Mr. Vane professes not to understand
+music, not even to care for it, except rarely, and yet he spoke of its
+influence over others with an enthusiasm that half charmed me once more
+back to my destined calling; nay, might have charmed me wholly, but that
+he seemed to think that I--that any public singer--must be a creature
+apart from the world,--the world in which such men live.  Perhaps that is
+true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+It was one of those lovely noons towards the end of May in which a rural
+suburb has the mellow charm of summer to him who escapes awhile from the
+streets of a crowded capital.  The Londoner knows its charm when he feels
+his tread on the softening swards of the Vale of Health, or, pausing at
+Richmond under the budding willow, gazes on the river glittering in the
+warmer sunlight, and hears from the villa-gardens behind him the brief
+trill of the blackbird.  But the suburbs round Paris are, I think, a yet
+more pleasing relief from the metropolis; they are more easily reached,
+and I know not why, but they seem more rural,--perhaps because the
+contrast of their repose with the stir left behind, of their redundance
+of leaf and blossom compared with the prim efflorescence of trees in the
+Boulevards and Tuileries, is more striking.  However that may be, when
+Graham reached the pretty suburb in which Isaura dwelt, it seemed to him
+as if all the wheels of the loud busy life were suddenly smitten still.
+The hour was yet early; he felt sure that he should find Isaura at home.
+The garden-gate stood unfastened and ajar; he pushed it aside and
+entered.  I think I have before said that the garden of the villa was
+shut out from the road and the gaze of neighbours by a wall and thick
+belts of evergreens; it stretched behind the house somewhat far for the
+garden of a suburban villa.  He paused when he had passed the gateway,
+for he heard in the distance the voice of one singing,--singing low,
+singing plaintively.  He knew it was the voice of Isaura-_he passed on,
+leaving the house behind him, and tracking the voice till he reached the
+singer.
+
+Isaura was seated within an arbour towards the farther end of the
+garden,--an arbour which, a little later in the year, must indeed be
+delicate and dainty with lush exuberance of jessamine and woodbine; now
+into its iron trelliswork leaflets and flowers were insinuating their
+gentle way.  Just at the entrance one white rose--a winter rose that had
+mysteriously survived its relations--opened its pale hues frankly to the
+noonday sun.  Graham approached slowly, noiselessly, and the last note of
+the song had ceased when he stood at the entrance of the arbour.  Isaura
+did not perceive him at first, for her face was bent downward musingly,
+as was often her wont after singing, especially when alone; but she felt
+that the place was darkened, that something stood between her and the
+sunshine.  She raised her face, and a quick flush mantled over it as she
+uttered his name, not loudly, not as in surprise, but inwardly and
+whisperingly, as in a sort of fear.
+
+"Pardon me, Mademoiselle," said Graham, entering; "but I heard your voice
+as I came into the garden, and it drew me onward involuntarily.  What a
+lovely air! and what simple sweetness in such of the words as reached me!
+I am so ignorant of music that you must not laugh at me if I ask whose is
+the music and whose are the words?  Probably both are so well known as to
+convict me of a barbarous ignorance."
+
+"Oh, no," said Isaura, with a still heightened colour, and in accents
+embarrassed and hesitating.  "Both the words and music are by an unknown
+and very humble composer, yet not, indeed, quite original,--they have not
+even that merit; at least they were suggested by a popular song in the
+Neapolitan dialect which is said to be very old."
+
+"I don't know if I caught the true meaning of the words, for they seemed
+to me to convey a more subtle and refined sentiment than is common in the
+popular songs of southern Italy."
+
+"The sentiment in the original is changed in the paraphrase, and not, I
+fear, improved by the change."
+
+"Will you explain to me the sentiment in both, and let me judge which I
+prefer?"
+
+"In the Neapolitan song a young fisherman, who has moored his boat under
+a rock on the shore, sees a beautiful face below the surface of the
+waters; he imagines it to be that of a Nereid, and casts in his net to
+catch this supposed nymph of the ocean.  He only disturbs the water,
+loses the image, and brings up a few common fishes.  He returns home
+disappointed, and very much enamoured of the supposed Nereid.  The next
+day he goes again to the same place, and discovers that the face which
+had so charmed him was that of a mortal girl reflected on the waters from
+the rock behind him, on which she had been seated, and on which she had
+her home.  The original air is arch and lively; just listen to it."  And
+Isaura warbled one of those artless and somewhat meagre tunes to which
+light-stringed instruments are the fitting accompaniment.
+
+"That," said Graham, "is a different music indeed from the other, which
+is deep and plaintive, and goes to the heart."
+
+"But do you not see how the words have been altered?  In the song you
+first heard me singing, the fisherman goes again to the spot, again and
+again sees the face in the water, again and again seeks to capture the
+Nereid, and never knows to the last that the face was that of the mortal
+on the rock close behind him, and which he passed by without notice every
+day.  Deluded by an ideal image, the real one escapes from his eye."
+
+"Is the verse that is recast meant to symbolize a moral in love?"
+
+"In love? nay, I know not; but in life, yes,--at least the life of the
+artist."
+
+"The paraphrase of the original is yours, Signorina, words and music
+both.  Am I not right?  Your silence answers 'Yes.'  Will you pardon me
+if I say that, though there can be no doubt of the new beauty you have
+given to the old song, I think that the moral of the old was the sounder
+one, the truer to human life.  We do not go on to the last duped by an
+allusion.  If enamoured by the shadow on the waters, still we do look
+around us and discover the image it reflects."
+
+Isaura shook her head gently, but made no answer.  On the table before
+her there were a few myrtle-sprigs and one or two buds from the last
+winter rose, which she had been arranging into a simple nosegay; she took
+up these, and abstractedly began to pluck and scatter the rose-leaves.
+
+"Despise the coming May flowers if you will, they will soon be so
+plentiful," said Graham; "but do not cast away the few blossoms which
+winter has so kindly spared, and which even summer will not give again;"
+and placing his hand on the winter buds, it touched hers,--lightly,
+indeed, but she felt the touch, shrank from it, coloured, and rose from
+her seat.
+
+"The sun has left this side of the garden, the east wind is rising, and
+you must find it chilly here," she said, in an altered tone; "will you
+not come into the house?"
+
+"It is not the air that I feel chilly," said Graham, with a half-smile;
+"I almost fear that my prosaic admonitions have displeased you."
+
+"They were not prosaic; and they were kind and very wise," she added,
+with her exquisite laugh,--laugh so wonderfully sweet and musical.  She
+now had gained the entrance of the arbour; Graham joined her, and they
+walked towards the house.  He asked her if she had seen much of the
+Savarins since they had met.
+
+"Once or twice we have been there of an evening."
+
+"And encountered, no doubt, the illustrious young minstrel who despises
+Tasso and Corneille?"
+
+"M. Rameau?  Oh, yes; he is constantly at the Savarins.  Do not be severe
+on him.  He is unhappy, he is struggling, he is soured.  An artist has
+thorns in his path which lookers-on do not heed."
+
+"All people have thorns in their path, and I have no great respect for
+those who want lookers-on to heed them whenever they are scratched.  But
+M. Rameau seems to me one of those writers very common nowadays, in
+France and even in England; writers who have never read anything worth
+studying, and are, of course, presumptuous in proportion to their
+ignorance.  I should not have thought an artist like yourself could have
+recognized an artist in a M. Rameau who despises Tasso without knowing
+Italian."
+
+Graham spoke bitterly; he was once more jealous.
+
+"Are you not an artist yourself?  Are you not a writer?  M. Savarin told
+me you were a distinguished man of letters."
+
+"M. Savarin flatters me too much.  I am not an artist, and I have a great
+dislike to that word as it is now hackneyed and vulgarized in England and
+in France.  A cook calls himself an artist; a tailor does the same; a man
+writes a gaudy melodrame, a spasmodic song, a sensational novel, and
+straightway he calls Himself an artist, and indulges in a pedantic jargon
+about 'essence' and 'form,' assuring us that a poet we can understand
+wants essence, and a poet we can scan wants form.  Thank heaven, I am not
+vain enough to call myself artist.  I have written some very dry
+lucubrations in periodicals, chiefly political, or critical upon other
+subjects than art.  But why, a propos of M. Rameau, did you ask me that
+question respecting myself?"
+
+"Because much in your conversation," answered Isaura, in rather a
+mournful tone, "made me suppose you had more sympathies with art and its
+cultivators than you cared to avow; and if you had such sympathies, you
+would comprehend what a relief it is to a poor aspirant to art like
+myself to come into communication with those who devote themselves to any
+art distinct from the common pursuits of the world, what a relief it is
+to escape from the ordinary talk of society.  There is a sort of
+instinctive freemasonry among us, including masters and disciples; and
+one art has a fellowship with other arts.  Mine is but song and music,
+yet I feel attracted towards a sculptor, a painter, a romance-writer, a
+poet, as much as towards a singer, a musician.  Do you understand why I
+cannot contemn M. Rameau as you do?  I differ from his tastes in
+literature; I do not much admire such of his writings as I have read; I
+grant that he overestimates his own genius, whatever that be,--yet I like
+to converse with him.  He is a struggler upwards, though with weak wings,
+or with erring footsteps, like myself."
+
+"Mademoiselle," said Graham, earnestly, "I cannot say how I thank you for
+this candour.  Do not condemn me for abusing it, if--" he paused.
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If I, so much older than yourself,--I do not say only in years, but in
+the experience of life, I whose lot is cast among those busy and
+'positive' pursuits, which necessarily quicken that unromantic faculty
+called common-sense,--if, I say, the deep interest with which you must
+inspire all whom you admit into an acquaintance even as unfamiliar as
+that now between us makes me utter one caution, such as might be uttered
+by a friend or brother.  Beware of those artistic sympathies which you so
+touchingly confess; beware how, in the great events of life, you allow
+fancy to misguide your reason.  In choosing friends on whom to rely,
+separate the artist from the human being.  Judge of the human being for
+what it is in itself.  Do not worship the face on the waters, blind to
+the image on the rock.  In one word, never see in an artist like a M.
+Rameau the human being to whom you could intrust the destinies of your
+life.  Pardon me, pardon me; we may meet little hereafter, but you are a
+creature so utterly new to me, so wholly unlike any woman I have ever
+before encountered and admired, and to me seem endowed with such wealth
+of mind and soul, exposed to such hazard, that--that--" again he paused,
+and his voice trembled as he concluded--"that it would be a deep sorrow
+to me if, perhaps years hence, I should have to say, 'Alas'!  by what
+mistake has that wealth been wasted!'"
+
+While they had thus conversed, mechanically they had turned away from the
+house, and were again standing before the arbour.
+
+Graham, absorbed in the passion of his adjuration, had not till now
+looked into the face of the companion by his side.  Now, when he had
+concluded, and heard no reply, he bent down and saw that Isaura was
+weeping silently.
+
+His heart smote him.
+
+"Forgive me," he exclaimed, drawing her hand into his; "I have had no
+right to talk thus; but it was not from want of respect; it was--
+it was--"
+
+The hand which was yielded to his pressed it gently, timidly, chastely.
+
+"Forgive!" murmured Isaura; "do you think that I, an orphan, have never
+longed for a friend who would speak to me thus?"  And so saying, she
+lifted her eyes, streaming still, to his bended countenance,--eyes,
+despite their tears, so clear in their innocent limpid beauty, so
+ingenuous, so frank, so virgin-like, so unlike the eyes of 'any other
+woman he had encountered and admired.'
+
+"Alas!" he said, in quick and hurried accents, "you may remember, when we
+have before conversed, how I, though so uncultured in your art, still
+recognized its beautiful influence upon human breasts; how I sought to
+combat your own depreciation of its rank among the elevating agencies of
+humanity; how, too, I said that no man could venture to ask you to
+renounce the boards, the lamps,--resign the fame of actress, of singer.
+Well, now that you accord to me the title of friend, now that you so
+touchingly remind me that you are an orphan, thinking of all the perils
+the young and the beautiful of your sex must encounter when they abandon
+private life for public, I think that a true friend might put the
+question, 'Can you resign the fame of actress, of singer?'"
+
+"I will answer you frankly.  The profession which once seemed to me so
+alluring began to lose its charms in my eyes some months ago.  It was
+your words, very eloquently expressed, on the ennobling effects of music
+and song upon a popular audience, that counteracted the growing distaste
+to rendering up my whole life to the vocation of the stage; but now I
+think I should feel grateful to the friend whose advice interpreted the
+voice of my own heart, and bade me relinquish the career of actress."
+
+Graham's face grew radiant.  But whatever might have been his reply was
+arrested; voices and footsteps were heard behind.  He turned round and
+saw the Venosta, the Savarins, and Gustave Rameau.
+
+Isaura heard and saw also, started in a sort of alarmed confusion, and
+then instinctively retreated towards the arbour.  Graham hurried on to
+meet the Signora and the visitors, giving time to Isaura to compose
+herself by arresting them in the pathway with conventional salutations.
+
+A few minutes later Isaura joined them, and there was talk to which
+Graham scarcely listened, though he shared in it by abstracted
+monosyllables.  He declined going into the house, and took leave at the
+gate.  In parting, his eyes fixed themselves on Isaura.  Gustave Rameau
+was by her side.  That nosegay which had been left in the arbour was in
+her hand; and though she was bending over it, she did not now pluck and
+scatter the rose-leaves.  Graham at that moment felt no jealousy of the
+fair-faced young poet beside her.
+
+As he walked slowly back, he muttered to himself, "But am I yet in the
+position to hold myself wholly free?  Am I, am I?  Were the sole choice
+before me that between her and ambition and wealth, how soon it would be
+made!  Ambition has no prize equal to the heart of such a woman; wealth
+no sources of joy equal to the treasures of her love."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
+
+The day after I posted my last, Mr. Vane called on us.  I was in our
+little garden at the time.  Our conversation was brief, and soon
+interrupted by visitors,--the Savarins and M. Rameau.  I long for your
+answer.  I wonder how he impressed you, if you have met him; how he would
+impress, if you met him now.  To me he is so different from all others;
+and I scarcely know why his words ring in my ears, and his image rests in
+my thoughts.  It is strange altogether; for though he is young, he speaks
+to me as if he were so much older than I,--so kindly, so tenderly, yet as
+if I were a child, and much as the dear Maestro might do, if he thought I
+needed caution or counsel.  Do not fancy, Eulalie, that there is any
+danger of my deceiving myself as to the nature of such interest as he may
+take in me.  Oh, no!  There is a gulf between us there which he does not
+lose sight of, and which we could not pass.  How, indeed, I could
+interest him at all, I cannot guess.  A rich, high-born Englishman,
+intent on political life; practical, prosaic--no, not prosaic; but still
+with the kind of sense which does not admit into its range of vision that
+world of dreams which is familiar as their daily home to Romance and to
+Art.  It has always seemed to me that for love, love such as I conceive
+it, there must be a deep and constant sympathy between two persons,--not,
+indeed, in the usual and ordinary trifles of taste and sentiment, but in
+those essentials which form the root of character, and branch out in all
+the leaves and blooms that expand to the sunshine and shrink from the
+cold,--that the worldling should wed the worldling, the artist the
+artist.  Can the realist and the idealist blend together, and hold
+together till death and beyond death?  If not, can there be true love
+between them?
+
+By true love, I mean the love which interpenetrates the soul, and once
+given can never die.  Oh, Eulalie, answer me, answer!
+
+P. S.--I have now fully made up my mind to renounce all thought of the
+stage.
+
+
+
+FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TOISAURA CICOGNA.
+
+MY DEAR CHILD,--how your mind has grown since you left me, the sanguine
+and aspiring votary of an art which, of all arts, brings the most
+immediate reward to a successful cultivator, and is in itself so divine
+in its immediate effects upon human souls!  Who shall say what may be the
+after-results of those effects which the waiters on posterity presume to
+despise because they are immediate?  A dull man, to whose mind a ray of
+that vague starlight undetected in the atmosphere of workday life has
+never yet travelled; to whom the philosopher, the preacher, the poet
+appeal in vain,--nay, to whom the conceptions of the grandest master of
+instrumental music are incomprehensible; to whom Beethoven unlocks no
+portal in heaven; to whom Rossini has no mysteries on earth unsolved by
+the critics of the pit,--suddenly hears the human voice of the human
+singer, and at the sound of that voice the walls which enclosed him fall.
+The something far from and beyond the routine of his commonplace
+existence becomes known to him.  He of himself, poor man, can make
+nothing of it.  He cannot put it down on paper, and say the next morning,
+"I am an inch nearer to heaven than I was last night;" but the feeling
+that he is an inch nearer to heaven abides with him.  Unconsciously he is
+gentler, he is less earthly, and, in being nearer to heaven, he is
+stronger for earth.  You singers do not seem to me to understand that you
+have--to use your own word, so much in vogue that it has become abused
+and trite--a mission!  When you talk of missions, from whom comes the
+mission?  Not from men.  If there be a mission from man to men, it must
+be appointed from on high.
+
+Think of all this; and in being faithful to your art, be true to
+yourself.  If you feel divided between that art and the art of the
+writer, and acknowledge the first to be too exacting to admit a rival,
+keep to that in which you are sure to excel.  Alas, my fair child! do not
+imagine that we writers feel a happiness in our pursuits and aims more
+complete than that which you can command.  If we care for fame (and, to
+be frank, we all do), that fame does not come up before us face to face,
+a real, visible, palpable form, as it does to the singer, to the actress.
+I grant that it may be more enduring, but an endurance on the length of
+which we dare not reckon.  A writer cannot be sure of immortality till
+his language itself be dead; and then he has but a share in an uncertain
+lottery.  Nothing but fragments remains of the Phrynichus who rivalled
+AEschylus; of the Agathon who perhaps excelled Euripides; of the Alcaeus,
+in whom Horace acknowledged a master and a model; their renown is not in
+their works, it is but in their names.  And, after all, the names of
+singers and actors last perhaps as long.  Greece retains the name of
+Polus, Rome of Roscius, England of Garrick, France of Talma, Italy of
+Pasta, more lastingly than posterity is likely to retain mine.  You
+address to me a question, which I have often put to myself,--"What is the
+distinction between the writer and the reader, when the reader says,
+'These are my thoughts, these are my feelings; the writer has stolen
+them, and clothed them in his own words'?"  And the more the reader says
+this, the more wide is the audience, the more genuine the renown, and,
+paradox though it seems, the more consummate the originality, of the
+writer.  But no, it is not the mere gift of expression, it is not the
+mere craft of the pen, it is not the mere taste in arrangement of word
+and cadence, which thus enables the one to interpret the mind, the heart,
+the soul of the many.  It is a power breathed into him as he lay in his
+cradle, and a power that gathered around itself, as he grew up, all the
+influences he acquired, whether from observation of external nature, or
+from study of men and books, or from that experience of daily life which
+varies with every human being.  No education could make two intellects
+exactly alike, as no culture can make two leaves exactly alike.  How
+truly you describe the sense of dissatisfaction which every writer of
+superior genius communicates to his admirers! how truly do you feel that
+the greater is the dissatisfaction in proportion to the writer's genius,
+and the admirer's conception of it!  But that is the mystery which makes
+--let me borrow a German phrase--the cloud-land between the finite and
+the infinite.  The greatest philosopher, intent on the secrets of Nature,
+feels that dissatisfaction in Nature herself.  The finite cannot reduce
+into logic and criticism the infinite.
+
+Let us dismiss these matters, which perplex the reason, and approach that
+which touches the heart, which in your case, my child, touches the heart
+of woman.  You speak of love, and deem that the love which lasts--the
+household, the conjugal love--should be based upon such sympathies of
+pursuit that the artist should wed the artist.
+
+This is one of the questions you do well to address to me; for whether
+from my own experience, or from that which I have gained from observation
+extended over a wide range of life, and quickened and intensified by the
+class of writing that I cultivate, and which necessitates a calm study of
+the passions, I am an authority on such subjects, better than most women
+can be.  And alas, my child, I come to this result: there is no
+prescribing to men or to women whom to select, whom to refuse.  I cannot
+refute the axiom of the ancient poet, "In love there is no wherefore."
+But there is a time--it is often but a moment of time--in which love is
+not yet a master, in which we can say, "I will love, I will not love."
+
+Now, if I could find you in such a moment, I would say to you, "Artist,
+do not love, do not marry, an artist."  Two artistic natures rarely
+combine.  The artistic nature is wonderfully exacting.  I fear it is
+supremely egotistical,--so jealously sensitive that it writhes at the
+touch of a rival.  Racine was the happiest of husbands; his wife adored
+his genius, but could not understand his plays.  Would Racine have been
+happy if he had married a Corneille in petticoats?  I who speak have
+loved an artist, certainly equal to myself.  I am sure that he loved me.
+That sympathy in pursuits of which you speak drew us together, and became
+very soon the cause of antipathy.  To both of us the endeavour to
+coalesce was misery.
+
+I don't know your M. Rameau.  Savarin has sent me some of his writings;
+from these I judge that his only chance of happiness would be to marry a
+commonplace woman, with _separation de biens_.  He is, believe me, but
+one of the many with whom New Paris abounds, who because they have the
+infirmities of genius imagine they have its strength.
+
+I come next to the Englishman.  I see how serious is your questioning
+about him.  You not only regard him as a being distinct from the crowd of
+a salon; he stands equally apart in the chamber of your thoughts,--you do
+not mention him in the same letter as that which treats of Rameau and
+Savarin.  He has become already an image not to be lightly mixed up with
+others.  You would rather not have mentioned him at all to me, but you
+could not resist it.  The interest you feel in him so perplexed you, that
+in a kind of feverish impatience you cry out to me, "Can you solve the
+riddle?  Did you ever know well Englishmen?  Can an Englishman be
+understood out of his island?" etc.  Yes, I have known well many
+Englishmen; in affairs of the heart they are much like all other men.
+No; I do not know this Englishman in particular, nor any one of his name.
+
+Well, my child, let us frankly grant that this foreigner has gained some
+hold on your thoughts, on your fancy, perhaps also on your heart.  Do not
+fear that he will love you less enduringly, or that you will become
+alienated from him, because he is not an artist.  If he be a strong
+nature, and with some great purpose in life, your ambition will fuse
+itself in his; and knowing you as I do, I believe you would make an
+excellent wife to an Englishman whom you honoured as well as loved; and
+sorry though I should be that you relinquished the singer's fame, I
+should be consoled in thinking you safe in the woman's best sphere,--
+a contented home, safe from calumny, safe from gossip.  I never had that
+home; and there has been no part in my author's life in which I would
+not have given all the celebrity it won for the obscure commonplace of
+such woman-lot.  Could I move human beings as pawns on a chessboard, I
+should indeed say that the most suitable and congenial mate for you, for
+a woman of sentiment and genius, would be a well-born and well-educated
+German; for such a German unites, with domestic habits and a strong sense
+of family ties, a romance of sentiment, a love of art, a predisposition
+towards the poetic side of life, which is very rare among Englishmen of
+the same class.  But as the German is not forthcoming, I give my vote for
+the Englishman, provided only you love him.  Ah, child, be sure of that.
+Do not mistake fancy for love.  All women do not require love in
+marriage, but without it that which is best and highest in you would
+wither and die.  Write to me often and tell me all.  M. Savarin is right.
+My book is no longer my companion.  It is gone from me, and I am once
+more alone in the world.
+
+Yours affectionately.
+
+P. S.--Is not your postscript a woman's?  Does it not require a woman's
+postscript in reply?  You say in yours that you have fully made up your
+mind to renounce all thoughts of the stage.  I ask in mine, "What has the
+Englishman to do with that determination?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Some weeks have passed since Graham's talk with Isaura in the garden; he
+has not visited the villa since.  His cousins the D'Altons have passed
+through Paris on their way to Italy, meaning to stay a few days; they
+stayed nearly a month, and monopolized much of Graham's companionship.
+Both these were reasons why, in the habitual society of the Duke,
+Graham's persuasion that he was not yet free to court the hand of Isaura
+became strengthened, and with that persuasion necessarily came a question
+equally addressed to his conscience.  "If not yet free to court her hand,
+am I free to expose myself to the temptation of seeking to win her
+affection?"  But when his cousin was gone, his heart began to assert its
+own rights, to argue its own case, and suggest modes of reconciling its
+dictates to the obligations which seemed to oppose them.  In this
+hesitating state of mind he received the following note:--
+
+
+                                          VILLA ------, LAC D'ENGHIEN.
+
+MY DEAR MR. VANE,--We have retreated from Paris to the banks of this
+beautiful little lake.  Come and help to save Frank and myself from
+quarrelling with each other, which, until the Rights of Women are firmly
+established, married folks always will do when left to themselves,
+especially if they are still lovers, as Frank and I are.  Love is a
+terribly quarrelsome thing.  Make us a present of a few days out of your
+wealth of time.  We will visit Montmorency and the haunts of Rousseau,
+sail on the lake at moonlight, dine at gypsy restaurants under trees not
+yet embrowned by summer heats, discuss literature and politics,
+"Shakspeare and the musical glasses,"--and be as sociable and pleasant as
+Boccaccio's tale-tellers, at Fiesole.  We shall be but a small party,
+only the Savarins, that unconscious sage and humourist Signora Venosta,
+and that dimple-cheeked Isaura, who embodies the song of nightingales and
+the smile of summer.  Refuse, and Frank shall not have an easy moment
+till he sends in his claims for thirty millions against the Alabama.
+
+                     Yours, as you behave,
+                                   LIZZIE MORLEY.
+
+Graham did not refuse.  He went to Enghien for four days and a quarter.
+He was under the same roof as Isaura.  Oh, those happy days! so happy
+that they defy description.  But though to Graham the happiest days he
+had ever known, they were happier still to Isaura.  There were drawbacks
+to his happiness, none to hers,--drawbacks partly from reasons the weight
+of which the reader will estimate later; partly from reasons the reader
+may at once comprehend and assess.  In the sunshine of her joy, all the
+vivid colourings of Isaura's artistic temperament came forth, so that
+what I may call the homely, domestic woman-side of her nature faded into
+shadow.  If, my dear reader, whether you be man or woman, you have come
+into familiar contact with some creature of a genius to which, even
+assuming that you yourself have a genius in its own way, you have no
+special affinities, have you not felt shy with that creature?  Have you
+not, perhaps, felt how intensely you could love that creature, and
+doubted if that creature could possibly love you?  Now I think that
+shyness and that disbelief are common with either man or woman, if,
+however conscious of superiority in the prose of life, he or she
+recognizes inferiority in the poetry of it.  And yet this self-abasement
+is exceedingly mistaken.  The poetical kind of genius is so grandly
+indulgent, so inherently deferential, bows with such unaffected modesty
+to the superiority in which it fears it may fail (yet seldom does fail),
+--the superiority of common-sense.  And when we come to women, what
+marvellous truth is conveyed by the woman who has had no superior in
+intellectual gifts among her own sex!  Corinne, crowned at the Capitol,
+selects out of the whole world as the hero of her love no rival poet and
+enthusiast, but a cold-blooded, sensible Englishman.
+
+Graham Vane, in his strong masculine form of intellect--Graham Vane, from
+whom I hope much, if he live to fulfil his rightful career--had, not
+unreasonably, the desire to dominate the life of the woman whom he
+selected as the partner of his own; but the life of Isaura seemed to
+escape him.  If at moments, listening to her, he would say to himself,
+"What a companion! life could never be dull with her," at other moments
+he would say, "True, never dull, but would it be always safe?"  And then
+comes in that mysterious power of love which crushes all beneath its
+feet, and makes us end self-commune by that abject submission of reason,
+which only murmurs, "Better be unhappy with the one you love than happy
+with one whom you do not."  All such self-communes were unknown to
+Isaura.  She lived in the bliss of the hour.  If Graham could have read
+her heart, he would have dismissed all doubt whether he could dominate
+her life.  Could a Fate or an Angel have said to her, "Choose,--on one
+side I promise you the glories of a Catalani, a Pasta, a Sappho, a De
+Stael, a Georges Sand, all combined into one immortal name; or, on the
+other side, the whole heart of the man who would estrange himself from
+you if you had such combination of glories,"--her answer would have
+brought Graham Vane to her feet.  All scruples, all doubts, would have
+vanished; he would have exclaimed, with the generosity inherent in the
+higher order of man, "Be glorious, if your nature wills it so.  Glory
+enough to me that you would have resigned glory itself to become mine."
+But how is it that men worth a woman's loving become so diffident when
+they love intensely?  Even in ordinary cases of love there is so
+ineffable a delicacy in virgin woman, that a man, be he how refined
+soever, feels himself rough and rude and coarse in comparison; and while
+that sort of delicacy was pre-eminent in this Italian orphan, there came,
+to increase the humility of the man so proud and so confident in himself
+when he had only men to deal with, the consciousness that his
+intellectual nature was hard and positive beside the angel-like purity
+and the fairy-like play of hers.
+
+There was a strong wish on the part of Mrs. Morley to bring about the
+union of these two.  She had a great regard and a great admiration for
+both.  To her mind, unconscious of all Graham's doubts and prejudices,
+they were exactly suited to each other.  A man of intellect so cultivated
+as Graham's, if married to a commonplace English "Miss," would surely
+feel as if life had no sunshine and no flowers.  The love of an Isaura
+would steep it in sunshine, pave it with flowers.  Mrs. Morley admitted
+--all American Republicans of gentle birth do admit--the instincts which
+lead "like" to match with "like," an equality of blood and race.  With
+all her assertion of the Rights of Woman, I do not think that Mrs. Morley
+would ever have conceived the possibility of consenting that the richest
+and prettiest and cleverest girl in the States could become the wife of a
+son of hers if the girl had the taint of negro blood, even though shown
+nowhere save the slight distinguishing hue of her finger-nails.  So had
+Isaura's merits been threefold what they were and she had been the
+wealthy heiress of a retail grocer, this fair Republican would have
+opposed (more strongly than many an English duchess, or at least a Scotch
+duke, would do, the wish of a son), the thought of an alliance between
+Graham Vane and the grocer's daughter!  But Isaura was a Cicogna, an
+offspring of a very ancient and very noble house.  Disparities of
+fortune, or mere worldly position, Mrs. Morley supremely despised.  Here
+were the great parities of alliance,--parities in years and good looks
+and mental culture.  So, in short, she in the invitation given to them
+had planned for the union between Isaura and Graham.  To this plan she
+had an antagonist, whom she did not even guess, in Madame Savarin.  That
+lady, as much attached to Isaura as was Mrs. Morley herself, and still
+more desirous of seeing a girl, brilliant and parentless, transferred
+from the companionship of Signora Venosta to the protection of a husband,
+entertained no belief in the serious attentions of Graham Vane.  Perhaps
+she exaggerated his worldly advantages, perhaps she undervalued the
+warmth of his affections; but it was not within the range of her
+experience, confined much to Parisian life, nor in harmony with her
+notions of the frigidity and morgue of the English national character,
+that a rich and high-born young man, to whom a great career in practical
+public life was predicted, should form a matrimonial alliance with a
+foreign orphan girl, who, if of gentle birth, had no useful connections,
+would bring no correspondent dot, and had been reared and intended for
+the profession of the stage.  She much more feared that the result of any
+attentions on the part of such a man would be rather calculated to
+compromise the orphan's name, or at least to mislead her expectations,
+than to secure her the shelter of a wedded home.  Moreover, she had
+cherished plans of her own for Isaura's future.  Madame Savarin had
+conceived for Gustave Rameau a friendly regard, stronger than that which
+Mrs. Morley entertained for Graham Vane, for it was more motherly.
+Gustave had been familiarized to her sight and her thoughts since he had
+first been launched into the literary world under her husband's auspices;
+he had confided to her his mortification in his failures, his joy in his
+successes.  His beautiful countenance, his delicate health, his very
+infirmities and defects, had endeared him to her womanly heart.  Isaura
+was the wife of all others who, in Madame Savarin's opinion, was made for
+Rameau.  Her fortune, so trivial beside the wealth of the Englishman,
+would be a competence to Rameau; then that competence might swell into
+vast riches if Isaura succeeded on the stage.  She found with extreme
+displeasure that Isaura's mind had become estranged from the profession
+to which she had been destined, and divined that a deference to the
+Englishman's prejudices had something to do with that estrangement.  It
+was not to be expected that a Frenchwoman, wife to a sprightly man of
+letters, who had intimate friends and allies in every department of the
+artistic world, should cherish any prejudice whatever against the
+exercise of an art in which success achieved riches and renown; but she
+was prejudiced, as most Frenchwomen are, against allowing to unmarried
+girls the same freedom and independence of action that are the rights of
+women--French women--when married; and she would have disapproved the
+entrance of Isaura on her professional career until she could enter it as
+a wife, the wife of an artist, the wife of Gustave Rameau.
+
+Unaware of the rivalry between these friendly diplomatists and schemers,
+Graham and Isaura glided hourly more and more down the current, which as
+yet ran smooth.  No words by which love is spoken were exchanged between
+them; in fact, though constantly together, they were very rarely, and
+then but for moments, alone with each other.  Mrs. Morley artfully
+schemed more than once to give them such opportunities for that mutual
+explanation of heart which, she saw, had not yet taken place; with art
+more practised and more watchful, Madame Savarin contrived to baffle her
+hostess's intention.  But, indeed, neither Graham nor Isaura sought to
+make opportunities for themselves.  He, as we know, did not deem himself
+wholly justified in uttering the words of love by which a man of honour
+binds himself for life; and she!--what girl pure-hearted and loving truly
+does not shrink from seeking the opportunities which it is for the man to
+court?  Yet Isaura needed no words to tell her that she was loved,--no,
+nor even a pressure of the hand, a glance of the eye; she felt it
+instinctively, mysteriously, by the glow of her own being in the presence
+of her lover.  She knew that she herself could not so love unless she
+were beloved.
+
+Here woman's wit is keener and truthfuller than man's.  Graham, as I have
+said, did not feel confident that he had reached the heart of Isaura.  He
+was conscious that he had engaged her interest, that he had attracted her
+fancy; but often, when charmed by the joyous play of her imagination, he
+would sigh to himself, "To natures so gifted what single mortal can be
+the all in all."
+
+They spent the summer mornings in excursions round the beautiful
+neigbbourhood, dined early, and sailed on the calm lake at moonlight.
+Their talk was such as might be expected from lovers of books in summer
+holidays.  Savarin was a critic by profession; Graham Vane, if not that,
+at least owed such literary reputation as he had yet gained to essays in
+which the rare critical faculty was conspicuously developed.
+
+It was pleasant to hear the clash of these two minds encountering each
+other; they differed perhaps less in opinions than in the mode by which
+opinions are discussed.  The Englishman's range of reading was wider than
+the Frenchman's, and his scholarship more accurate; but the Frenchman had
+a compact neatness of expression, a light and nimble grace, whether in
+the advancing or the retreat of his argument, which covered deficiencies,
+and often made them appear like merits.  Graham was compelled, indeed, to
+relinquish many of the forces of superior knowledge or graver eloquence,
+which with less lively antagonists he could have brought into the field,
+for the witty sarcasm of Savarin would have turned them aside as pedantry
+or declamation.  But though Graham was neither dry nor diffuse, and the
+happiness at his heart brought out the gayety of humour which had been
+his early characteristic, and yet rendered his familiar intercourse
+genial and playful, still there was this distinction between his humour
+and Savarin's wit,--that in the first there was always something earnest,
+in the last always something mocking.  And in criticism Graham seemed
+ever anxious to bring out a latent beauty, even in writers comparatively
+neglected; Savarin was acutest when dragging forth a blemish never before
+discovered in writers universally read.
+
+Graham did not perhaps notice the profound attention with which Isaura
+listened to him in these intellectual skirmishes with the more glittering
+Parisian.  There was this distinction she made between him and Savarin,--
+when the last spoke she often chimed in with some happy sentiment of her
+own; but she never interrupted Graham, never intimated a dissent from his
+theories of art, or the deductions he drew from them; and she would
+remain silent and thoughtful for some minutes when his voice ceased.
+There was passing from his mind into hers an ambition which she imagined,
+poor girl, that he would be pleased to think he had inspired, and which
+might become a new bond of sympathy between them.  But as yet the
+ambition was vague and timid,--an idea or a dream to be fulfilled in some
+indefinite future.
+
+The last night of this short-lived holiday-time, the party, after staying
+out on the lake to a later hour than usual, stood lingering still on the
+lawn of the villa; and their host, who was rather addicted to superficial
+studies of the positive sciences, including, of course, the most popular
+of all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening to speculative
+conjectures on the probable size of the inhabitants of Sirius, that very
+distant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who has led philosophers
+into mortifying reflections upon the utter insignificance of our own poor
+little planet, capable of producing nothing greater than Shakspeares and
+Newtons, Aristotles and Caesars,--mannikins, no doubt, beside intellects
+proportioned to the size of the world in which they flourish.
+
+As it chanced, Isaura and Graham were then standing close to each other
+and a little apart from the rest.  "It is very strange," said Graham,
+laughing low, "how little I care about Sirius.  He is the sun of some
+other system, and is perhaps not habitable at all, except by Salamanders.
+He cannot be one of the stars with which I have established familiar
+acquaintance, associated with fancies and dreams and hopes, as most of us
+do, for instance, with Hesperus, the moon's harbinger and comrade.  But
+amid all those stars there is one--not Hesperus--which has always had
+from my childhood a mysterious fascination for me.  Knowing as little of
+astrology as I do of astronomy, when I gaze upon that star I become
+credulously superstitious, and fancy it has an influence on my life.
+Have you, too, any favourite star?"
+
+"Yes," said Isaura; "and I distinguish it now, but I do not even know its
+name, and never would ask it."
+
+"So like me.  I would not vulgarize my unknown source of beautiful
+illusions by giving it the name it takes in technical catalogues.  For
+fear of learning that name I never have pointed it out to any one before.
+I too at this moment distinguish it apart from all its brotherhood.  Tell
+me which is yours."
+
+Isaura pointed and explained.  The Englishman was startled.  By what
+strange coincidence could they both have singled out from all the host of
+heaven the same favourite star?  "Cher Vane," cried Savarin, "Colonel
+Morley declares that what America is to the terrestrial system Sirius is
+to the heavenly.  America is to extinguish Europe, and then Sirius is to
+extinguish the world."
+
+"Not for some millions of years; time to look about us," said the
+Colonel, gravely.  "But I certainly differ from those who maintain that
+Sirius recedes from us.  I say that he approaches.  The principles of a
+body so enlightened must be those of progress."  Then addressing Graham
+in English, he added, "there will be a mulling in this fogified planet
+some day, I predicate.  Sirius is a keener!"
+
+"I have not imagination lively enough to interest myself in the destinies
+of Sirius in connection with our planet at a date so remote," said
+Graham, smiling.  Then he added in a whisper to Isaura, "My imagination
+does not carry me further than to wonder whether this day twelvemonth--
+the 8th of July-we two shall both be singling out that same star, and
+gazing on it as now, side by side."
+
+This was the sole utterance of that sentiment in which the romance of
+love is so rich that the Englishman addressed to Isaura during those
+memorable summer days at Enghien.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The next morning the party broke up.  Letters had been delivered both to
+Savarin and to Graham, which, even had the day for departure not been
+fixed, would have summoned them away.  On reading his letter, Savarin's
+brow became clouded.  He made a sign to his wife after breakfast, and
+wandered away with her down an alley in the little garden.  His trouble
+was of that nature which a wife either soothes or aggravates, according
+sometimes to her habitual frame of mind, sometimes to the mood of temper
+in which she may chance to be,--a household trouble, a pecuniary trouble.
+
+Savarin was by no means an extravagant man.  His mode of living, though
+elegant and hospitable, was modest compared to that of many French
+authors inferior to himself in the fame which at Paris brings a very good
+return in francs; but his station itself as the head of a powerful
+literary clique necessitated many expenses which were too congenial to
+his extreme good-nature to be regulated by strict prudence.  His hand was
+always open to distressed writers and struggling artists, and his sole
+income was derived from his pen and a journal in which he was chief
+editor and formerly sole proprietor.  But that journal had of late not
+prospered.  He had sold or pledged a considerable share in the
+proprietorship.  He had been compelled also to borrow a sum large for
+him, and the debt obtained from a retired bourgeois who lent out his
+moneys "by way," he said, "of maintaining an excitement and interest in
+life," would in a few days become due.  The letter was not from that
+creditor; but it was from his publisher, containing a very disagreeable
+statement of accounts, pressing for settlement, and declining an offer of
+Savarin for a new book (not yet begun) except upon terms that the author
+valued himself too highly to accept.  Altogether, the situation was
+unpleasant.  There were many times in which Madame Savarin presumed to
+scold her distinguished husband for his want of prudence and thrift.  But
+those were never the times when scolding could be of no use.  It could
+clearly be of no use now.  Now was the moment to cheer and encourage him;
+to reassure him as to his own undiminished powers and popularity, for he
+talked dejectedly of himself as obsolete and passing out of fashion; to
+convince him also of the impossibility that the ungrateful publisher whom
+Savarin's more brilliant successes had enriched could encounter the odium
+of hostile proceedings; and to remind him of all the authors, all the
+artists, whom he in their earlier difficulties had so liberally assisted,
+and from whom a sum sufficing to pay the bourgeois creditor when the day
+arrived could now be honourably asked and would be readily contributed.
+In this last suggestion the homely prudent good-sense of Madame Savarin
+failed her.  She did not comprehend that delicate pride of honour which,
+with all his Parisian frivolities and cynicism, dignified the Parisian
+man of genius.  Savarin could not, to save his neck from a rope, have
+sent round the begging-hat to friends whom he had obliged.  Madame
+Savarin was one of those women with large-lobed ears, who can be
+wonderfully affectionate, wonderfully sensible, admirable wives and
+mothers, and yet are deficient in artistic sympathies with artistic
+natures.  Still, a really good honest wife is such an incalculable
+blessing to her lord, that, at the end of the talk in the solitary alley,
+this man of exquisite finesse, of the undefinably high-bred temperament,
+and, alas! the painful morbid susceptibility, which belongs to the
+genuine artistic character, emerged into the open sunlit lawn with his
+crest uplifted, his lip curved upward in its joyous mockery, and
+perfectly persuaded that somehow or other he should put down the
+offensive publisher, and pay off the unoffending creditor when the day
+for payment came.  Still he had judgment enough to know that to do this
+he must get back to Paris, and could not dawdle away precious hours in
+discussing the principles of poetry with Graham Vane.
+
+There was only one thing, apart from "the begging-hat," in which Savarin
+dissented from his wife.--She suggested his starting a new journal in
+conjunction with Gustave Rameau, upon whose genius and the expectations
+to be formed from it (here she was tacitly thinking of Isaura wedded to
+Rameau, and more than a Malibran on the stage) she insisted vehemently.
+Savarin did not thus estimate Gustave Rameau, thought him a clever,
+promising young writer in a very bad school of writing, who might do well
+some day or other.  But that a Rameau could help a Savarin to make a
+fortune!  No; at that idea he opened his eyes, patted his wife's
+shoulder, and called her "enfant."
+
+Graham's letter was from M. Renard, and ran thus:--
+
+     MONSIEUR,--I had the honour to call at your apartment this morning,
+     and I write this line to the address given to me by your concierge
+     to say that I have been fortunate enough to ascertain that the
+     relation of the missing lady is now at Paris.  I shall hold myself
+     in readiness to attend your summons.  Deign to accept, Monsieur, the
+     assurance of my profound consideration.
+                                             J.  RENARD.
+
+This communication sufficed to put Graham into very high spirits.
+Anything that promised success to his research seemed to deliver his
+thoughts from a burden and his will from a fetter.  Perhaps in a few days
+he might frankly and honourably say to Isaura words which would justify
+his retaining longer, and pressing more ardently, the delicate hand which
+trembled in his as they took leave.
+
+On arriving at Paris, Graham despatched a note to M. Renard requesting to
+see him, and received a brief line in reply that M. Renard feared he
+should be detained on other and important business till the evening, but
+hoped to call at eight o'clock.  A few minutes before that hour he
+entered Graham's apartment.
+
+"You have discovered the uncle of Louise Duval!" exclaimed Graham; "of
+course you mean M. de Mauleon, and he is at Paris?"
+
+"True so far, Monsieur; but do not be too sanguine as to the results of
+the information I can give you.  Permit me, as briefly as possible, to
+state the circumstances.  When you acquainted me with the fact that M. de
+Mauleon was the uncle of Louise Duval, I told you that I was not without
+hopes of finding him out, though so long absent from Paris.  I will now
+explain why.  Some months ago, one of my colleagues engaged in the
+political department (which I am not) was sent to Lyons, in consequence
+of some suspicions conceived by the loyal authorities there of a plot
+against the emperor's life.  The suspicions were groundless, the plot a
+mare's nest.  But my colleague's attention was especially drawn towards a
+man not mixed up with the circumstances from which a plot had been
+inferred, but deemed in some way or other a dangerous enemy to the
+Government.  Ostensibly, he exercised a modest and small calling as a
+sort of courtier or _agent de change_; but it was noticed that certain
+persons familiarly frequenting his apartment, or to whose houses he used
+to go at night, were disaffected to the Government,--not by any means of
+the lowest rank,--some of them rich malcontents who had been devoted
+Orleanists; others, disappointed aspirants to office or the 'cross;' one
+or two well-born and opulent fanatics dreaming of another Republic.
+Certain very able articles in the journals of the excitable _Midi_,
+though bearing another signature, were composed or dictated by this man,
+--articles evading the censure and penalties of the law, but very
+mischievous in their tone.  All who had come into familiar communication
+with this person were impressed with a sense of his powers; and also with
+a vague belief that he belonged to a higher class in breeding and
+education than that of a petty _agent de change_.  My colleague set
+himself to watch the man, and took occasions of business at his little
+office to enter into talk with him.  Not by personal appearance, but by
+voice, he came to a conclusion that the man was not wholly a stranger to
+him,--a peculiar voice with a slight Norman breadth of pronunciation,
+though a Parisian accent; a voice very low, yet very distinct; very
+masculine, yet very gentle.  My colleague was puzzled till late one
+evening he observed the man coming out of the house of one of these rich
+malcontents, the rich malcontent himself accompanying him.  My colleague,
+availing himself of the dimness of light, as the two passed into a lane
+which led to the agent's apartment, contrived to keep close behind and
+listen to their conversation; but of this he heard nothing,--only, when
+at the end of the lane, the rich man turned abruptly, shook his companion
+warmly by the hand, and parted from him, saying, 'Never fear; all shall
+go right with you, my dear Victor.' At the sound of that name 'Victor,'
+my colleague's memories, before so confused, became instantaneously
+clear.  Previous to entering our service, he had been in the horse
+business, a votary of the turf; as such he had often seen the brilliant
+'sportman,' Victor de Mauleon; sometimes talked to him.  Yes, that was
+the voice,--the slight Norman intonation (Victor de Mauleon's father had
+it strongly, and Victor had passed some of his early childhood in
+Normandy), the subdued modulation of speech which had made so polite the
+offence to men, or so winning the courtship to women,--that was Victor de
+Mauleon.  But why there in that disguise?  What was his real business and
+object?  My confrere had no time allowed to him to prosecute such
+inquiries.  Whether Victor or the rich malcontent had observed him at
+their heels, and feared he might have overheard their words, I know not;
+but the next day appeared in one of the popular journals circulating
+among the _ouvriers_ a paragraph stating that a Paris spy had been seen
+at Lyons, warning all honest men against his machinations, and containing
+a tolerably accurate description of his person.  And that very day, on
+venturing forth, my estimable colleague suddenly found himself hustled by
+a ferocious throng, from whose hands he was with great difficulty rescued
+by the municipal guard.  He left Lyons that night; and for recompense of
+his services received a sharp reprimand from his chief.  He had committed
+the worst offence in our profession, _trop de zele_.  Having only heard
+the outlines of this story from another, I repaired to my _confrere_
+after my last interview with Monsieur, and learned what I now tell you
+from his own lips.  As he was not in my branch of the service, I could
+not order him to return to Lyons; and I doubt whether his chief would
+have allowed it.  But I went to Lyons myself, and there ascertained that
+our supposed Vicomte had left that town for Paris some months ago, not
+long after the adventure of my colleague.  The man bore a very good
+character generally,--was said to be very honest and inoffensive; and the
+notice taken of him by persons of higher rank was attributed generally to
+a respect for his talents, and not on account of any sympathy in
+political opinions.  I found that the confrere mentioned, and who alone
+could identify M. de Mauleon in the disguise which the Vicomte had
+assumed, was absent on one of those missions abroad in which he is
+chiefly employed.  I had to wait for his return, and it was only the day
+before yesterday that I obtained the following particulars.  M. de
+Mauleon bears the same name as he did at Lyons,--that name is Jean
+Lebeau; he exercises the ostensible profession of a 'letter-writer,' and
+a sort of adviser on business among the workmen and petty bourgeoisie,
+and he nightly frequents the cafe Jean Jacques, Rue Faubourg Montmartre.
+It is not yet quite half-past eight, and, no doubt, you could see him at
+the cafe this very night, if you thought proper to go."
+
+"Excellent!  I will go!  Describe him!"
+
+"Alas! that is exactly what I cannot do at present; for after hearing
+what I now tell you, I put the same request you do to my colleague, when,
+before he could answer me, he was summoned to the bureau of his chief,
+promising to return and give me the requisite description.  He did not
+return; and I find that he was compelled, on quitting his chief, to seize
+the first train starting for Lille upon an important political
+investigation which brooked no delay.  He will be back in a few days,
+and then Monsieur shall have the description."
+
+"Nay; I think I will seize time by the forelock, and try my chance
+tonight.  If the man be really a conspirator, and it looks likely enough,
+who knows but what he may see quick reason to take alarm and vanish from
+Paris at any hour?--Cafe Jean Jacques, Rue ------; I will go.  Stay; you
+have seen Victor de Mauleon in his youth: what was he like then?"
+
+"Tall, slender, but broad-shouldered, very erect, carrying his head high,
+a profusion of dark curls, a small black mustache, fair clear complexion,
+light-coloured eyes with dark lashes, _fort bel homme_.  But he will not
+look like that now."
+
+"His present age?"
+
+"Forty-seven or forty-eight.  But before you go, I must beg you to
+consider well what you are about.  It is evident that M. de Mauleon has
+some strong reason, whatever it be, for merging his identity in that of
+Jean Lebeau.  I presume, therefore, that you could scarcely go up to M.
+Lebeau, when you have discovered him, and say, 'Pray, Monsieur le
+Vicomte, can you give me some tidings of your niece, Louise Duval?'  If
+you thus accosted him, you might possibly bring some danger on yourself,
+but you would certainly gain no information from him."
+
+"True."
+
+On the other hand, if you make his acquaintance as M. Lebeau, how can you
+assume him to know anything about Louise Duval?"
+
+"Parbleu!  Monsieur Renard, you try to toss me aside on both horns of the
+dilemma; but it seems to me that, if I once make his acquaintance as M.
+Lebeau, I might gradually and cautiously feel my way as to the best mode
+of putting the question to which I seek reply.  I suppose, too, that the
+man must be in very poor circumstances to adopt so humble a calling, and
+that a small sum of money may smooth all difficulties."
+
+"I am not so sure of that," said M. Renard, thoughtfully; "but grant that
+money may do so, and grant also that the Vicomte, being a needy man, has
+become a very unscrupulous one,--is there anything in your motives for
+discovering Louise Duval which might occasion you trouble and annoyance,
+if it were divined by a needy and unscrupulous man; anything which might
+give him a power of threat or exaction?  Mind, I am not asking you to
+tell me any secret you have reasons for concealing, but I suggest that it
+might be prudent if you did not let M. Lebeau know your real name and
+rank; if, in short, you could follow his example, and adopt a disguise.
+But no; when I think of it, you would doubtless be so unpractised in the
+art of disguise that he would detect you at once to be other than you
+seem; and if suspecting you of spying into his secrets, and if those
+secrets be really of a political nature, your very life might not be
+safe."
+
+"Thank you for your hint; the disguise is an excellent idea, and combines
+amusement with precaution.  That this Victor de Mauleon must be a very
+unprincipled and dangerous man is, I think, abundantly clear.  Granting
+that he was innocent of all design of robbery in the affair of the
+jewels, still, the offence which he did own--that of admitting himself at
+night by a false key into the rooms of a wife, whom he sought to surprise
+or terrify into dishonour--was a villanous action; and his present course
+of life is sufficiently mysterious to warrant the most unfavourable
+supposition.  Besides, there is another motive for concealing my name
+from him: you say that he once had a duel with a Vane, who was very
+probably my father, and I have no wish to expose myself to the chance of
+his turning up in London some day, and seeking to renew there the
+acquaintance that I had courted at Paris.  As for my skill in playing any
+part I may assume, do not fear; I am no novice in that.  In my younger
+days I was thought clever in private theatricals, especially in the
+transformations of appearance which belong to light comedy and farce.
+Wait a few minutes, and you shall see."
+
+Graham then retreated into his bedroom, and in a few minutes reappeared
+so changed, that Renard at first glance took him for a stranger.  He had
+doffed his dress--which habitually, when in Capitals, was characterized
+by the quiet, indefinable elegance that to a man of the great world,
+high-bred and young, seems "to the manner born"--for one of those coarse
+suits which Englishmen are wont to wear in their travels, and by which
+they are represented in French or German caricatures,--loose jacket of
+tweed with redundant pockets, waistcoat to match, short dust-coloured
+trousers.  He had combed his hair straight over his forehead, which, as I
+have said somewhere before, appeared in itself to alter the character of
+his countenance, and, without any resort to paints or cosmetics, had
+somehow or other given to the expression of his face an impudent, low-
+bred expression, with a glass screwed on to his right eye,--such a look
+as a cockney journeyman, wishing to pass for a "swell" about town, may
+cast on a servant-maid in the pit of a suburban theatre.
+
+"Will it do, old fellow?" he exclaimed, in a rollicking, swaggering tone
+of voice, speaking French with a villanous British accent.
+
+"Perfectly," said Renard, laughing.  "I offer my compliments, and if ever
+you are ruined, Monsieur, I will promise you a place in our police.  Only
+one caution,--take care not to overdo your part."
+
+"Right.  A quarter to nine; I'm off."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+There is generally a brisk exhilaration of spirits in the return to any
+special amusement or light accomplishment associated with the pleasant
+memories of earlier youth; and remarkably so, I believe, when the
+amusement or accomplishment has been that of the amateur stage-player.
+Certainly I have known persons of very grave pursuits, of very dignified
+character and position, who seem to regain the vivacity of boyhood when
+disguising look and voice for a part in some drawing-room comedy or
+charade.  I might name statesmen of solemn repute rejoicing to raise and
+to join in a laugh at their expense in such travesty of their habitual
+selves.
+
+The reader must not therefore be surprised, nor, I trust, deem it
+inconsistent with the more serious attributes of Graham's character, if
+the Englishman felt the sort of joyful excitement I describe, as, in his
+way to the cafe Jean Jacques, he meditated the role he had undertaken;
+and the joyousness was heightened beyond the mere holiday sense of
+humouristic pleasantry by the sanguine hope that much to effect his
+lasting happiness might result from the success of the object for which
+his disguise was assumed.
+
+It was just twenty minutes past nine when he arrived at the cafe Jean
+Jacques.  He dismissed the _fiacre_ and entered.
+
+The apartment devoted to customers comprised two large rooms.  The first
+was the cafe properly speaking; the second, opening on it, was the
+billiard-room.  Conjecturing that he should probably find the person of
+whom he was in quest employed at the billiard-table, Graham passed
+thither at once.  A tall man, who might be seven-and-forty, with a long
+black beard, slightly grizzled, was at play with a young man of perhaps
+twenty-eight, who gave him odds,--as better players of twenty-eight ought
+to give odds to a player, though originally of equal force, whose eye is
+not so quick, whose hand is not so steady, as they were twenty years ago.
+Said Graham to himself, "The bearded man is my Vicomte."  He called for a
+cup of coffee, and seated himself on a bench at the end of the room.
+
+The bearded man was far behind in the game.  It was his turn to play;
+the balls were placed in the most awkward position for him.  Graham
+himself was a fair billiard-player, both in the English and the French
+game.  He said to himself, "No man who can make a cannon there should
+accept odds."  The bearded man made a cannon; the bearded man continued
+to make cannons; the bearded man did not stop till he had won the game. 
+The gallery of spectators was enthusiastic.  Taking care to speak in
+very bad, very English-French, Graham expressed to one of the
+enthusiasts seated beside him his admiration of the bearded man's
+playing, and ventured to ask if the bearded man were a professional
+or an amateur player.
+
+"Monsieur," replied the enthusiast, taking a short cutty-pipe from his
+mouth, "it is an amateur, who has been a great player in his day, and is
+so proud that he always takes less odds than he ought of a younger man.
+It is not once in a month that he comes out as he has done to-night; but
+to-night he has steadied his hand.  He has had six petits verres."
+
+"Ah, indeed!  Do you know his name?"
+
+"I should think so: he buried my father, my two aunts, and my wife."
+
+"Buried?" said Graham, more and more British in his accent; "I don't
+understand."
+
+"Monsieur, you are English."
+
+"I confess it."
+
+"And a stranger to the Faubourg Montmartre."
+
+"True."
+
+"Or you would have heard of M. Giraud, the liveliest member of the State
+Company for conducting funerals.  They are going to play La Poule."
+
+Much disconcerted, Graham retreated into the cafe, and seated himself
+haphazard at one of the small tables.  Glancing round the room, he saw no
+one in whom he could conjecture the once brilliant Vicomte.
+
+The company appeared to him sufficiently decent, and especially what may
+be called local.  There were some blouses drinking wine, no doubt of the
+cheapest and thinnest; some in rough, coarse dresses, drinking beer.
+These were evidently English, Belgian, or German artisans.  At one table,
+four young men, who looked like small journeymen, were playing cards.
+At three other tables, men older, better dressed, probably shop-keepers,
+were playing dominos.  Graham scrutinized these last, but among them all
+could detect no one corresponding to his ideal of the Vicomte de Mauleon.
+"Probably," thought he, "I am too late, or perhaps he will not be here
+this evening.  At all events, I will wait a quarter of an hour."  Then,
+the _garcon_ approaching his table, he deemed it necessary to call for
+something, and, still in strong English accent, asked for lemonade and an
+evening journal.  The _garcon_ nodded and went his way.  A monsieur at
+the round table next his own politely handed to him the "Galignani,"
+saying in very good English, though unmistakably the good English of a
+Frenchman, "The English journal, at your service."
+
+Graham bowed his head, accepted the "Galignani," and inspected his
+courteous neighbour.  A more respectable-looking man no Englishman could
+see in an English country town.  He wore an unpretending flaxen wig, with
+limp whiskers that met at the chin, and might originally have been the
+same colour as the wig, but were now of a pale gray,--no beard, no
+mustache.  He was dressed with the scrupulous cleanliness of a sober
+citizen,--a high white neckcloth, with a large old-fashioned pin,
+containing a little knot of hair covered with glass or crystal, and
+bordered with a black framework, in which were inscribed letters,--
+evidently a mourning pin, hallowed to the memory of lost spouse or child,
+--a man who, in England, might be the mayor of a cathedral town, at least
+the town-clerk.  He seemed suffering from some infirmity of vision, for
+he wore green spectacles.  The expression of his face was very mild and
+gentle; apparently he was about sixty years old,--somewhat more.
+
+Graham took kindly to his neighbour, insomuch that, in return for the
+"Galignani," he offered him a cigar, lighting one himself.
+
+His neighbour refused politely.
+
+
+"Merci!  I never smoke, never; _mon medecin_ forbids it.  If I could be
+tempted, it would be by, an English cigar.  Ah, how you English beat us
+in all things,--your ships, your iron, your tabac,--which you do not
+grow!"
+
+This speech rendered literally as we now render it may give the idea of a
+somewhat vulgar speaker.  But there was something in the man's manner, in
+his smile, in his courtesy, which did not strike Graham as vulgar; on the
+contrary, he thought within himself, "How instinctive to all Frenchmen
+good breeding is!"
+
+Before, however, Graham had time to explain to his amiable neighbour the
+politico-economical principle according to which England, growing no
+tobacco, had tobacco much better than France, which did grow it, a rosy
+middle-aged monsieur made his appearance, saying hurriedly to Graham's
+neighbour, "I'm afraid I'm late, but there is still a good half-hour
+before us if you will give me my revenge."
+
+"Willingly, Monsieur Georges. _Garcon_, the dominos."
+
+"Have you been playing at billiards?" asked M. Georges.
+
+"Yes, two games."
+
+"With success?"
+
+"I won the first, and lost the second through the defect of my eyesight;
+the game depended on a stroke which would have been easy to an infant,--
+I missed it."
+
+Here the dominos arrived, and M. Georges began shuffling them; the other
+turned to Graham and asked politely if he understood the game.
+
+"A little, but not enough to comprehend why it is said to require so much
+skill."
+
+"It is chiefly an affair of memory with me; but M. Georges, my opponent,
+has the talent of combination, which I have not."
+
+"Nevertheless," replied M. Georges, gruffly, "you are not easily beaten;
+it is for you to play first, Monsieur Lebeau."  Graham almost started.
+Was it possible!  This mild, limp-whiskered, flaxen-wigged man Victor de
+Mauleon, the Don Juan of his time; the last person in the room he should
+have guessed.  Yet, now examining his neighbour with more attentive eye,
+he wondered at his stupidity in not having recognized at once the
+ci-devant _gentilhomme_ and _beau garcon_.  It happens frequently that
+our imagination plays us this trick; we form to ourselves an idea of some
+one eminent for good or for evil,--a poet, a statesman, a general, a
+murderer, a swindler, a thief.  The man is before us, and our ideas have
+gone into so different a groove that he does not excite a suspicion; we
+are told who he is, and immediately detect a thousand things that ought
+to have proved his identity.
+
+Looking thus again with rectified vision at the false Lebeau, Graham
+observed an elegance and delicacy of feature which might, in youth, have
+made the countenance very handsome, and rendered it still good-looking,
+nay, prepossessing.  He now noticed, too, the slight Norman accent, its
+native harshness of breadth subdued into the modulated tones which
+bespoke the habits of polished society.  Above all, as M. Lebeau moved
+his dominos with one hand, not shielding his pieces with the other (as M.
+Georges warily did), but allowing it to rest carelessly on the table, he
+detected the hands of the French aristocrat,--hands that had never done
+work; never (like those of the English noble of equal birth) been
+embrowned or freckled, or roughened or enlarged by early practice in
+athletic sports; but hands seldom seen save in the higher circles of
+Parisian life,--partly perhaps of hereditary formation, partly owing
+their texture to great care begun in early youth, and continued
+mechanically in after life,--with long taper fingers and polished nails;
+white and delicate as those of a woman, but not slight, not feeble;
+nervous and sinewy as those of a practised swordsman.
+
+Graham watched the play, and Lebeau good-naturedly explained to him its
+complications as it proceeded; though the explanation, diligently
+attended to by M. Georges, lost Lebeau the game.
+
+The dominos were again shuffled, and during that operation M. Georges
+said, "By the way, Monsieur Lebeau, you promised to find me a _locataire_
+for my second floor; have you succeeded?"
+
+"Not yet.  Perhaps you had better advertise in 'Les Petites Affiches.'
+You ask too much for the habitues of this neighbourhood,--one hundred
+francs a month."
+
+"But the lodging is furnished, and well too, and has four rooms.  One
+hundred francs are not much."
+
+A thought flashed upon Graham.  "Pardon, Monsieur," he said, "have you an
+_appartement de garcon_ to let furnished?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, a charming one.  Are you in search of an apartment?"
+
+"I have some idea of taking one, but only by the month.  I am but just
+arrived at Paris, and I have business which may keep me here a few weeks.
+I do but require a bedroom and a small cabinet, and the rent must be
+modest.  I am not a milord."
+
+"I am sure we could arrange, Monsieur," said M. Georges, "though I could
+not well divide my logement.  But one hundred francs a month is not
+much!"
+
+"I fear it is more than I can afford; however, if you will give me your
+address, I will call and see the rooms,--say the day after to-morrow.
+Between this and then, I expect letters which may more clearly decide my
+movements."
+
+"If the apartments suit you," said M. Lebeau, "you will at least be in
+the house of a very honest man, which is more than can be said of every
+one who lets furnished apartments.  The house, too, has a concierge, with
+a handy wife who will arrange your rooms and provide you with coffee--or
+tea, which you English prefer--if you breakfast at home."  Here M.
+Georges handed a card to Graham, and asked what hour he would call.
+
+"About twelve, if that hour is convenient," said Graham, rising.  "I
+presume there is a restaurant in the neighbourhood where I could dine
+reasonably."
+
+"_Je crois bien_, half-a-dozen.  I can recommend to you one where you can
+dine _en prince_ for thirty sous.  And if you are at Paris on business,
+and want any letters written in private, I can also recommend to you my
+friend here, M. Lebeau.  Ay, and on affairs his advice is as good as a
+lawyer's, and his fee a bagatelle."
+
+"Don't believe all that Monsieur Georges so flatteringly says of me," put
+in M. Lebeau, with a modest half-smile, and in English.  "I should tell
+you that I, like yourself, am recently arrived at Paris, having bought
+the business and goodwill of my predecessor in the apartment I occupy;
+and it is only to the respect due to his antecedents, and on the score of
+a few letters of recommendation which I bring from Lyons, that I can
+attribute the confidence shown to me, a stranger in this neighbourhood.
+Still I have some knowledge of the world, and I am always glad if I can
+be of service to the English.  I love the English"--he said this with a
+sort of melancholy earnestness which seemed sincere; and then added in a
+more careless tone,--"I have met with much kindness from them in the
+course of a chequered life."
+
+"You seem a very good fellow,--in fact, a regular trump, Monsieur
+Lebeau," replied Graham, in the same language.  "Give me your address.
+To say truth, I am a very poor French scholar, as you must have seen, and
+am awfully bother-headed how to manage some correspondence on matters
+with which I am entrusted by my employer, so that it is a lucky chance
+which has brought me acquainted with you."
+
+M. Lebeau inclined his head gracefully, and drew from a very neat morocco
+case a card, which Graham took and pocketed.  Then he paid for his coffee
+and lemonade, and returned home well satisfied with the evening's
+adventure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The next morning Graham sent for M. Renard, and consulted with that
+experienced functionary as to the details of the plan of action which he
+had revolved during the hours of a sleepless night.
+
+"In conformity with your advice," said he, "not to expose myself to the
+chance of future annoyance, by confiding to a man so dangerous as the
+false Lebeau my name and address, I propose to take the lodging offered
+to me, as Mr. Lamb, an attorney's clerk, commissioned to get in certain
+debts, and transact other matters of business, on behalf of his
+employer's clients.  I suppose there will be no difficulty with the
+police in this change of name, now that passports for the English are not
+necessary?"
+
+"Certainly not.  You will have no trouble in that respect."
+
+"I shall thus be enabled very naturally to improve acquaintance with the
+professional letter-writer, and find an easy opportunity to introduce the
+name of Louise Duval.  My chief difficulty, I fear, not being a practical
+actor, will be to keep up consistently the queer sort of language I have
+adopted, both in French and in English.  I have too sharp a critic in a
+man so consummate himself in stage trick and disguise as M. Lebeau not
+to feel the necessity of getting through my role as quickly as I can.
+Meanwhile, can you recommend me to some _magasin_ where I can obtain a
+suitable change of costume?  I can't always wear a travelling suit, and I
+must buy linen of coarser texture than mine, and with the initials of my
+new name inscribed on it."
+
+"Quite right to study such details; I will introduce you to a magasin
+near the Temple, where you will find all you want."
+
+"Next, have you any friends or relations in the provinces unknown to M.
+Lebeau, to whom I might be supposed to write about debts or business
+matters, and from whom I might have replies?"
+
+"I will think over it, and manage that for you very easily.  Your letters
+shall find their way to me, and I will dictate the answers."
+
+After some further conversation on that business, M. Renard made an
+appointment to meet Graham at a cafe near the, Temple later in the
+afternoon, and took his departure.
+
+Graham then informed his _laquais de place_ that, though he kept on his
+lodgings, he was going into the country for a few days, and should not
+want the man's services till he returned.  He therefore dismissed and
+paid him off at once, so that the laquais might not observe, when he
+quitted his rooms the next day, that he took with him no change of
+clothes, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Graham Vane has been for some days in the apartment rented of M. Georges.
+He takes it in the name of Mr. Lamb,--a name wisely chosen, less common
+than Thompson and Smith, less likely to be supposed an assumed name, yet
+common enough not to be able easily to trace it to any special family.
+He appears, as he had proposed, in the character of an agent employed by
+a solicitor in London to execute sundry commissions and to collect
+certain outstanding debts.  There is no need to mention the name of the
+solicitor; if there were, he could give the name of his own solicitor,
+to whose discretion he could trust implicitly.  He dresses and acts up to
+his assumed character with the skill of a man who, like the illustrious
+Charles Fox, has, though in private representations, practised the stage-
+play in which Demosthenes said the triple art of oratory consisted; who
+has seen a great deal of the world, and has that adaptability of
+intellect which knowledge of the world lends to one who is so thoroughly
+in earnest as to his end that he agrees to be sportive as to his means.
+
+The kind of language he employs when speaking English to Lebeau is that
+suited to the role of a dapper young underling of vulgar mind habituated
+to vulgar companionships.  I feel it due, if not to Graham himself, at
+least to the memory of the dignified orator whose name he inherits, so to
+modify and soften the hardy style of that peculiar diction in which he
+disguises his birth and disgraces his culture, that it is only here and
+there that I can venture to indicate the general tone of it; but in order
+to supply my deficiencies therein, the reader has only to call to mind
+the forms of phraseology which polite novelists in vogue, especially
+young-lady novelists, ascribe to well-born gentlemen, and more
+emphatically to those in the higher ranks of the Peerage.  No doubt
+Graham, in his capacity of critic, had been compelled to read, in order
+to review, those contributions to refined literature, and had
+familiarized himself to a vein of conversation abounding with "swell" and
+"stunner" and "awfully jolly," in its libel on manners and outrage on
+taste.
+
+He has attended nightly the cafe Jean Jacques; he has improved
+acquaintance with M. Georges and M. Lebeau; he has played at billiards,
+he has played at dominos, with the latter.  He has been much surprised at
+the unimpeachable honesty which M. Lebeau has exhibited in both these
+games.  In billiards, indeed, a man cannot cheat except by disguising his
+strength; it is much the same in dominos,--it is skill combined with
+luck, as in whist; but in whist there are modes of cheating which dominos
+do not allow,--you can't mark a domino as you can a card.  It was
+perfectly clear to Graham that M. Lebeau did not gain a livelihood by
+billiards or dominos at the cafe Jean Jacques.  In the former he was not
+only a fair but a generous player.  He played exceedingly well, despite
+his spectacles; but he gave, with something of a Frenchman's lofty
+_fanfaronnade_, larger odds to his adversary than his play justified.  In
+dominos, where such odds could not well be given, he insisted on playing
+such small stakes as two or three francs might cover.  In short,
+M. Lebeau puzzled Graham.  All about M. Lebeau, his manner, his talk,
+was irreproachable, and baffled suspicion; except in this,--Graham
+gradually discovered that the cafe had a quasi-political character.
+Listening to talkers round him, he overheard much that might well have
+shocked the notions of a moderate Liberal; much that held in disdain the
+objects to which, in 1869, an English Radical directed his aspirations.
+Vote by ballot, universal suffrage, etc.,--such objects the French had
+already attained.  By the talkers at the cafe Jean Jacques they were
+deemed to be the tricky contrivances of tyranny.  In fact, the talk was
+more scornful of what Englishmen understand by radicalism or democracy
+than Graham ever heard from the lips of an ultra-Tory.  It assumed a
+strain of philosophy far above the vulgar squabbles of ordinary party
+politicians,--a philosophy which took for its fundamental principles the
+destruction of religion and of private property.  These two objects
+seemed dependent the one on the other.  The philosophers of the Jean
+Jacques held with that expounder of Internationalism, Eugene Dupont,
+"Nous ne voulons plus de religion, car les religions etouffent
+l'intelligence."
+
+     [Discours par Eugene Dupont a la Cloture du Congres de Bruxelles,
+     Sept.  3, 1868]
+
+Now and then, indeed, a dissentient voice was raised as to the existence
+of a Supreme Being, but, with one exception, it soon sank into silence.
+No voice was raised in defence of private property.  These sages appeared
+for the most part to belong to the class of _ouvriers_ or artisans.  Some
+of them were foreigners,--Belgian, German, English; all seemed well off
+for their calling.  Indeed they must have had comparatively high wages,
+to judge by their dress and the money they spent on regaling themselves.
+The language of several was well chosen, at times eloquent.  Some brought
+with them women who seemed respectable, and who often joined in the
+conversation, especially when it turned upon the law of marriage as a
+main obstacle to all personal liberty and social improvement.  If this
+was a subject on which the women did not all agree, still they discussed
+it, without prejudice and with admirable sang froid.  Yet many of them
+looked like wives and mothers.  Now and then a young journeyman brought
+with him a young lady of more doubtful aspect, but such a couple kept
+aloof from the others.  Now and then, too, a man evidently of higher
+station than that of ouvrier, and who was received by the philosophers
+with courtesy and respect, joined one of the tables and ordered a bowl of
+punch for general participation.  In such occasional visitors, Graham,
+still listening, detected a writer of the press; now and then, a small
+artist or actor or medical student.  Among the _habitues_ there was one
+man, an _ouvrier_, in whom Graham could not help feeling an interest.  He
+was called Monnier, sometimes more familiarly Armand, his baptismal
+appellation.  This man had a bold and honest expression of countenance.
+He talked like one who, if he had not read much, had thought much on the
+subjects he loved to discuss.  He argued against the capital of employers
+quite as ably as Mr. Mill has argued against the rights of property in
+land.  He was still more eloquent against the laws of marriage and
+Heritage.  But his was the one voice not to be silenced in favour of a
+Supreme Being.  He had at least the courage of his opinions, and was
+always thoroughly in earnest.  M. Lebeau seemed to know this man, and
+honoured him with a nod and a smile, when passing by him to the table he
+generally occupied.  This familiarity with a man of that class, and of
+opinions so extreme, excited Graham's curiosity.  One evening he said to
+Lebeau, "A queer fellow that you have just nodded to.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Well, he has queer notions."
+
+"Notions shared, I believe, by many of your countrymen?"
+
+"I should think not many.  Those poor simpletons yonder may have caught
+'em from their French fellow-workmen, but I don't think that even the
+_gobemouches_ in our National Reform Society open their mouths to swallow
+such wasps."
+
+"Yet I believe the association to which most of those _ouvriers_ belong
+had its origin in England."
+
+"Indeed! what association?"
+
+"The International."
+
+"Ah, I have heard of that."
+
+Lebeau turned his green spectacles full on Graham's face as he said
+slowly, "And what do you think of it?"
+
+Graham prudently checked the disparaging reply that first occurred to
+him, and said, "I know so little about it that I would rather ask you."
+
+"I think it might become formidable if it found able leaders who knew how
+to use it.  Pardon me, how came you to know of this cafe?  Were you
+recommended to it?"
+
+"No; I happened to be in this neighbourhood on business, and walked in,
+as I might into any other cafe."
+
+"You don't interest yourself in the great social questions which are
+agitated below the surface of this best of all possible worlds?"
+
+"I can't say that I trouble my head much about them."
+
+"A game at dominos before M. Georges arrives?"
+
+"Willingly.  Is M. Georges one of those agitators below the surface?"
+
+"No, indeed.  It is for you to play."
+
+Here M. Georges arrived, and no further conversation on political or
+social questions ensued.
+
+Graham had already called more than once at M. Lebeau's office, and asked
+him to put into good French various letters on matters of business, the
+subjects of which had been furnished by M. Renard.  The office was rather
+imposing and stately, considering the modest nature of M. Lebeau's
+ostensible profession.  It occupied the entire ground-floor of a corner
+house, with a front-door at one angle and a back-door at the other.  The
+anteroom to his cabinet, and in which Graham had generally to wait some
+minutes before he was introduced, was generally well filled, and not only
+by persons who, by their dress and outward appearance, might be fairly
+supposed sufficiently illiterate to require his aid as polite letter-
+writers,--not only by servant-maids and grisettes, by sailors, zouaves,
+and journeymen workmen,--but not unfrequently by clients evidently
+belonging to a higher, or at least a richer, class of society,--men with
+clothes made by a fashionable tailor; men, again, who, less fashionably
+attired; looked like opulent tradesmen and fathers of well-to-do
+families,--the first generally young, the last generally middle-aged.
+All these denizens of a higher world were introduced by a saturnine clerk
+into M. Lebeau's reception-room, very quickly and in precedence of the
+_ouvriers_ and _grisettes_.
+
+"What can this mean?" thought Graham; "is it really that this humble
+business avowed is the cloak to some political conspiracy concealed,--the
+International Association?"  And so pondering, the clerk one day singled
+him from the crowd and admitted him into M. Lebeau's cabinet.  Graham
+thought the time had now arrived when he might safely approach the
+subject that had brought him to the Faubourg Montmartre.
+
+"You are very good," said Graham, speaking in the English of a young earl
+in our elegant novels,--"you are very good to let me in while you have so
+many swells and nobs waiting for you in the other room.  But, I say, old
+fellow, you have not the cheek to tell me that they want you to correct
+their cocker or spoon for them by proxy?"
+
+"Pardon me," answered M. Lebeau in French, "if I prefer my own language
+in replying to you.  I speak the English I learned many years ago, and
+your language in the _beau monde_, to which you evidently belong, is
+strange to me.  You are quite right, however, in your surmise that I have
+other clients than those who, like yourself, think I could correct their
+verbs or their spelling.  I have seen a great deal of the world,--I know
+something of it, and something of the law; so that many persons come to
+me for advice and for legal information on terms more moderate than those
+of an _avoue_.  But my ante-chamber is full, I am pressed for time;
+excuse me if I ask you to say at once in what I can be agreeable to you
+to-day."
+
+"Ah!" said Graham, assuming a very earnest look, "you do know the world,
+that is clear; and you do know the law of France, eh?"
+
+"Yes, a little."
+
+"What I wanted to say at present may have something to do with French
+law, and I meant to ask you either to recommend to me a sharp lawyer, or
+to tell me how I can best get at your famous police here."
+
+"Police?"
+
+"I think I may require the service of one of those officers whom we in
+England call detectives; but if you are busy now, I can call to-morrow."
+
+"I spare you two minutes.  Say at once, dear Monsieur, what you want with
+law or police."
+
+"I am instructed to find out the address of a certain Louise Duval,
+daughter of a drawing-master named Adolphe Duval, living in the Rue ----
+in the year 1848."
+
+Graham, while he thus said, naturally looked Lebeau in the face,--not
+pryingly, not significantly, but as a man generally does look in the face
+the other man whom he accosts seriously.  The change in the face he
+regarded was slight, but it was unmistakable.  It was the sudden meeting
+of the eyebrows, accompanied with the sudden jerk of the shoulder and
+bend of the neck, which betoken a man taken by surprise, and who pauses
+to reflect before he replies.  His pause was but momentary,
+
+"For what object is this address required?"
+
+"That I don't know; but evidently for some advantage to Madame or
+Mademoiselle Duval, if still alive, because my employer authorizes me to
+spend no less than L100 in ascertaining where she is, if alive, or where
+she was buried, if dead; and if other means fail, I am instructed to
+advertise to the effect that if Louise Duval, or, in case of her death,
+any children of hers living in the year 1849, will communicate with some
+person whom I may appoint at Paris, such intelligence, authenticated, may
+prove to the advantage of the party advertised for.  I am, however, told
+not to resort to this means without consulting either with a legal
+adviser or the police."
+
+"Hem!  have you inquired at the house where this lady was, you say,
+living in 1848?"
+
+"Of course I have done that; but very clumsily, I dare say, through a
+friend, and learned nothing.  But I must not keep you now.  I think I
+shall apply at once to the police.  What should I say when I get to the
+bureau?"
+
+"Stop, Monsieur, stop.  I do not advise you to apply to the police.  It
+would be waste of time and money.  Allow me to think over the matter.  I
+shall see you this evening at the cafe Jean Jacques at eight o'clock.
+Till then do nothing."
+
+"All right; I obey you.  The whole thing is out of my way of business
+awfully.  Bonjour."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Punctually at eight o'clock Graham Vane had taken his seat at a corner
+table at the remote end of the cafe Jean Jacques, called for his cup of
+coffee and his evening journal, and awaited the arrival of M. Lebeau.
+His patience was not tasked long.  In a few minutes the Frenchman
+entered, paused at the comptoir, as was his habit, to address a polite
+salutation to the well-dressed lady who there presided, nodded as usual
+to Armand Monnier, then glanced round, recognized Graham with a smile,
+and approached his table with the quiet grace of movement by which he was
+distinguished.
+
+Seating himself opposite to Graham, and speaking in a voice too low to be
+heard by others, and in French, he then said,
+
+"In thinking over your communication this morning, it strikes me as
+probable, perhaps as certain, that this Louise Duval or her children, if
+she have any, must be entitled to some moneys bequeathed to her by a
+relation or friend in England.  What say you to that assumption, Monsieur
+Lamb?"
+
+"You are a sharp fellow," answered Graham.  "Just what I say to myself.
+Why else should I be instructed to go to such expense in finding her out?
+Most likely, if one can't trace her, or her children born before the date
+named, any such moneys will go to some one else; and that some one else,
+whoever he be, has commissioned my employer to find out.  But I don't
+imagine any sum due to her or her heirs can be much, or that the matter
+is very important; for, if so, the thing would not be carelessly left in
+the hands of one of the small fry like myself, and clapped in along with
+a lot of other business as an off-hand job."
+
+"Will you tell me who employed you?"
+
+"No, I don't feel authorized to do that at present; and I don't see the
+necessity of it.  It seems to me, on consideration, a matter for the
+police to ferret out; only, as I asked before, how should I get at the
+police?"
+
+"That is not difficult.  It is just possible that I might help you better
+than any lawyer or any detective."
+
+"Why, did you ever know this Louise Duval?"
+
+"Excuse me, Monsieur Lamb; you refuse me your full confidence; allow me
+to imitate your reserve."
+
+"Oho!" said Graham; "shut up as close as you like; it is nothing to me.
+Only observe, there is this difference between us, that I am employed by
+another.  He does not authorize me to name him, and if I did commit that
+indiscretion, I might lose my bread and cheese.  Whereas you have
+nobody's secret to guard but your own, in saying whether or not you ever
+knew a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval; and if you have some reason for not
+getting me the information I am instructed to obtain, that is also a
+reason for not troubling you further.  And after all, old boy" (with a
+familiar slap on Lebeau's stately shoulder), "after all, it is I who
+would employ you; you don't employ me.  And if you find out the lady, it
+is you who would get the L100., not I."
+
+M. Lebeau mechanically brushed, with a light movement of hand, the
+shoulder which the Englishman had so pleasantly touched, drew himself and
+chair some inches back, and said slowly,--
+
+"Monsieur Lamb, let us talk as gentleman to gentleman.  Put aside the
+question of money altogether; I must first know why your employer wants
+to hunt out this poor Louise Duval.  It may be to her injury, and I would
+do her none if you offered thousands where you offer pounds.  I forestall
+the condition of mutual confidence; I own that I have known her,--it is
+many years ago; and, Monsieur Lamb, though a Frenchman very often injures
+a woman from love, he is in a worse plight for bread and cheese than I am
+if he injures her for money."
+
+"Is he thinking of the duchess's jewels?" thought Graham.  "Bravo, mon
+vieux," he said aloud; "but as I don't know what my employer's motive in
+his commission is, perhaps you can enlighten me.  How could his inquiry
+injure Louise Duval?"
+
+"I cannot say; but you English have the power to divorce your wives.
+Louise Duval may have married an Englishman, separated from him, and he
+wants to know where he can find, in order to criminate and divorce her,
+or it may be to insist on her return to him."
+
+"Bosh! that is not likely."
+
+"Perhaps, then, some English friend she may have known has left her a
+bequest, which would of course lapse to some one else if she be not
+living."
+
+"By gad!" cried Graham, "I think you hit the right nail on the head:
+_c'est cela_.  But what then?"
+
+"Well, if I thought any substantial benefit to Louise Duval might result
+from the success of your inquiry, I would really see if it were in my
+power to help you.  But I must have time to consider."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"I can't exactly say; perhaps three or four days."
+
+"Bon! I will wait.  Here comes M. Georges.  I leave you to dominos and
+him.  Good-night."
+
+Late that night M. Lebeau was seated alone in a chamber connected with
+the cabinet in which he received visitors.  A ledger was open before him,
+which he scanned with careful eyes, no longer screened by spectacles.
+The survey seemed to satisfy him.  He murmured, "It suffices, the time
+has come," closed the book, returned it to his bureau, which he locked
+up, and then wrote in cipher the letter here reduced into English:--
+
+
+     "DEAR AND NOBLE FRIEND,--Events march; the Empire is everywhere
+     undermined.  Our treasury has thriven in my hands; the sums
+     subscribed and received by me through you have become more than
+     quadrupled by advantageous speculations, in which M. Georges has
+     been a most trustworthy agent.  A portion of them I have continued
+     to employ in the mode suggested,--namely, in bringing together men
+     discreetly chosen as being in their various ways representatives and
+     ringleaders of the motley varieties that, when united at the right
+     moment, form a Parisian mob.  But from that right moment we are as
+     yet distant.  Before we can call passion into action, we must
+     prepare opinion for change.  I propose now to devote no
+     inconsiderable portion of our fund towards the inauguration of a
+     journal which shall gradually give voice to our designs.  Trust me
+     to insure its success, and obtain the aid of writers who will have
+     no notion of the uses to which they ultimately contribute.  Now that
+     the time has come to establish for ourselves an organ in the press,
+     addressing higher orders of intelligence than those which are needed
+     to destroy and incapable of reconstructing, the time has also
+     arrived for the reappearance in his proper name and rank of the man
+     in whom you take so gracious an interest.  In vain you have pressed
+     him to do so before; till now he had not amassed together, by the
+     slow process of petty gains and constant savings, with such
+     additions as prudent speculations on his own account might
+     contribute, the modest means necessary to his resumed position; and
+     as he always contended against your generous offers, no
+     consideration should ever tempt him either to appropriate to his
+     personal use a single sou intrusted to him for a public purpose, or
+     to accept from friendship the pecuniary aid which would abase him
+     into the hireling of a cause.  No!  Victor de Mauleon despises too
+     much the tools that he employs to allow any man hereafter to say,
+     'Thou also wert a tool, and hast been paid for thy uses.'
+
+     "But to restore the victim of calumny to his rightful place in this
+     gaudy world, stripped of youth and reduced in fortune, is a task
+     that may well seem impossible.  To-morrow he takes the first step
+     towards the achievement of the impossible.  Experience is no bad
+     substitute for youth, and ambition is made stronger by the goad of
+     poverty.
+
+     "Thou shalt hear of his news soon."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 BOOK V.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The next day at noon M. Louvier was closeted in his study with M.
+Gandrin.
+
+"Yes," cried Louvier, "I have behaved very handsomely to the _beau
+Marquis_.  No one can say to the contrary."
+
+"True," answered Gandrin.  "Besides the easy terms for the transfer of
+the mortgages, that free bonus of one thousand louis is a generous and
+noble act of munificence."
+
+"Is it not! and my youngster has already begun to do with it as I meant
+and expected.  He has taken a fine apartment; he has bought a coupe and
+horses; he has placed himself in the hands of the Chevalier de
+Finisterre; he is entered at the Jockey Club.  Parbleu, the one thousand
+louis will be soon gone."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"And then!  why, he will have tasted the sweets of Parisian life; he will
+think with disgust of the _vieux manoir_.  He can borrow no more.  I must
+remain sole mortgagee, and I shall behave as handsomely in buying his
+estates as I have behaved in increasing his income."
+
+Here a clerk entered and said that a monsieur wished to see M. Louvier
+for a few minutes in private, on urgent business.
+
+"Tell him to send in his card."
+
+"He has declined to do so, but states that he has already the honour of
+your acquaintance."
+
+"A writer in the press, perhaps; or is he an artist?"
+
+"I have not seen him before, Monsieur, but he has the air _tres comme il
+faut_."
+
+"Well, you may admit him.  I will not detain you longer, my dear Gandrin.
+My homages to Madame.  Bonjour."
+
+Louvier bowed out M. Gandrin, and then rubbed his hands complacently.  He
+was in high spirits.  "Aha, my dear Marquis, thou art in my trap now.
+Would it were thy father instead," he muttered chucklingly, and then took
+his stand on the hearth, with his back to the fireless grate.  There
+entered a gentleman exceedingly well dressed,--dressed according to the
+fashion, but still as became one of ripe middle age, not desiring to pass
+for younger than he was.
+
+He was tall, with a kind of lofty ease in his air and his movements; not
+slight of frame, but spare enough to disguise the strength and endurance
+which belong to sinews and thews of steel, freed from all superfluous
+flesh, broad across the shoulders, thin in the flanks.  His dark hair had
+in youth been luxuriant in thickness and curl; it was now clipped short,
+and had become bare at the temples, but it still retained the lustre of
+its colour and the crispness of its ringlets.  He wore neither beard nor
+mustache, and the darkness of his hair was contrasted by a clear fairness
+of complexion, healthful, though somewhat pale, and eyes of that rare
+gray tint which has in it no shade of blue,--peculiar eyes, which give a
+very distinct character to the face.  The man must have been singularly
+handsome in youth; he was handsome still, though probably in his forty-
+seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very different kind of
+comeliness.  The form of the features and the contour of the face were
+those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek outline, and such beauty
+would naturally have been the attribute of the countenance in earlier
+days; but the cheeks were now thin, and with lines of care and sorrow
+between nostril and lip, so that the shape of the face seemed lengthened,
+and the features had become more salient.
+
+Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea that he had seen him
+before, and could not remember where or when; but at all events he
+recognized at the first glance a man of rank and of the great world.
+
+"Pray be seated, Monsieur," he said, resuming his own easy-chair.
+
+The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very graceful bend of his head,
+drew his chair near to the financier's, stretched his limbs with the ease
+of a man making himself at home, and fixing his calm bright eyes quietly
+on Louvier, said, with a bland smile,--
+
+"My dear old friend, do you not remember me?  You are less altered than I
+am."
+
+Louvier stared hard and long; his lip fell, his cheek paled, and at last
+he faltered out, "Ciel! is it possible!  Victor, the Vicomte de Mauleon?"
+
+"At your service, my dear Louvier."
+
+There was a pause; the financier was evidently confused and embarrassed,
+and not less evidently the visit of the "dear old friend" was unwelcome.
+
+"Vicomte," he said at last, "this is indeed a surprise; I thought you had
+long since quitted Paris for good."
+
+"'L'homme propose,' etc.  I have returned, and mean to enjoy the rest of
+my days in the metropolis of the Graces and the Pleasures.  What though
+we are not so young as we were, Louvier,--we have more vigour in us than
+the new generation; and though it may no longer befit us to renew the gay
+carousals of old, life has still excitements as vivid for the social
+temperament and ambitious mind.  Yes, the _roi des viveurs_ returns to
+Paris for a more solid throne than he filled before."
+
+"Are you serious?"
+
+"As serious as the French gayety will permit one to be."
+
+"Alas, Monsieur le Vicomte! can you flatter yourself that you will regain
+the society you have quitted, and the name you have--"
+
+Louvier stopped short; something in the Vicomte's eye daunted him.
+
+"The name I have laid aside for convenience of travel.  Princes travel
+incognito, and so may a simple _gentilhomme_.  'Regain my place in
+society,' say you?  Yes; it is not that which troubles me."
+
+"What does?"
+
+"The consideration whether on a very modest income I can be sufficiently
+esteemed for myself to render that society more pleasant than ever.  Ah,
+_mon cher_! why recoil? why so frightened?  Do you think I am going to
+ask you for money?  Have I ever done so since we parted; and did I ever
+do so before without repaying you?  Bah! you _roturiers_ are worse than
+the Bourbons.  You never learn or unlearn.  'Fors non mutat genus.'"
+
+The magnificent _millionaire_, accustomed to the homage of grandees from
+the Faubourg and _lions_ from the Chaussee d'Antin, rose to his feet in
+superb wrath, less at the taunting words than at the haughtiness of mien
+with which they were uttered.
+
+"Monsieur, I cannot permit you to address me in that tone.  Do you mean
+to insult me?"
+
+"Certainly not.  Tranquillize your nerves, reseat yourself, and listen,--
+reseat yourself, I say."
+
+Louvier dropped into his chair.
+
+"No," resumed the Vicomte, politely, "I do not come here to insult you,
+neither do I come to ask money; I assume that I am in my rights when I
+ask Monsieur Louvier what has become of Louise Duval?"
+
+"Louise Duval! I know nothing about her."
+
+"Possibly not now; but you did know her well enough, when we two parted,
+to be a candidate for her hand.  You did know her enough to solicit my
+good offices in promotion of your suit; and you did, at my advice, quit
+Paris to seek her at Aix-la-Chapelle."
+
+"What! have you, Monsieur de Mauleon, not heard news of her since that
+day?"
+
+"I decline to accept your question as an answer to mine.  You went to
+Aix-la-Chapelle; you saw Louise Duval, at my urgent request she
+condescended to accept your hand."
+
+"No, Monsieur de Mauleon, she did not accept my hand.  I did not even see
+her.  The day before I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle she had left it,--not
+alone,--left it with her lover."
+
+"Her lover!  You do not mean the miserable Englishman who--"
+
+"No Englishman," interrupted Louvier, fiercely.  "Enough that the step
+she took placed an eternal barrier between her and myself.  I have never
+even sought to hear of her since that day.  Vicomte, that woman was the
+one love of my life.  I loved her, as you must have known, to folly, to
+madness.  And how was my love requited?  Ah! you open a very deep wound,
+Monsieur le Vicomte."
+
+"Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you credit for feelings so keen and
+so genuine, nor did I think myself thus easily affected by matters
+belonging to a past life so remote from the present.  For whom did Louise
+forsake you?"
+
+"It matters not; he is dead."
+
+"I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you."
+
+"I need no one to avenge my wrong.  Let this pass."
+
+"Not yet.  Louise, you say, fled with a seducer?  So proud as she was, I
+can scarcely believe it."
+
+"Oh, it was not with a _roturier_ she fled; her pride would not have
+allowed that."
+
+"He must have deceived her somehow.  Did she continue to live with him?"
+
+"That question, at least, I can answer; for though I lost all trace of
+her life, his life was pretty well known to me till its end; and a very
+few months after she fled he was enchained to another.  Let us talk of
+her no more."
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered De Mauleon, "some disgraces are not to be redeemed,
+and therefore not to be discussed.  To me, though a relation, Louise
+Duval was but little known, and after what you tell me, I cannot dispute
+your right to say, 'Talk of her no more.'  You loved her, and she wronged
+you.  My poor Louvier, pardon me if I made an old wound bleed afresh."
+
+These words were said with a certain pathetic tenderness; they softened
+Louvier towards the speaker.
+
+After a short pause the Vicomte swept his hand over his brow, as if to
+dismiss from his mind a painful and obtrusive thought; then with a
+changed expression of countenance,--an expression frank and winning,--
+with voice and with manner in which no vestige remained of the irony or
+the haughtiness with which he had resented the frigidity of his
+reception, he drew his chair still nearer to Louvier's, and resumed: "Our
+situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed since we two became friends.
+I then could say, 'Open sesame' to whatever recesses, forbidden to vulgar
+footsteps, the adventurer whom I took by the hand might wish to explore.
+In those days my heart was warm; I liked you, Louvier,--honestly liked
+you.  I think our personal acquaintance commenced in some gay gathering
+of young viveurs, whose behaviour to you offended my sense of good
+breeding?"
+
+Louvier coloured and muttered inaudibly.  De Mauleon continued: "I felt it
+due to you to rebuke their incivilities, the more so as you evinced on
+that occasion your own superiority in sense and temper, permit me to add,
+with no lack of becoming spirit."
+
+Louvier bowed his head, evidently gratified.
+
+"From that day we became familiar.  If any obligation to me were
+incurred, you would not have been slow to return it.  On more than one
+occasion when I was rapidly wasting money--and money was plentiful with
+you--you generously offered me your purse.  On more than one occasion I
+accepted the offer; and you would never have asked repayment if I had not
+insisted on repaying.  I was no less grateful for your aid."  Louvier
+made a movement as if to extend his hand, but he checked the impulse.
+
+"There was another attraction which drew me towards you.  I recognized in
+your character a certain power in sympathy with that power which I
+imagined lay dormant in myself, and not to be found among the
+_freluquets_ and _lions_ who were my more habitual associates.  Do you
+not remember some hours of serious talk we have had together when we
+lounged in the Tuileries, or sipped our coffee in the garden of the
+Palais Royal?--hours when we forgot that those were the haunts of idlers,
+and thought of the stormy actions affecting the history of the world of
+which they had been the scene; hours when I confided to you, as I
+confided to no other man, the ambitious hopes for the future which my
+follies in the present, alas! were hourly tending to frustrate."
+
+"Ay, I remember the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the
+Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal,--it was on the Pont de la Concorde,
+on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you
+said, pointing towards the walls of the _Corps Legislatif_, 'Paul, when I
+once get into the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First
+Minister of France?'"
+
+"Did I say so?--possibly; but I was too young then for admission to the
+Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in idle
+loiterings at the Fountain of Youth.  Pass over these circumstances.  You
+became in love with Louise.  I told you her troubled history; it did not
+diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit.  You set out
+for Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards; then fell the thunderbolt
+which shattered my existence, and we have never met again till this hour.
+You did not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier."
+
+"But," said Louvier, falteringly, "but since you refer to that
+thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that--that--"
+
+"I was subjected to a calumny which I expect those who have known me as
+well as you did to assist me now to refute."
+
+"If it be really a calumny."
+
+"Heavens, man!  could you ever doubt that?" cried De Mauleon, with heat;
+"ever doubt that I would rather have blown out my brains than allowed
+them even to conceive the idea of a crime so base?"
+
+"Pardon me," answered Louvier, meekly, "but I did not return to Paris for
+months after you had disappeared.  My mind was unsettled by the news that
+awaited me at Aix; I sought to distract it by travel,--visited Holland
+and England; and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard of your
+story was the darker side of it.  I willingly listen to your own account.
+You never took, or at least never accepted, the Duchesse de ------'s
+jewels; and your friend M. de  ----- never sold them to one jeweller and
+obtained their substitutes in paste from another?"
+
+The Vicomte made a perceptible effort to repress an impulse of rage;
+then reseating himself in his chair, and with that slight shrug of the
+shoulder by which a Frenchman implies to himself that rage would be out
+of place, replied calmly, "M. de N.  did as you say, but of course not
+employed by me, nor with my knowledge.  Listen; the truth is this,--the
+time has come to tell it.  Before you left Paris for Aix I found myself
+on the brink of ruin.  I had glided towards it with my characteristic
+recklessness, with that scorn of money for itself, that sanguine
+confidence in the favour of fortune, which are vices common to every _roi
+des viveurs_.  Poor mock Alexanders that we spendthrifts are in youth!
+we divide all we have among others, and when asked by some prudent
+friend, 'What have you left for your own share?' answer, 'Hope.'  I knew,
+of course, that my patrimony was rapidly vanishing; but then my horses
+were matchless.  I had enough to last me for years on their chance of
+winning--of course they would win.  But you may recollect when we parted
+that I was troubled,--creditors' bills before me--usurers' bills too,--
+and you, my dear Louvier, pressed on me your purse, were angry when I
+refused it.  How could I accept?  All my chance of repayment was in the
+speed of a horse.  I believed in that chance for myself; but for a
+trustful friend, no.  Ask your own heart now,--nay, I will not say
+heart,--ask your own common-sense, whether a man who then put aside your
+purse--spendthrift, _vaurien_, though he might be--was likely to steal or
+accept a woman's jewels.  Va, mon pauvre Louvier, again I say, 'Fors non
+mutat genus.'"
+
+Despite the repetition of the displeasing patrician motto, such
+reminiscences of his visitor's motley character--irregular, turbulent,
+the reverse of severe, but, in its own loose way, grandly generous and
+grandly brave--struck both on the common-sense and the heart of the
+listener; and the Frenchman recognized the Frenchman.  Louvier doubted
+De Mauleon's word no more, bowed his head, and said, "Victor de Mauleon,
+I have wronged you; go on."
+
+"On the day after you left for Aix came that horse-race on which my all
+depended: it was lost.  The loss absorbed the whole of my remaining
+fortune; it absorbed about twenty thousand francs in excess, a debt of
+honour to De N., whom you called my friend.  Friend he was not; imitator,
+follower, flatterer, yes.  Still I deemed him enough my friend to say to
+him, 'Give me a little time to pay the money; I must sell my stud, or
+write to my only living relation from whom I have expectations.'  You
+remember that relation,--Jacques de Mauleon, old and unmarried.  By De
+N.'s advice I did write to my kinsman.  No answer came; but what did come
+were fresh bills from creditors.  I then calmly calculated my assets.
+The sale of my stud and effects might suffice to pay every sou that I
+owed, including my debt to De N.; but that was not quite certain.  At all
+events, when the debts were paid I should be beggared.  Well, you know,
+Louvier, what we Frenchmen are: how Nature has denied to us the quality
+of patience; how involuntarily suicide presents itself to us when hope is
+lost; and suicide seemed to me here due to honour, namely, to the certain
+discharge of my liabilities,--for the stud and effects of Victor de
+Mauleon, _roi des viveurs_, would command much higher prices if he died
+like Cato than if he ran away from his fate like Pompey.  Doubtless De N.
+guessed my intention from my words or my manner; but on the very day in
+which I had made all preparations for quitting the world from which
+sunshine had vanished, I received in a blank envelope bank-notes
+amounting to seventy thousand francs, and the post-mark on the envelope
+was that of the town of Fontainebleau, near to which lived my rich
+kinsman Jacques.  I took it for granted that the sum came from him.
+Displeased as he might have been with my wild career, still I was his
+natural heir.  The sum sufficed to pay my debt to De N., to all
+creditors, and leave a surplus.  My sanguine spirits returned.  I would
+sell my stud; I would retrench, reform, go to my kinsman as the penitent
+son.  The fatted calf would be killed, and I should wear purple yet.  You
+understand that, Louvier?"
+
+"Yes, yes; so like you.  Go on."
+
+"Now, then, came the thunderbolt!  Ah! in those sunny days you used to
+envy me for being so spoilt by women.  The Duchesse de ------ had
+conceived for me one of those romantic fancies which women without
+children and with ample leisure for the waste of affection do sometimes
+conceive for very ordinary men younger than themselves, but in whom they
+imagine they discover sinners to reform or heroes to exalt.  I had been
+honoured by some notes from the Duchesse in which this sort of romance
+was owned.  I had not replied to them encouragingly.  In truth, my heart
+was then devoted to another,--the English girl whom I had wooed as my
+wife; who, despite her parents' retraction of their consent to our union
+when they learned how dilapidated were my fortunes, pledged herself to
+remain faithful to me, and wait for better days."  Again De Mauleon
+paused in suppressed emotion, and then went on hurriedly: "No, the
+Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty passion, but she did inspire me
+with an affectionate respect.  I felt that she was by nature meant to be
+a great and noble creature, and was, nevertheless, at that moment wholly
+misled from her right place amongst women by an illusion of mere
+imagination about a man who happened then to be very much talked about,
+and perhaps resembled some Lothario in the novels which she was always
+reading.  We lodged, as you may remember, in the same house."
+
+"Yes, I remember.  I remember how you once took me to a great ball given
+by the Duchesse; how handsome I thought her, though no longer young; and
+you say right--how I did envy you, that night!"
+
+"From that night, however, the Duc, not unnaturally, became jealous.  He
+reproved the Duchesse for her too amiable manner towards a _mauvais
+sujet_ like myself, and forbade her in future to receive my visits.  It
+was then that these notes became frequent and clandestine, brought to me
+by her maid, who took back my somewhat chilling replies.
+
+"But to proceed.  In the flush of my high spirits, and in the insolence
+of magnificent ease with which I paid De N------ the trifle I owed him,
+something he said made my heart stand still."
+
+"I told him that the money received had come from Jacques de Mauleon, and
+that I was going down to his house that day to thank him.  He replied,
+'Don't go; it did not come from him.'  'It must; see the post-mark of the
+envelope,--Fontainebleau.'  'I posted it at Fontainebleau.'  'You sent me
+the money, you!'  'Nay, that is beyond my means.  Where it came from,'
+said this _miserable_, 'much more may yet come;' and then be narrated,
+with that cynicism so in vogue at Paris, how he had told the Duchesse
+(who knew him as my intimate associate) of my stress of circumstance,
+of his fear that I meditated something desperate; how she gave him the
+jewels to sell and to substitute; how, in order to baffle my suspicion
+and frustrate my scruples, he had gone to Fontainebleau and there posted
+the envelope containing the bank-notes, out of which he secured for
+himself the payment he deemed otherwise imperilled.  De N. having made
+this confession, hurried down the stairs swiftly enough to save himself a
+descent by the window.  Do you believe me still?"
+
+"Yes; you were always so hot-blooded, and De N. so considerate of self,
+I believe you implicitly."
+
+"Of course I did what any man would do; I wrote a hasty letter to the
+Duchesse, stating all my gratitude for an act of pure friendship so
+noble; urging also the reasons that rendered it impossible for a man of
+honour to profit by such an act.  Unhappily, what had been sent was paid
+away ere I knew the facts; but I could not bear the thought of life till
+my debt to her was acquitted; in short, Louvier, conceive for yourself
+the sort of letter which I--which any honest man--would write, under
+circumstances so cruel."
+
+"H'm!" grunted Louvier.
+
+"Something, however, in my letter, conjoined with what De N. had told her
+as to my state of mind, alarmed this poor woman, who had deigned to take
+in me an interest so little deserved.  Her reply, very agitated and
+incoherent, was brought to me by her maid, who had taken my letter, and
+by whom, as I before said, our correspondence had been of late carried
+on.  In her reply she implored me to decide, to reflect on nothing till I
+had seen her; stated how the rest of her day was pre-engaged; and since
+to visit her openly had been made impossible by the Due's interdict,
+enclosed the key to the private entrance to her rooms, by which I could
+gain an interview with her at ten o'clock that night, an hour at which
+the Duc had informed her he should be out till late at his club.  Now,
+however great the indiscretion which the Duchesse here committed, it is
+due to her memory to say that I am convinced that her dominant idea was
+that I meditated self-destruction; that no time was to be lost to save me
+from it; and for the rest she trusted to the influence which a woman's
+tears and adjurations and reasonings have over even the strongest and
+hardest men.  It is only one of those coxcombs in whom the world of
+fashion abounds who could have admitted a thought that would have done
+wrong to the impulsive, generous, imprudent eagerness of a woman to be in
+time to save from death by his own hand a fellow-being for whom she had
+conceived an interest.  I so construed her note.  At the hour she named I
+admitted myself into the rooms by the key she sent.  You know the rest: I
+was discovered by the Duc and by the agents of police in the cabinet in
+which the Duchesse's jewels were kept.  The key that admitted me into the
+cabinet was found in my possession."
+
+De Mauleon's voice here faltered, and he covered his face with a
+convulsive hand.  Almost in the same breath he recovered from visible
+sign of emotion, and went on with a half laugh.
+
+"Ah! you envied me, did you, for being spoiled by the women?  Enviable
+position indeed was mine that night!  The Duc obeyed the first impulse of
+his wrath.  He imagined that I had dishonoured him; he would dishonour me
+in return.  Easier to his pride, too, a charge against the robber of
+jewels than against a favoured lover of his wife.  But when I, obeying
+the first necessary obligation of honour, invented on the spur of the
+moment the story by which the Duchesse's reputation was cleared from
+suspicion, accused myself of a frantic passion and the trickery of a
+fabricated key, the Due's true nature of gentilhomme came back.  He
+retracted the charge which he could scarcely even at the first blush have
+felt to be well-founded; and as the sole charge left was simply that
+which men _comme il faut_ do not refer to criminal courts and police
+investigations, I was left to make my bow unmolested and retreat to my
+own rooms, awaiting there such communciations as the Duc might deem it
+right to convey to me on the morrow.
+
+"But on the morrow the Duc, with his wife and personal suite, quitted
+Paris en route for Spain; the bulk of his retinue, including the
+offending Abigail, was discharged; and, whether through these servants or
+through the police, the story before evening was in the mouth of every
+gossip in club or cafe,--exaggerated, distorted, to my ignominy and
+shame.  My detection in the cabinet, the sale of the jewels, the
+substitution of paste by De N., who was known to be my servile imitator
+and reputed to be my abject tool, all my losses on the turf, my debts,--
+all these scattered fibres of flax were twisted together in a rope that
+would have hanged a dog with a much better name than mine.  If some
+disbelieved that I could be a thief, few of those who should have known
+me best held me guiltless of a baseness almost equal to that of theft,--
+the exaction of profit from the love of a foolish woman."
+
+"But you could have told your own tale, shown the letters you had
+received from the Duchesse, and cleared away every stain on your honour."
+
+"How?--shown her letters, ruined her character, even stated that she had
+caused her jewels to be sold for the uses of a young roue!  Ah, no,
+Louvier!  I would rather have gone to the galleys."
+
+"H'm!" grunted Louvier again.
+
+"The Duc generously gave me better means of righting myself.  Three days
+after he quitted Paris I received a letter from him, very politely
+written, expressing his great regret that any words implying the
+suspicion too monstrous and absurd to need refutation should have escaped
+him in the surprise of the moment; but stating that since the offence I
+had owned was one that he could not overlook, he was under the necessity
+of asking the only reparation I could make.  That if it 'deranged' me to
+quit Paris, he would return to it for the purpose required; but that if I
+would give him the additional satisfaction of suiting his convenience, he
+should prefer to await my arrival at Bayonne, where he was detained by
+the indisposition of the Duchesse."
+
+"You have still that letter?" asked Louvier, quickly.  "Yes; with other
+more important documents constituting what I may call my pieces
+justificatives.
+
+"I need not say that I replied stating the time at which I should arrive
+at Bayonne, and the hotel at which I should await the Duc's command.
+Accordingly I set out that same day, gained the hotel named, despatched
+to the Duc the announcement of my arrival, and was considering how I
+should obtain a second in some officer quartered in the town--for my
+soreness and resentment at the marked coldness of my former acquaintances
+at Paris had forbidden me to seek a second among any of that faithless
+number--when the Due himself entered my room.  Judge of my amaze at
+seeing him in person; judge how much greater the amaze became when he
+advanced with a grave but cordial smile, offering me his hand!
+
+"'Monsieur de Mauleon,' said he, 'since I wrote to you, facts have become
+known to me which would induce me rather to ask your friendship than call
+on you to defend your life.  Madame la Duchesse has been seriously ill
+since we left Paris, and I refrained from all explanations likely to add
+to the hysterical excitement under which she was suffering.  It is only
+this day that her mind became collected, and she herself then gave me her
+entire confidence.  Monsieur, she insisted on my reading the letters that
+you addressed to her.  Those letters, Monsieur, suffice to prove your
+innocence of any design against my peace.  The Duchesse has so candidly
+avowed her own indiscretion, has so clearly established the distinction
+between indiscretion and guilt, that I have granted her my pardon with a
+lightened heart and a firm belief that we shall be happier together than
+we have been yet.'
+
+"The Due continued his journey the next day, but he subsequently honoured
+me with two or three letters written as friend to friend, and in which
+you will find repeated the substance of what I have stated him to say by
+word of mouth."
+
+"But why not then have returned to Paris?  Such letters, at least, you
+might have shown, and in braving your calumniators you would have soon
+lived them down."
+
+"You forget that I was a ruined man.  When, by the sale of my horses,
+etc., my debts, including what was owed to the Duchesse, and which I
+remitted to the Duc, were discharged, the balance left to me would not
+have maintained me a week at Paris.  Besides, I felt so sore, so
+indignant.  Paris and the Parisians had become to me so hateful.  And to
+crown all, that girl, that English girl whom I had so loved, on whose
+fidelity I had so counted--well, I received a letter from her, gently but
+coldly bidding me farewell forever.  I do not think she believed me
+guilty of theft; but doubtless the offence I had confessed, in order to
+save the honour of the Duchesse, could but seem to her all sufficient!
+Broken in spirit, bleeding at heart to the very core, still self-
+destruction was no longer to be thought of.  I would not die till I could
+once more lift up my head as Victor de Mauleon."
+
+"What then became of you, my poor Victor?"
+
+"Ah! that is a tale too long for recital.  I have played so many parts
+that I am puzzled to recognize my own identity with the Victor de Mauleon
+whose name I abandoned.  I have been a soldier in Algeria, and won my
+cross on the field of battle,--that cross and my colonel's letter are
+among my _pieces justificatives_; I have been a gold-digger in
+California, a speculator in New York, of late in callings obscure and
+humble.  But in all my adventures, under whatever name, I have earned
+testimonials of probity, could manifestations of so vulgar a virtue be
+held of account by the enlightened people of Paris.  I come now to a
+close.  The Vicomte de Mauleon is about to re-appear in Paris, and the
+first to whom he announces that sublime avatar is Paul Louvier.  When
+settled in some modest apartment, I shall place in your hands my _pieces
+justificatives_.  I shall ask you to summon my surviving relations or
+connections, among which are the Counts de Vandemar, Beauvilliers, De
+Passy, and the Marquis de Rochebriant, with any friends of your own who
+sway the opinions of the Great World.  You will place my justification
+before them, expressing your own opinion that it suffices; in a word, you
+will give me the sanction of your countenance.  For the rest, I trust to
+myself to propitiate the kindly and to silence the calumnious.  I have
+spoken; what say you?"
+
+"You overrate my power in society.  Why not appeal yourself to your high-
+born relations?"
+
+"No, Louvier; I have too well considered the case to alter my decision.
+It is through you, and you alone, that I shall approach my relations.
+My vindicator must be a man of whom the vulgar cannot say, 'Oh, he is a
+relation,--a fellow-noble; those aristocrats whitewash each other.'  It
+must be an authority with the public at large,--a bourgeois, a
+millionaire, a _roi de la Bourse_.  I choose you, and that ends the
+discussion."
+
+Louvier could not help laughing good-humouredly at the _sang froid_ of
+the Vicomte.  He was once more under the domination of a man who had for
+a time dominated all with whom he lived.
+
+De Mauleon continued: "Your task will be easy enough.  Society changes
+rapidly at Paris.  Few persons now exist who have more than a vague
+recollection of the circumstances which can be so easily explained to my
+complete vindication when the vindication comes from a man of your solid
+respectability and social influence.  Besides, I have political objects
+in view.  You are a Liberal; the Vandemars and Rochebriants are
+Legitimists.  I prefer a godfather on the Liberal side. _Pardieu, mon
+ami_, why such coquettish hesitation?  Said and done.  Your hand on it."
+
+"There is my hand then.  I will do all I can to help you."
+
+"I know you will, old friend; and you do both kindly and wisely."  Here
+De Mauleon cordially pressed the hand he held, and departed.
+
+On gaining the street, the Vicomte glided into a neighbouring courtyard,
+in which he had left his fiacre, and bade the coachman drive towards the
+Boulevard Sebastopol.  On the way, he took from a small bag that he had
+left in the carriage the flaxen wig and pale whiskers which distinguished
+M. Lebeau, and mantled his elegant habiliments in an immense cloak, which
+he had also left in the fiacre.  Arrived at the Boulevard Sebastopol, he
+drew up the collar of the cloak so as to conceal much of his face,
+stopped the driver, paid him quickly, and, bag in hand, hurried on to
+another stand of fiacres at a little distance, entered one, drove to the
+Faubourg Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle at the mouth of a street not
+far from M. Lebeau's office, and gained on foot the private side-door of
+the house, let himself in with his latchkey, entered the private room on
+the inner side of his office, locked the door, and proceeded leisurely to
+exchange the brilliant appearance which the Vicomte de Mauleon had borne
+on his visit to the millionaire for the sober raiment and bourgeois air
+of M. Lebeau, the letter-writer.
+
+Then after locking up his former costume in a drawer of his secretaire,
+he sat himself down and wrote the following lines:--
+
+     DEAR MONSIEUR GEORGES,--I advise you strongly, from information that
+     has just reached me, to lose no time in pressing M. Savarin to repay
+     the sum I recommended you to lend him, and for which you hold his
+     bill due this day.  The scandal of legal measures against a writer
+     so distinguished should be avoided if possible.  He will avoid it
+     and get the money somehow; but he must be urgently pressed.  If you
+     neglect this warning, my responsibility is past. _Agreez mes
+     sentimens les plus sinceres_.
+                                             J.  L.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Marquis de Rochebriant is no longer domiciled in an attic in the
+gloomy Faubourg.  See him now in a charming _appartement de garcon an
+premier_ in the Rue du Helder, close by the promenades and haunts of the
+mode.  It had been furnished and inhabited by a brilliant young
+provincial from Bordeaux, who, coming into an inheritance of one hundred
+thousand francs, had rushed up to Paris to enjoy himself, and make his
+million at the Bourse.  He had enjoyed himself thoroughly,--he had been a
+darling of the _demi monde_; he had been a successful and an inconstant
+gallant.  Zelie had listened to his vows of eternal love, and his offers
+of unlimited _cachemires_; Desiree, succeeding Zelie, had assigned to him
+her whole heart--or all that was left of it--in gratitude for the ardour
+of his passion, and the diamonds and coupe which accompanied and attested
+the ardour; the superb Hortense, supplanting Desiree, received his visits
+in the charming apartment he furnished for her, and entertained him and
+his friends at the most delicate little suppers, for the moderate sum of
+four thousand francs a month.  Yes, he had enjoyed himself thoroughly,
+but he had not made a million at the Bourse.  Before the year was out,
+the one hundred thousand francs were gone.  Compelled to return to his
+province, and by his hard-hearted relations ordained, on penalty of
+starvation, to marry the daughter of an _avoue_, for the sake of her dot
+and a share in the hated drudgery of the _avoue's_ business,--his
+apartment was to be had for a tenth part of the original cost of its
+furniture.  A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, to whom Louvier had
+introduced the Marquis as a useful fellow who knew Paris, and would save
+him from being cheated, had secured this bijou of an apartment for Alain,
+and concluded the bargain for the bagatelle of L500.  The Chevalier took
+the same advantageous occasion to purchase the English well-bred hack and
+the neat coupe and horses which the Bordelais was also necessitated to
+dispose of.  These purchases made, the Marquis had some five thousand
+francs (L200) left out of Louvier's premium of L1,000.  The Marquis,
+however, did not seem alarmed or dejected by the sudden diminution of
+capital so expeditiously effected.  The easy life thus commenced seemed
+to him too natural to be fraught with danger; and easy though it was, it
+was a very simple and modest sort of life compared with that of many
+other men of his age to whom Enguerrand had introduced him, though most
+of them had an income less than his, and few, indeed, of them were his
+equals in dignity of birth.  Could a Marquis de Rochebriant, if he lived
+at Paris at all, give less than three thousand francs a year for his
+apartment, or mount a more humble establishment than that confined to a
+valet and a tiger, two horses for his _coupe_ and one for the saddle?
+"Impossible," said the Chevalier de Finisterre, decidedly; and the
+Marquis bowed to so high an authority.  He thought within himself, "If I
+find in a few months that I am exceeding my means, I can but dispose of
+my rooms and my horses, and return to Rochebriant a richer man by far
+than I left it."
+
+To say truth, the brilliant seductions of Paris had already produced
+their effect, not only on the habits, but on the character and cast of
+thought, which the young noble had brought with him from the feudal and
+melancholy Bretagne.
+
+Warmed by the kindness with which, once introduced by his popular
+kinsmen, he was everywhere received, the reserve or shyness which is the
+compromise between the haughtiness of self-esteem and the painful doubt
+of appreciation by others rapidly melted away.  He caught insensibly the
+polished tone, at once so light and so cordial, of his new-made friends.
+With all the efforts of the democrats to establish equality and
+fraternity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity are
+most to be found.  All _gentilshommes_ in the best society are equals;
+and whether they embrace or fight each other, they embrace or fight as
+brothers of the same family.  But with the tone of manners Alain de
+Rochebriant imbibed still more insensibly the lore of that philosophy
+which young idlers in pursuit of pleasure teach to each other.  Probably
+in all civilized and luxurious capitals that philosophy is very much the
+same among the same class of idlers at the same age; probably it
+flourishes in Pekin not less than at Paris.  If Paris has the credit, or
+discredit, of it more than any other capital, it is because in Paris more
+than in any other capital it charms the eye by grace and amuses the ear
+by wit.  A philosophy which takes the things of this life very easily;
+which has a smile and a shrug of the shoulders for any pretender to the
+Heroic; which subdivides the wealth of passion into the pocket-money of
+caprices, is always in or out of love ankle-deep, never venturing a
+plunge; which, light of heart as of tongue, turns "the solemn
+plausibilities" of earth into subjects for epigrams and bons mots,--
+jests at loyalty to kings and turns up its nose at enthusiasm for
+commonwealths, abjures all grave studies and shuns all profound emotions.
+We have crowds of such philosophers in London; but there they are less
+noticed, because the agreeable attributes of the sect are there dimmed
+and obfuscated.  It is not a philosophy that flowers richly in the reek
+of fogs and in the teeth of east winds; it wants for full development the
+light atmosphere of Paris.  Now this philosophy began rapidly to exercise
+its charms upon Alain de Rochebriant.  Even in the society of professed
+Legitimists, he felt that faith had deserted the Legitimist creed or
+taken refuge only as a companion of religion in the hearts of high-born
+women and a small minority of priests.  His chivalrous loyalty still
+struggled to keep its ground, but its roots were very much loosened.  He
+saw--for his natural intellect was keen--that the cause of the Bourbon
+was hopeless, at least for the present, because it had ceased, at least
+for the present, to be a cause.  His political creed thus shaken, with it
+was shaken also that adherence to the past which had stifled his ambition
+of a future.  That ambition began to breathe and to stir, though he owned
+it not to others, though, as yet, he scarce distinguished its whispers,
+much less directed its movements towards any definite object.  Meanwhile,
+all that he knew of his ambition was the new-born desire for social
+success.
+
+We see him, then, under the quick operation of this change in sentiments
+and habits, reclined on the _fauteuil_ before his fireside, and listening
+to his college friend, of whom we have so long lost sight, Frederic
+Lemercier.  Frederic had breakfasted with Alain,--a breakfast such as
+might have contented the author of the "Almanach des Gourmands," and
+provided from the cafe Anglais.  Frederic has just thrown aside his
+regalia.
+
+"Pardieu! my dear Alain.  If Louvier has no sinister object in the
+generosity of his dealings with you, he will have raised himself
+prodigiously in my estimation.  I shall forsake, in his favour, my
+allegiance to Duplessis, though that clever fellow has just made a
+wondrous coup in the Egyptians, and I gain forty thousand francs by
+having followed his advice.  But if Duplessis has a head as long as
+Louvier's, he certainly has not an equal greatness of soul.  Still, my
+dear friend, will you pardon me if I speak frankly, and in the way of a
+warning homily?"
+
+"Speak; you cannot oblige me more."
+
+"Well, then, I know that you can no more live at Paris in the way you are
+doing, or mean to do, without some fresh addition to your income, than a
+lion could live in the Jardin des Plantes upon an allowance of two mice a
+week."
+
+"I don't see that.  Deducting what I pay to my aunt,--and I cannot get
+her to take more than six thousand francs a year,--I have seven hundred
+napoleons left, net and clear.  My rooms and stables are equipped, and I
+have twenty-five hundred francs in hand.  On seven hundred napoleons a
+year, I calculate that I can very easily live as I do; and if I fail--
+well, I must return to Pochebriant.  Seven hundred napoleons a year will
+be a magnificent rental there."
+
+Frederic shook his head.  "You do not know how one expense leads to
+another.  Above all, you do not calculate the chief part of one's
+expenditure,--the unforeseen.  You will play at the Jockey Club, and lose
+half your income in a night."
+
+"I shall never touch a card."
+
+"So you say now, innocent as a lamb of the force of example.  At all
+events, _beau seigneur_, I presume you are not going to resuscitate the
+part of the Ermite de la Chaussee d'Antin; and the fair Parisiennes are
+demons of extravagance."
+
+"Demons whom I shall not court."
+
+"Did I say you would?  They will court you.  Before another month has
+flown you will be inundated with billets-doux."
+
+"It is not a shower that will devastate my humble harvest.  But, mon
+cher, we are falling upon very gloomy topics.  _Laissez-moi tranquille_
+in my illusions, if illusions they be.  Ah, you cannot conceive what a
+new life opens to the man who, like myself, has passed the dawn of his
+youth in privation and fear, when he suddenly acquires competence and
+hope.  If it lasts only a year, it will be something to say 'Vixi.'"
+
+"Alain," said Frederic; very earnestly, "believe me, I should not have
+assumed the ungracious and inappropriate task of Mentor, if it were only
+a year's experience at stake, or if you were in the position of men like
+myself,--free from the encumbrance of a great name and heavily mortgaged
+lands.  Should you fail to pay regularly the interest due to Louvier, he
+has the power to put up at public auction, and there to buy in for
+himself, your chateau and domain."
+
+"I am aware that in strict law he would have such power, though I doubt
+if he would use it.  Louvier is certainly a much better and more generous
+fellow than I could have expected; and if I believe De Finisterre, he has
+taken a sincere liking to me on account of affection to my poor father.
+But why should not the interest be paid regularly?  The revenues from
+Rochebriant are not likely to decrease, and the charge on them is
+lightened by the contract with Louvier.  And I will confide to you a hope
+I entertain of a very large addition to my rental."
+
+"How?"
+
+"A chief part of my rental is derived from forests, and De Finisterre has
+heard of a capitalist who is disposed to make a contract for their sale
+at the fall this year, and may probably extend it to future years, at a
+price far exceeding that which I have hitherto obtained."
+
+"Pray be cautious.  De Finisterre is not a man I should implicitly trust
+in such matters."
+
+"Why?  Do you know anything against him?  He is in the best society,--
+perfect gentilhomme,--and, as his name may tell you, a fellow-Breton.
+You yourself allow, and so does Enguerrand, that the purchases he made
+for me--in this apartment, my horses, etc.--are singularly advantageous."
+
+"Quite true; the Chevalier is reputed sharp and clever, is said to be
+very amusing, and a first-rate piquet-player.  I don't know him
+personally,--I am not in his set.  I have no valid reason to disparage
+his character, nor do I conjecture any motive he could have to injure or
+mislead you.  Still, I say, be cautious how far you trust to his advice
+or recommendation."
+
+"Again I ask why?"
+
+"He is unlucky to his friends.  He attaches himself much to men younger
+than himself; and somehow or other I have observed that most of them have
+come to grief.  Besides, a person in whose sagacity I have great
+confidence warned me against making the Chevalier's acquaintance, and
+said to me, in his blunt way, 'De Finisterre came to Paris with nothing;
+he has succeeded to nothing; he belongs to no ostensible profession by
+which anything can be made.  But evidently now he has picked up a good
+deal; and in proportion as any young associate of his becomes poorer, De
+Finisterre seems mysteriously to become richer.  Shun that sort of
+acquaintance.'"
+
+"Who is your sagacious adviser!"
+
+"Duplessis."
+
+"Ah, I thought so.  That bird of prey fancies every other bird looking
+out for pigeons.  I fancy that Duplessis is, like all those money-
+getters, a seeker after fashion, and De Finisterre has not returned his
+bow."
+
+"My dear Alain, I am to blame; nothing is so irritating as a dispute
+about the worth of the men we like.  I began it, now let it be dropped;
+only make me one promise,--that if you should be in arrear, or if need
+presses, you will come at once to me.  It was very well to be absurdly
+proud in an attic, but that pride will be out of place in your
+_appartement au premier_."
+
+"You are the best fellow in the world, Frederic, and I make you the
+promise you ask," said Alain, cheerfully, but yet with a secret emotion
+of tenderness and gratitude.  "And now, _mon cher_, what day will you
+dine with me to meet Raoul and Enguerrand, and some others whom you would
+like to know?"
+
+"Thanks, and hearty ones, but we move now in different spheres, and I
+shall not trespass on yours. _Je suis trop bourgeois_ to incur the
+ridicule of _le bourgeois gentilhomme_."
+
+"Frederic, how dare you speak thus?  My dear fellow, my friends shall
+honour you as I do."
+
+"But that will be on your account, not mine.  No; honestly that kind of
+society neither tempts nor suits me.  I am a sort of king in my own walk;
+and I prefer my Bohemian royalty to vassalage in higher regions.  Say no
+more of it.  It will flatter my vanity enough if you will now and then
+descend to my coteries, and allow me to parade a Rochebriant as my
+familiar crony, slap him on the shoulder, and call him Alain."
+
+"Fie! you who stopped me and the English aristocrat in the Champs
+Elysees, to humble us with your boast of having fascinated _une grande
+dame_,--I think you said a duchesse."
+
+"Oh," said Lemercier, conceitedly, and passing his hand through his
+scented locks, "women are different; love levels all ranks.  I don't
+blame Ruy Blas for accepting the love of a queen, but I do blame him for
+passing himself off as a noble,--a plagiarism, by the by, from an English
+play.  I do not love the English enough to copy them.  _A propos_, what
+has become of _ce beau_ Grarm Varn?  I have not seen him of late."
+
+"Neither have I."
+
+"Nor the belle Italienne?"
+
+"Nor her," said Alain, slightly blushing.
+
+At this moment Enguerrand lounged into the room.  Alain stopped Lemercier
+to introduce him to his kinsman.  "Enguerrand, I present to you M.
+Lemercier, my earliest and one of my dearest friends."
+
+The young noble held out his hand with the bright and joyous grace which
+accompanied all his movements, and expressed in cordial words his delight
+to make M. Lemercier's acquaintance.  Bold and assured as Frederic was in
+his own circles, he was more discomposed than set at ease by the gracious
+accost of a lion, whom he felt at once to be of a breed superior to his
+own.  He muttered some confused phrases, in which _ravi_ and _flatte_
+were alone audible, and evanished.
+
+"I know M. Lemercier by sight very well," said Enguerrand, seating
+himself.  "One sees him very often in the Bois; and I have met him in the
+Coulisses and the _Bal Mabille_.  I think, too, that he plays at the
+Bourse, and is _lie_ with M. Duplessis, who bids fair to rival Louvier
+one of these days.  Is Duplessis also one of your dearest friends?"
+
+"No, indeed.  I once met him, and was not prepossessed in his favour."
+
+"Nevertheless, he is a man much to be admired and respected."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because he understands so well the art of making what we all covet,--
+money.  I will introduce you to him."
+
+"I have been already introduced."
+
+"Then I will re-introduce you.  He is much courted in a society which I
+have recently been permitted by my father to frequent,--the society, of
+the Imperial Court."
+
+"You frequent that society, and the Count permits it?"
+
+"Yes; better the Imperialists than the Republicans; and my father begins
+to own that truth, though he is too old or too indolent to act on it."
+
+"And Raoul?"
+
+"Oh, Raoul, the melancholy and philosophical Raoul, has no ambition of
+any kind, so long as--thanks somewhat to me--his purse is always
+replenished for the wants of his stately existence, among the foremost of
+which wants are the means to supply the wants of others.  That is the
+true reason why he consents to our glove-shop.  Raoul belongs, with some
+other young men of the Faubourg, to a society enrolled under the name of
+Saint Francois de Sales, for the relief of the poor.  He visits their
+houses, and is at home by their sickbeds as at their stinted boards.  Nor
+does he confine his visitations to the limits of our Faubourg; he extends
+his travels to Montmartre and Belleville.  As to our upper world, he does
+not concern himself much with its changes.  He says that we have
+destroyed too much ever to rebuild solidly; and that whatever we do build
+could be upset any day by a Paris mob, which he declares to be the only
+institution we have left.  A wonderful fellow is Raoul,--full of mind,
+though he does little with it; full of heart, which he devotes to
+suffering humanity, and to a poetic, knightly reverence (not to be
+confounded with earthly love, and not to be degraded into that sickly
+sentiment called Platonic affection) for the Comtesse di Rimini, who is
+six years older than himself, and who is very faithfully attached to her
+husband, Raoul's intimate friend, whose honour he would guard as his own.
+It is an episode in the drama of Parisian life, and one not so uncommon
+as the malignant may suppose.  Di Rimini knows and approves of his
+veneration; my mother, the best of women, sanctions it, and deems truly
+that it preserves Raoul safe from all the temptations to which ignobler
+youth is exposed.  I mention this lest you should imagine there was
+anything in Raoul's worship of his star less pure than it is.  For the
+rest, Raoul, to the grief and amazement of that disciple of Voltaire, my
+respected father, is one of the very few men I know in our circles who is
+sincerely religious,--an orthodox Catholic,--and the only man I know who
+practises the religion he professes; charitable, chaste, benevolent; and
+no bigot, no intolerant ascetic.  His only weakness is his entire
+submission to the worldly common-sense of his good-for-nothing, covetous,
+ambitious brother Enguerrand.  I cannot say how I love him for that.  If
+he had not such a weakness, his excellence would gall me, and I believe I
+should hate him."
+
+Alain bowed his head at this eulogium.  Such had been the character that
+a few months ago he would have sought as example and model.  He seemed to
+gaze upon a flattered portrait of himself as he had been.
+
+"But," said Enguerrand, "I have not come here to indulge in the overflow
+of brotherly affection.  I come to take you to your relation, the
+Duchesse of Tarascon.  I have pledged myself to her to bring you, and she
+is at home on purpose to receive you."
+
+"In that case I cannot be such a churl as to refuse.  And, indeed, I no
+longer feel quite the same prejudices against her and the Imperialists as
+I brought from Bretagne.  Shall I order my carriage?"
+
+"No; mine is at the door.  Yours can meet you where you will, later.
+_Allons_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Duchesse de Tarascon occupied a vast apartment in the Rue Royale,
+close to the Tuileries.  She held a high post among the ladies who graced
+the brilliant court of the Empress.  She had survived her second husband
+the duke, who left no issue, and the title died with him.
+
+Alain and Enguerrand were ushered up the grand staircase, lined with
+tiers of costly exotics as if for a fete; but in that and in all kinds of
+female luxury, the Duchesse lived in a state of _fete perpetuelle_.  The
+doors on the landing-place were screened by heavy portieres of Genoa
+velvet, richly embroidered in gold with the ducal crown and cipher.  The
+two salons through which the visitors passed to the private cabinet or
+boudoir were decorated with Gobelin tapestries, fresh, with a mixture of
+roseate hues, and depicting incidents in the career of the first emperor;
+while the effigies of the late duke's father--the gallant founder of a
+short-lived race figured modestly in the background.  On a table of
+Russian malachite within the recess of the central window lay, preserved
+in glass cases, the baton and the sword, the epaulettes and the
+decorations of the brave Marshal.  On the consoles and the mantelpieces
+stood clocks and vases of Sevres that could scarcely be eclipsed by those
+in the Imperial palaces.  Entering the cabinet, they found the Duchesse
+seated at her writing-table, with a small Skye terrier, hideous in the
+beauty of the purest breed, nestled at her feet.  This room was an
+exquisite combination of costliness and comfort,--Luxury at home.  The
+hangings were of geranium-coloured silk, with double curtains of white
+satin; near to the writing-table a conservatory, with a white marble
+fountain at play in the centre, and a trellised aviary at the back.  The
+walls were covered with small pictures,--chiefly portraits and miniatures
+of the members of the imperial family, of the late Duc, of his father the
+Marshal and Madame la Marechale, of the present Duchesse herself, and of
+some of the principal ladies of the court.
+
+The Duchesse was still in the prime of life.  She had passed her fortieth
+year, but was so well "conserved" that you might have guessed her to be
+ten years younger.  She was tall; not large, but with rounded figure
+inclined to _en bon point_; with dark hair and eyes, but fair complexion,
+injured in effect rather than improved by pearl-powder, and that
+atrocious barbarism of a dark stain on the eyelids which has of late
+years been a baneful fashion; dressed,--I am a man, and cannot describe
+her dress; all I know is that she had the acknowledged fame of the best-
+dressed subject of France.  As she rose from her seat there was in her
+look and air the unmistakable evidence of grande dame,--a family likeness
+in feature to Alain himself, a stronger likeness to the picture of her
+first cousin (his mother) which was preserved at Rochebriant.  Her
+descent was indeed from ancient and noble houses.  But to the distinction
+of race she added that of fashion, crowning both with a tranquil
+consciousness of lofty position and unblemished reputation.
+
+"Unnatural cousin!" she said to Alain, offering her hand to him, with a
+gracious smile,--"all this age in Paris, and I see you for the first
+time.  But there is joy on earth as in heaven over sinners who truly
+repent.  You repent truly--n'est ce pas?"
+
+It is impossible to describe the caressing charm which the Duchesse threw
+into her words, voice, and look.  Alain was fascinated and subdued.
+
+"Ah, Madame la Duchesse," said he, bowing over the fait hand he lightly
+held, "it was not sin, unless modesty be a sin, which made a rustic
+hesitate long before he dared to offer his homage to the queen of the
+graces."
+
+"Not badly said for a rustic," cried Enguerrand; "eh, Madame?"
+
+"My cousin, you are pardoned," said the Duchesse.  "Compliment is the
+perfume of _gentilhommerie_; and if you brought enough of that perfume
+from the flowers of Rochebriant to distribute among the ladies at court,
+you will be terribly the mode there.  Seducer!"--here she gave the
+Marquis a playful tap on the cheek, not in a coquettish but in a mother-
+like familiarity, and looking at him attentively, said: "Why, you are
+even handsomer than your father.  I shall be proud to present to their
+Imperial Majesties so becoming a cousin.  But seat yourselves here,
+Messieurs, close to my arm-chair, _caussons_."
+
+The Duchesse then took up the ball of the conversation.  She talked
+without any apparent artifice, but with admirable tact; put just the
+questions about Rochebriant most calculated to please Alain, shunning all
+that might have pained him; asking him for descriptions of the
+surrounding scenery, the Breton legends; hoping that the old castle would
+never be spoiled by modernizing restorations; inquiring tenderly after
+his aunt, whom she had in her childhood once seen, and still remembered
+with her sweet, grave face; paused little for replies; then turned to
+Enguerrand with sprightly small-talk on the topics of the day, and every
+now and then bringing Alain into the pale of the talk, leading on
+insensibly until she got Enguerrand himself to introduce the subject of
+the emperor, and the political troubles which were darkening a reign
+heretofore so prosperous and splendid.
+
+Her countenance then changed; it became serious, and even grave in its
+expression.
+
+"It is true," she said, "that the times grow menacing, menacing not only
+to the throne, but to order and property and France.  One by one they are
+removing all the breakwaters which the empire had constructed between the
+executive and the most fickle and impulsive population that ever shouted
+'long live' one day to the man whom they would send to the guillotine the
+next.  They are denouncing what they call personal government.  Grant
+that it has its evils; but what would they substitute,--a constitutional
+monarchy like the English?  That is impossible with universal suffrage
+and without an hereditary chamber.  The nearest approach to it was the
+monarchy of Louis Philippe,--we know how sick they became of that.  A
+republic?--mon Dieu!  composed of Republicans terrified out of their wits
+at each other.  The moderate men, mimics of the Girondins, with the Reds
+and the Socialists and the Communists, ready to tear them to pieces.  And
+then--What then?--the commercialists, the agriculturists, the middle
+class combining to elect some dictator who will cannonade the mob and
+become a mimic Napoleon, grafted on a mimic Necker or a mimic Danton.
+Oh, Messieurs, I am French to the core.  You inheritors of such names
+must be as French as I am; and yet you men insist on remaining more
+useless to France in the midst of her need than I am,--I, a woman who can
+but talk and weep."
+
+The Duchesse spoke with a warmth of emotion which startled and profoundly
+affected Alain.  He remained silent, leaving it to Enguerrand to answer.
+
+"Dear Madame," said the latter, "I do not see how either myself or our
+kinsman can merit your reproach.  We are not legislators.  I doubt if
+there is a single department in France that would elect us, if we offered
+ourselves.  It is not our fault if the various floods of revolution leave
+men of our birth and opinions stranded wrecks of a perished world.  The
+emperor chooses his own advisers, and if they are bad ones, his Majesty
+certainly will not ask Alain and me to replace them."
+
+"You do not answer--you evade me," said the Duchesse; with a mournful
+smile.  "You are too skilled a man of the world, Monsieur Enguerrand, not
+to know that it is not only legislators and ministers that are necessary
+to the support of a throne, and the safeguard of a nation.  Do you not
+see how great a help it is to both throne and nation when that section of
+public opinion which is represented by names illustrious in history,
+identified with records of chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion, rallies
+round the order established?  Let that section of public opinion stand
+aloof, soured and discontented, excluded from active life, lending no
+counter-balance to the perilous oscillations of democratic passion, and
+tell me if it is not an enemy to itself as well as a traitor to the
+principles it embodies?"
+
+"The principles it embodies, Madame," said Alain, "are those of fidelity
+to a race of kings unjustly set aside, less for the vices than the
+virtues of ancestors.  Louis XV. was the worst of the Bourbons,--he was
+the _bien aime_: he escapes.  Louis XVI. was in moral attributes the best
+of the Bourbons,--he dies the death of a felon.  Louis XVIII., against
+whom much may be said, restored to the throne by foreign bayonets,
+reigning as a disciple of Voltaire might reign, secretly scoffing alike
+at the royalty and the religion which were crowned in his person, dies
+peacefully in his bed.  Charles X., redeeming the errors of his youth by
+a reign untarnished by a vice, by a religion earnest and sincere, is sent
+into exile for defending established order from the very inroads which
+you lament.  He leaves an heir against whom calumny cannot invent a tale,
+and that heir remains an outlaw simply because he descends from Henry
+IV., and has a right to reign.  Madame, you appeal to us as among the
+representatives of the chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion which
+characterized the old nobility of France.  Should we deserve that
+character if we forsook the unfortunate, and gained wealth and honour in
+forsaking?"
+
+"Your words endear you to me.  I am proud to call you cousin," said the
+Duchesse.  "But do you, or does any man in his senses believe that if you
+upset the Empire you could get back the Bourbons; that you would not be
+in imminent danger of a Government infinitely more opposed to the
+theories on which rests the creed of Legitimists than that of Louis
+Napoleon?  After all, what is there in the loyalty of you Bourbonites
+that has in it the solid worth of an argument which can appeal to the
+comprehension of mankind, except it be the principle of a hereditary
+monarchy?  Nobody nowadays can maintain the right divine of a single
+regal family to impose itself upon a nation.  That dogma has ceased to be
+a living principle; it is only a dead reminiscence.  But the institution
+of monarchy is a principle strong and vital, and appealing to the
+practical interests of vast sections of society.  Would you sacrifice the
+principle which concerns the welfare of millions, because you cannot
+embody it in the person of an individual utterly insignificant in
+himself?  In a word, if you prefer monarchy to the hazard of
+republicanism for such a country as France, accept the monarchy you find,
+since it is quite clear you cannot rebuild the monarchy you would prefer.
+Does it not embrace all the great objects for which you call yourself
+Legitimist?  Under it religion is honoured, a national Church secured, in
+reality if not in name; under it you have united the votes of millions to
+the establishment of the throne; under it all the material interests of
+the country, commercial, agricultural, have advanced with an unequalled
+rapidity of progress; under it Paris has become the wonder of the world
+for riches, for splendour, for grace and beauty; under it the old
+traditional enemies of France have been humbled and rendered impotent.
+The policy of Richelieu has been achieved in the abasement of Austria;
+the policy of Napoleon I. has been consummated in the salvation of Europe
+from the semi-barbarous ambition of Russia.  England no longer casts her
+trident in the opposition scale of the balance of European power.
+Satisfied with the honour of our alliance, she has lost every other ally;
+and her forces neglected, her spirit enervated, her statesmen dreaming
+believers in the safety of their island, provided they withdraw from the
+affairs of Europe, may sometimes scold us, but will certainly not dare to
+fight.  With France she is but an inferior satellite; without France she
+is--nothing.  Add to all this a court more brilliant than that of Louis
+XIV., a sovereign not indeed without faults and errors, but singularly
+mild in his nature, warm-hearted to friends, forgiving to foes, whom
+personally no one could familiarly know and not be charmed with a _bonte_
+of character, lovable as that of Henri IV.,--and tell me what more than
+all this could you expect from the reign of a Bourbon?"
+
+"With such results," said Alain, "from the monarchy you so eloquently
+praise, I fail to discover what the emperor's throne could possibly gain
+by a few powerless converts from an unpopular, and you say, no doubt
+truly, from a hopeless cause."
+
+"I say monarchy gains much by the loyal adhesion of any man of courage,
+ability, and honour.  Every new monarchy gains much by conversions from
+the ranks by which the older monarchies were strengthened and adorned.
+But I do not here invoke your aid merely to this monarchy, my cousin; I
+demand your devotion to the interests of France; I demand that you should
+not rest an outlaw from her service.  Ah, you think that France is in no
+danger, that you may desert or oppose the Empire as you list, and that
+society will remain safe!  You are mistaken.  Ask Enguerrand."
+
+"Madame," said Enguerrand, "you overrate my political knowledge in that
+appeal; but, honestly speaking, I subscribe to your reasonings.  I agree
+with you that the empire sorely needs the support of men of honour; it
+has one cause of rot which now undermines it,--dishonest jobbery in its
+administrative departments; even in that of the army, which apparently is
+so heeded and cared for.  I agree with you that France is in danger, and
+may need the swords of all her better sons, whether against the foreigner
+or against her worst enemies,--the mobs of her great towns.  I myself
+received a military education, and but for my reluctance to separate
+myself from my father and Raoul, I should be a candidate for employments
+more congenial to me than those of the Bourse and my trade in the glove-
+shop.  But Alain is happily free from all family ties, and Alain knows
+that my advice to him is not hostile to your exhortations."
+
+"I am glad to think he is under so salutary an influence," said the
+Duchesse; and seeing that Alain remained silent and thoughtful, she
+wisely changed the subject, and shortly afterwards the two friends took
+leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Three days elapsed before Graham again saw M. Lebeau.  The letter-writer
+did not show himself at the cafe, and was not to be found at his office,
+the ordinary business of which was transacted by his clerk, saying that
+his master was much engaged on important matters that took him from home.
+
+Graham naturally thought that these matters concerned the discovery of
+Louise Duval, and was reconciled to suspense.  At the cafe, awaiting
+Lebeau, he had slid into some acquaintance with the ouvrier Armand
+Monnier, whose face and talk had before excited his interest.  Indeed,
+the acquaintance had been commenced by the _ouvrier_, who seated himself
+at a table near to Graham's, and, after looking at him earnestly for some
+minutes, said, "You are waiting for your antagonist at dominos,
+M. Lebeau,--a very remarkable man."
+
+"So he seems.  I know, however, but little of him.  You, perhaps, have
+known him longer?"
+
+"Several months.  Many of your countrymen frequent this cafe, but you do
+not seem to care to associate with the blouses."
+
+"It is not that; but we islanders are shy, and don't make acquaintance
+with each other readily.  By the way, since you so courteously accost me,
+I may take the liberty of saying that I overheard you defend the other
+night, against one of my countrymen, who seemed to me to talk great
+nonsense, the existence of le bon Dieu.  You had much the best of it.
+I rather gathered from your argument that you went somewhat further, and
+were not too enlightened to admit of Christianity."
+
+Armand Monnier looked pleased.  He liked praise; and he liked to hear
+himself talk, and he plunged at once into a very complicated sort of
+Christianity,--partly Arian, partly Saint Simonian, with a little of
+Rousseau and a great deal of Armand Monnier.  Into this we need not
+follow him; but, in sum, it was a sort of Christianity, the main heads
+of which consisted in the removal of your neighbour's landmarks, in the
+right of the poor to appropriate the property of the rich, in the right
+of love to dispense with marriage, and the duty of the State to provide
+for any children that might result from such union,--the parents being
+incapacitated to do so, as whatever they might leave was due to the
+treasury in common.  Graham listened to these doctrines with melancholy
+not unmixed with contempt.  "Are these opinions of yours," he asked,
+"derived from reading or your own reflection?"
+
+"Well, from both, but from circumstances in life that induced me to read
+and reflect.  I am one of the many victims of the tyrannical law of
+marriage.  When very young I married a woman who made me miserable, and
+then forsook me.  Morally, she has ceased to be my wife; legally, she is.
+I then met with another woman who suits me, who loves me.  She lives with
+me; I cannot marry her; she has to submit to humiliations, to be called
+contemptuously an _ouvrier's_ mistress.  Then, though before I was only a
+Republican, I felt there was something wrong in society which needed a
+greater change than that of a merely political government; and then, too,
+when I was all troubled and sore, I chanced to read one of Madame de
+Grantmesnil's books.  A glorious genius that woman's!"
+
+"She has genius, certainly," said Graham, with a keen pang at his heart,
+--Madame de Grantmesnil, the dearest friend of Isaura!  "But," he added,
+"though I believe that eloquent author has indirectly assailed certain
+social institutions, including that of marriage, I am perfectly persuaded
+that she never designed to effect such complete overthrow of the system
+which all civilized communities have hitherto held in reverence as your
+doctrines would attempt; and, after all, she but expresses her ideas
+through the medium of fabulous incidents and characters.  And men of your
+sense should not look for a creed in the fictions of poets and romance-
+writers."
+
+"Ah," said Monnier, "I dare say neither Madame de Grantmesnil nor even
+Rousseau ever even guessed the ideas they awoke in their readers; but one
+idea leads on to another.  And genuine poetry and romance touch the heart
+so much more than dry treatises.  In a word, Madame de Grantmesnil's book
+set me thinking; and then I read other books, and talked with clever men,
+and educated myself.  And so I became the man I am."  Here, with a self-
+satisfied air, Monnier bowed to the Englishman, and joined a group at the
+other end of the room.
+
+The next evening, just before dusk, Graham Vane was seated musingly in
+his own apartment in the Faubourg Montmartre, when there came a slight
+knock at his door.  He was so wrapped in thought that he did not hear the
+sound, though twice repeated.  The door opened gently, and M. Lebeau
+appeared on the threshold.  The room was lighted only by the gas-lamp
+from the street without.
+
+Lebeau advanced through the gloom, and quietly seated himself in the
+corner of the fireplace opposite to Graham before he spoke.  "A thousand
+pardons for disturbing your slumbers, Monsieur Lamb."
+
+Startled then by the voice so near him, Graham raised his head, looked
+round, and beheld very indistinctly the person seated so near him.
+
+"Monsieur Lebeau?"
+
+"At your service.  I promise to give an answer to your question; accept
+my apologies that it has been deferred so long.  I shall not this evening
+go to our cafe.  I took the liberty of calling--"
+
+"Monsieur Lebeau, you are a brick."
+
+"A what, Monsieur!--a brique?"
+
+"I forgot; you are not up to our fashionable London idioms.  A brick
+means a jolly fellow, and it is very kind in you to call.  What is your
+decision?"
+
+"Monsieur, I can give you some information, but it is so slight that I
+offer it gratis, and forego all thought of undertaking further inquiries.
+They could only be prosecuted in another country, and it would not be
+worth my while to leave Paris on the chance of gaining so trifling a
+reward as you propose.  Judge for yourself.  In the year 1849, and in the
+month of July, Louise Duval left Paris for Aix-la-Chapelle.  There she
+remained some weeks, and then left it.  I can learn no further traces of
+her movements."
+
+"Aix-la-Chapelle!  What could she do there?"
+
+"It is a Spa in great request; crowded during the summer season with
+visitors from all countries.  She might have gone there for health or for
+pleasure."
+
+"Do you think that one could learn more at the Spa itself if one went
+there?"
+
+"Possibly.  But it is so long,--twenty years ago."
+
+"She might have revisited the place."
+
+"Certainly; but I know no more."
+
+"Was she there under the same name,--Duval?"
+
+"I am sure of that."
+
+"Do you think she left it alone or with others?  You tell me she was
+awfully belle; she might have attracted admirers."
+
+"If," answered Lebeau, reluctantly, "I could believe the report of my
+informant, Louise Duval left Aix not alone, but with some gallant; not an
+Englishman.  They are said to have parted soon, and the man is now dead.
+But, speaking frankly, I do not think Mademoiselle Duval would have thus
+compromised her honour and sacrificed her future.  I believe she would
+have scorned all proposals that were not those of marriage.  But all I
+can say for certainty is that nothing is known to me of her fate since
+she quitted Aix-la-Chapelle."
+
+"In 1849?  She had then a child living."
+
+"A child?  I never heard that she had any child; and I do not believe she
+could have had any child in 1849."
+
+Graham mused.  Somewhat less than five years after 1849 Louise Duval had
+been seen at Aix-la-Chapelle.  Possibly she found some attraction at that
+place, and might yet be discovered there.  "Monsieur Lebeau," said
+Graham, "you know this lady by sight; you would recognize her in spite of
+the lapse of years.  Will you go to Aix and find out there what you can?
+Of course, expenses will be paid, and the reward will be given if you
+succeed."
+
+"I cannot oblige you.  My interest in this poor lady is not very strong,
+though I should be willing to serve her, and glad to know that she were
+alive.  I have now business on hand which interests me much more, and
+which will take me from Paris, but not in the direction of Aix."
+
+"If I wrote to my employer, and got him to raise the reward to some
+higher amount, that might make it worth your while?"
+
+"I should still answer that my affairs will not permit such a journey.
+But if there be any chance of tracing Louise Duval at Aix,--and there may
+be,--you would succeed quite as well as I should.  You must judge for
+yourself if it be worth your trouble to attempt such a task; and if you
+do attempt it, and do succeed, pray let me know.--A line to my office
+will reach me for some little time, even if I am absent from Paris.
+Adieu, Monsieur Lamb."
+
+Here M. Lebeau Lose and departed.
+
+Graham relapsed into thought; but a train of thought much more active,
+much more concentred than before.  "No," thus ran his meditations,--"no,
+it would not be safe to employ that man further.  The reasons that forbid
+me to offer any very high reward for the discovery of this woman operate
+still more strongly against tendering to her own relation a sum that
+might indeed secure his aid, but would unquestionably arouse his
+suspicions, and perhaps drag into light all that must be concealed.  Oh,
+this cruel mission!  I am, indeed, an impostor to myself till it be
+fulfilled.  I will go to Aix, and take Renard with me.  I am impatient
+till I set out, but I cannot quit Paris without once more seeing Isaura.
+She consents to relinquish the stage; surely I could wean her too from
+intimate friendship with a woman whose genius has so fatal an effect upon
+enthusiastic minds.  And then--and then?"
+
+He fell into a delightful revery; and contemplating Isaura as his future
+wife, he surrounded her sweet image with all those attributes of dignity
+and respect with which an Englishman is accustomed to invest the destined
+bearer of his name, the gentle sovereign of his household, the sacred
+mother of his children.  In this picture the more brilliant qualities of
+Isaura found, perhaps, but faint presentation.  Her glow of sentiment,
+her play of fancy, her artistic yearnings for truths remote, for the
+invisible fairyland of beautiful romance, receded into the background of
+the picture.  It was all these, no doubt, that had so strengthened and
+enriched the love at first sight, which had shaken the equilibrium of his
+positive existence; and yet he now viewed all these as subordinate to the
+one image of mild decorous matronage into which wedlock was to transform
+the child of genius, longing for angel wings and unlimited space.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+On quitting the sorry apartment of the false M. Lamb, Lebeau walked on
+with slow steps and bended head, like a man absorbed in thought.  He
+threaded a labyrinth of obscure streets, no longer in the Faubourg
+Montmartre, and dived at last into one of the few courts which preserve
+the cachet of the moyen age untouched by the ruthless spirit of
+improvement which during the second empire has so altered the face of
+Paris.  At the bottom of the court stood a large house, much dilapidated,
+but bearing the trace of former grandeur in pilasters and fretwork in the
+style of the Renaissance, and a defaced coat of arms, surmounted with a
+ducal coronet, over the doorway.  The house had the aspect of desertion:
+many of the windows were broken; others were jealously closed with
+mouldering shutters.  The door stood ajar; Lebeau pushed it open, and the
+action set in movement a bell within a porter's lodge.  The house, then,
+was not uninhabited; it retained the dignity of a concierge.  A man with
+a large grizzled beard cut square, and holding a journal in his hand,
+emerged from the lodge, and moved his cap with a certain bluff and surly
+reverence on recognizing Lebeau.
+
+"What!  so early, citizen?"
+
+"Is it too early?" said Lebeau, glancing at his watch.  "So it is; I was
+not aware of the time.  But I am tired with waiting; let me into the
+salon.  I will wait for the rest; I shall not be sorry for a little
+repose."
+
+"Bon," said the porter, sententiously; "while man reposes men advance."
+
+"A profound truth, citizen Le Roux; though if they advance on a reposing
+foe, they have blundering leaders unless they march through unguarded
+by-paths and with noiseless tread."
+
+Following the porter up a dingy broad staircase, Lebeau was admitted into
+a large room, void of all other furniture than a table, two benches at
+its sides, and a fauteuil at its head.  On the mantelpiece there was a
+huge clock, and some iron sconces were fixed on the panelled walls.
+
+Lebeau flung himself, with a wearied air, into the fauteuil.  The porter
+looked at him with a kindly expression.  He had a liking to Lebeau, whom
+he had served in his proper profession of messenger or commissionnaire
+before being placed by that courteous employer in the easy post he now
+held.  Lebeau, indeed, had the art, when he pleased, of charming
+inferiors; his knowledge of mankind allowed him to distinguish
+peculiarities in each individual, and flatter the amour propre by
+deference to such eccentricities.  Marc le Roux, the roughest of "red
+caps," had a wife of whom he was very proud.  He would have called the
+empress Citoyenne Eugenie, but he always spoke of his wife as Madame.
+Lebeau won his heart by always asking after Madame.
+
+"You look tired, citizen," said the porter; "let me bring you a glass of
+wine."
+
+"Thank you, mon ami, no.  Perhaps later, if I have time, after we break
+up, to pay my respects to Madame."
+
+The porter smiled, bowed, and retired muttering, "Nom d'un petit
+bonhomme; il n'y a rien de tel que les belles manieres."
+
+Left alone, Lebeau leaned his elbow on the table, resting his chin on his
+hand, and gazing into the dim space,--for it was now, indeed, night, and
+little light came through the grimy panes of the one window left unclosed
+by shutters.  He was musing deeply.  This man was, in much, an enigma to
+himself.  Was he seeking to unriddle it?  A strange compound of
+contradictory elements.  In his stormy youth there had been lightning-
+like flashes of good instincts, of irregular honour, of inconsistent
+generosity,--a puissant wild nature, with strong passions of love and of
+hate, without fear, but not without shame.  In other forms of society
+that love of applause which had made him seek and exult in the notoriety
+which he mistook for fame might have settled down into some solid and
+useful ambition.  He might have become great in the world's eye, for at
+the service of his desires there were no ordinary talents.  Though too
+true a Parisian to be a severe student, still, on the whole, he had
+acquired much general information, partly from books, partly from varied
+commerce with mankind.  He had the gift, both by tongue and by pen, of
+expressing himself with force and warmth; time and necessity had improved
+that gift.  Coveting, during his brief career of fashion, the
+distinctions which necessitate lavish expenditure, he had been the most
+reckless of spendthrifts; but the neediness which follows waste had never
+destroyed his original sense of personal honour.  Certainly Victor de
+Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to whom the thought of
+accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of a woman who loved him
+could have occurred as a possible question of casuistry between honour
+and temptation.  Nor could that sort of question have, throughout the
+sternest trials or the humblest callings to which his after-life had been
+subjected, forced admission into his brain.  He was one of those men,
+perhaps the most terrible though unconscious criminals, who are the
+offsprings produced by intellectual power and egotistical ambition.  If
+you had offered to Victor de Mauleon the crown of the Caesars, on
+condition of his doing one of those base things which "a gentleman"
+cannot do, pick a pocket, cheat at cards,--Victor de Mauleon would have
+refused the crown.  He would not have refused on account of any laws of
+morality affecting the foundations of the social system, but from the
+pride of his own personality.  "I, Victor de Mauleon!  I pick a pocket!
+I cheat at cards!  I!"  But when something incalculably worse for the
+interests of society than picking a pocket or cheating at cards was
+concerned; when for the sake either of private ambition or political
+experiment hitherto untested, and therefore very doubtful, the peace and
+order and happiness of millions might be exposed to the release of the
+most savage passions, rushing on revolutionary madness or civil massacre,
+then this French dare-devil would have been just as unscrupulous as any
+English philosopher whom a metropolitan borough might elect as its
+representative.  The system of the empire was in the way of Victor de
+Mauleon,--in the way of his private ambition, in the way of his political
+dogmas; and therefore it must be destroyed, no matter what nor whom it
+crushed beneath its ruins.  He was one of those plotters of revolutions
+not uncommon in democracies, ancient and modern, who invoke popular
+agencies with the less scruple because they have a supreme contempt for
+the populace.  A man with mental powers equal to De Mauleon's, and who
+sincerely loves the people and respects the grandeur of aspiration with
+which, in the great upheaving of their masses, they so often contrast the
+irrational credulities of their ignorance and the blind fury of their
+wrath, is always exceedingly loath to pass the terrible gulf that divides
+reform from revolution.  He knows how rarely it happens that genuine
+liberty is not disarmed in the passage, and what sufferings must be
+undergone by those who live by their labour during the dismal intervals
+between the sudden destruction of one form of society and the gradual
+settlement of another.  Such a man, however, has no type in a Victor de
+Mauleon.  The circumstances of his life had placed this strong nature at
+war with society, and corrupted into misanthropy affections that had once
+been ardent.  That misanthropy made his ambition more intense, because it
+increased his scorn for the human instruments it employed.
+
+Victor de Mauleon knew that however innocent of the charges that had so
+long darkened his name, and however--thanks to his rank, his manners, his
+savoir vivre, the aid of Louvier's countenance and the support of his own
+high-born connections--he might restore himself to his rightful grade in
+private life, the higher prizes in public life would scarcely be within
+reach, to a man of his antecedents and stinted means, in the existent
+form and conditions of established political order.  Perforce, the
+aristocrat must make himself democrat if he would become a political
+chief.  Could he assist in turning upside down the actual state of
+things, he trusted to his individual force of character to find himself
+among the uppermost in the general _bouleversement_.  And in the first
+stage of popular revolution the mob has no greater darling than the noble
+who deserts his order, though in the second stage it may guillotine him
+at the denunciation of his cobbler.  A mind so sanguine and so audacious
+as that of Victor de Mauleon never thinks of the second step if it sees a
+way to the first.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The room was in complete darkness, save where a ray from a gas-lamp at
+the mouth of the court came aslant through the window, when citizen Le
+Roux re-entered, closed the window, lighted two of the sconces, and drew
+forth from a drawer in the table implements of writing, which he placed
+thereon noiselessly, as if he feared to disturb M. Lebeau, whose head,
+buried in his hands, rested on the table.  He seemed in a profound sleep.
+At last the porter gently touched the arm of the slumberer, and whispered
+in his ear, "It is on the stroke of ten, citizen; they will be here in a
+minute or so."  Lebeau lifted his head drowsily.
+
+"Eh," said he--"what?"
+
+"You have been asleep."
+
+"I suppose so, for I have been dreaming.  Ha!  I hear the door-bell.
+I am wide awake now."
+
+The porter left him, and in a few minutes conducted into the salon two
+men wrapped in cloaks, despite the warmth of the summer night.  Lebeau
+shook hands with them silently, and not less silently they laid aside
+their cloaks and seated themselves.  Both these men appeared to belong to
+the upper section of the middle class.  One, strongly built, with a keen
+expression of countenance, was a surgeon considered able in his
+profession, but with limited practice, owing to a current suspicion
+against his honour in connection with a forged will.  The other, tall,
+meagre, with long grizzled hair and a wild unsettled look about the eyes,
+was a man of science; had written works well esteemed upon mathematics
+and electricity, also against the existence of any other creative power
+than that which he called "nebulosity," and defined to be the combination
+of heat and moisture.  The surgeon was about the age of forty, the
+atheist a few years older.  In another minute or so, a knock was heard
+against the wall.  One of the men rose and touched a spring in the panel,
+which then flew back, and showed an opening upon a narrow stair, by
+which, one after the other, entered three other members of the society.
+Evidently there was more than one mode of ingress and exit.
+
+The three new-comers were not Frenchmen,--one might see that at a glance;
+probably they had reasons for greater precaution than those who entered
+by the front door.  One, a tall, powerfully-built man, with fair hair and
+beard, dressed with a certain pretension to elegance,--faded threadbare
+elegance,--exhibiting no appearance of linen, was a Pole.  One, a slight
+bald man, very dark and sallow, was an Italian.  The third, who seemed
+like an _ouvrier_ in his holiday clothes, was a Belgian.
+
+Lebeau greeted them all with an equal courtesy, and each with an equal
+silence took his seat at the table.
+
+Lebeau glanced at the clock.  "Confreres," he said, "our number as fixed
+for this seance still needs two to be complete, and doubtless they will
+arrive in a few minutes.  Till they come, we can but talk upon trifles.
+Permit me to offer you my cigar-case."  And so saying, he who professed
+to be no smoker handed his next neighbour, who was the Pole, a large
+cigar-case amply furnished; and the Pole, helping himself to two cigars,
+handed the case to the man next him,--two only declining the luxury, the
+Italian and the Belgian.  But the Pole was the only man who took two
+cigars.
+
+Steps were now heard on the stairs, the door opened, and citizen Le Toux
+ushered in, one after the other, two men, this time unmistakably French,
+--to an experienced eye unmistakably Parisians: the one, a young
+beardless man, who seemed almost boyish, with a beautiful face, and a
+stinted, meagre frame; the other, a stalwart man of about eight-and
+twenty, dressed partly as an _ouvrier_, not in his Sunday clothes, rather
+affecting the blouse,--not that he wore that antique garment, but that he
+was in rough costume unbrushed and stained, with thick shoes and coarse
+stockings, and a workman's cap.  But of all who gathered round the table
+at which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most distinguished exterior,--
+a virile honest exterior, a massive open forehead, intelligent eyes, a
+handsome clear-cut incisive profile, and solid jaw.  The expression of
+the face was stern, but not mean,--an expression which might have become
+an ancient baron as well as a modern workman; in it plenty of haughtiness
+and of will, and still more of self-esteem.
+
+"Confreres," said Lebeau, rising, and every eye turned to him, "our
+number for the present seance is complete.  To business.  Since we last
+met, our cause has advanced with rapid and not with noiseless stride.  I
+need not tell you that Louis Bonaparte has virtually abnegated _Les idees
+Napoleoniennes,--a fatal mistake for him, a glorious advance for us.  The
+liberty of the press must very shortly be achieved, and with it personal
+government must end.  When the autocrat once is compelled to go by the
+advice of his ministers, look for sudden changes.  His ministers will be
+but weathercocks, turned hither and thither according as the wind chops
+at Paris; and Paris is the temple of the winds.  The new revolution is
+almost at hand.  [Murmurs of applause.]  It would move the laughter of
+the Tuileries and its ministers, of the Bourse and of its gamblers, of
+every dainty salon of this silken city of would-be philosophers and wits,
+if they were told that here within this mouldering baraque, eight men, so
+little blessed by fortune, so little known to fame as ourselves, met to
+concert the fall of an empire.  The Government would not deem us
+important enough to notice our existence."
+
+"I know not that," interrupted the Pole.
+
+"Ah, pardon," resumed the orator; "I should have confined my remark to
+the five of us who are French.  I did injustice to the illustrious
+antecedents of our foreign allies.  I know that you, Thaddeus Loubisky,
+that you, Leonardo Raselli, have been too eminent for hands hostile to
+tyrants not to be marked with a black cross in the books of the police; I
+know that you, Jan Vanderstegen, if hitherto unscarred by those wounds in
+defence of freedom which despots and cowards would fain miscall the
+brands of the felon, still owe it to your special fraternity to keep your
+movements rigidly concealed.  The tyrant would suppress the International
+Society, and forbids it the liberty of congress.  To you three is granted
+the secret entrance to our council-hall.  But we Frenchmen are as yet
+safe in our supposed insignificance.  Confreres, permit me to impress on
+you the causes why, insignificant as we seem, we are really formidable.
+In the first place, we are few: the great mistake in most secret
+associations has been to admit many councillors; and disunion enters
+whereever many tongues can wrangle.  In the next place, though so few in
+council, we are legion when the time comes for action; because we are
+representative men, each of his own section, and each section is capable
+of an indefinite expansion.
+
+"You, valiant Pole, you, politic Italian, enjoy the confidence of
+thousands now latent in unwatched homes and harmless callings, but who,
+when you lift a finger, will, like the buried dragon's teeth, spring up
+into armed men.  You, Jan Vanderstegen, the trusted delegate from
+Verviers, that swarming camp of wronged labour in its revolt from the
+iniquities of capital,--you, when the hour arrives, can touch the wire
+that flashes the telegram 'Arise' through all the lands in which workmen
+combine against their oppressors.
+
+"Of us five Frenchmen, let me speak more modestly.  You, sage and
+scholar, Felix Ruvigny, honoured alike for the profundity of your science
+and the probity of your manners, induced to join us by your abhorrence of
+priestcraft and superstition,--you made a wide connection among all the
+enlightened reasoners who would emancipate the mind of man from the
+trammels of Church-born fable, and when the hour arrives in which it is
+safe to say, 'Delenda est Roma,' you know where to find the pens that are
+more victorious than swords against a Church and a Creed.  You" (turning
+to the surgeon)--"you, Gaspard le Noy, whom a vile calumny has robbed of
+the throne in your profession so justly due to your skill, you, nobly
+scorning the rich and great, have devoted yourself to tend and heal the
+humble and the penniless, so that you have won the popular title of the
+'Medecin des Pauvres,' when the time comes wherein soldiers shall fly
+before the sansculottes, and the mob shall begin the work which they who
+move mobs will complete, the clients of Gaspard le Noy will be the
+avengers of his wrongs.
+
+"You, Armand Monnier, simple ouvrier, but of illustrious parentage, for
+your grandsire was the beloved friend of the virtuous Robespierre, your
+father perished a hero and a martyr in the massacre of the _coup d'etat_;
+you, cultured in the eloquence of Robespierre himself, and in the
+persuasive philosophy of Robespierre's teacher, Rousseau; you, the
+idolized orator of the Red Republicans,--you will be indeed a chief of
+dauntless bands when the trumpet sounds for battle.  Young publicist and
+poet, Gustave Rameau,--I care not which you are at present, I know what
+you will be soon, you need nothing for the development of your powers
+over the many but an organ for their manifestation.  Of that anon.  I now
+descend into the bathos of egotism.  I am compelled lastly to speak of
+myself.  It was at Marseilles and Lyons, as you already know, that I
+first conceived the plan of this representative association.  For years
+before I had been in familiar intercourse with the friends of freedom,--
+that is, with the foes of the Empire.  They are not all poor; some few
+are rich and generous.  I do not say these rich and few concur in the
+ultimate objects of the poor and many; 'but they concur in the first
+object, the demolition of that which exists,--the Empire.  In the course
+of my special calling of negotiator or agent in the towns of the Midi, I
+formed friendships with some of these prosperous malcontents; and out of
+these friendships I conceived the idea which is embodied in this council.
+
+"According to that conception, while the council may communicate as it
+will with all societies, secret or open, having revolution for their
+object, the council refuses to merge itself in any other confederation;
+it stands aloof and independent; it declines to admit into its code any
+special articles of faith in a future beyond the bounds to which it
+limits its design and its force.  That design unites us; to go beyond
+would divide.  We all agree to destroy the Napoleonic dynasty; none of us
+might agree as to what we should place in its stead.  All of us here
+present might say, 'A republic.'  Ay, but of what kind?  Vanderstegen
+would have it socialistic; Monnier goes further, and would have it
+communistic, on the principles of Fourier; Le Noy adheres to the policy
+of Danton, and would commence the republic by a reign of terror; our
+Italian ally abhors the notion of general massacre, and advocates
+individual assassination.  Ruvigny would annihilate the worship of a
+Deity; Monnier holds with Voltaire and Robespierre, that, 'if there were
+no Deity, it would be necessary to man to create one.'  Bref, we could
+not agree upon any plan for the new edifice, and therefore we refuse to
+discuss one till the ploughshare has gone over the ruins of the old.  But
+I have another and more practical reason for keeping our council distinct
+from all societies with professed objects beyond that of demolition.  We
+need a certain command of money.  It is I who bring to you that, and--
+how?  Not from my own resources,--they but suffice to support myself; not
+by contributions from _ouvriers_ who, as you well know, will subscribe
+only for their own ends in the victory of workmen over masters.  I bring
+money to you from the coffers of the rich malcontents.  Their politics
+are not those of most present; their politics are what they term
+moderate.  Some are indeed for a republic, but for a republic strong in
+defence of order, in support of property; others--and they are more
+numerous and the more rich--for a constitutional monarchy, and, if
+possible, for the abridgment of universal suffrage, which in their eyes
+tends only to anarchy in the towns and arbitrary rule under priestly
+influence in the rural districts.  They would not subscribe a sou if they
+thought it went to further the designs whether of Ruvigny the atheist, or
+of Monnier, who would enlist the Deity of Rousseau on the side of the
+drapeau rouge; not a sou if they knew I had the honour to boast such
+confreres as I see around me.  They subscribe, as we concert, for the
+fall of Bonaparte.  The policy I adopt I borrow from the policy of the
+English Liberals.  In England, potent millionnaires, high-born dukes,
+devoted Churchmen, belonging to the Liberal party, accept the services of
+men who look forward to measures which would ruin capital, eradicate
+aristocracy, and destroy the Church, provided these men combine with them
+in some immediate step onward against the Tories.  They have a proverb
+which I thus adapt to French localities: if a train passes Fontainebleau
+on its way to Marseilles, why should I not take it to Fontainebleau
+because other passengers are going on to Marseilles?
+
+"Confreres, it seems to me the moment has come when we may venture some
+of the fund placed at my disposal to other purposes than those to which
+it has been hitherto devoted.  I propose, therefore, to set up a journal
+under the auspices of Gustave Rameau as editor-in-chief,--a journal
+which, if he listen to my advice, will create no small sensation.  It
+will begin with a tone of impartiality; it will refrain from all violence
+of invective; it will have wit, it will have sentiment, and eloquence; it
+will win its way into the salons and cafes of educated men; and then, and
+then, when it does change from polished satire into fierce denunciation
+and sides with the blouses, its effect will be startling and terrific.
+Of this I will say more to citizen Rameau in private.  To you I need not
+enlarge upon the fact that, at Paris, a combination of men, though
+immeasurably superior to us in status or influence, without a journal at
+command is nowhere; with such a journal, written not to alarm but to
+seduce fluctuating opinions, a combination of men immeasurably inferior
+to us may be anywhere.
+
+"Confreres, this affair settled, I proceed to distribute amongst you sums
+of which each who receives will render me an account, except our valued
+confrere the Pole.  All that we can subscribe to the cause of humanity a
+representative of Poland requires for himself."  (A suppressed laugh
+among all but the Pole, who looked round with a grave, imposing air, as
+much as to say, "What is there to laugh at?--a simple truth.")
+
+M. Lebeau then presented to each of his confreres a sealed envelope,
+containing no doubt a bank-note, and perhaps also private instructions as
+to its disposal.  It was one of his rules to make the amount of any sum
+granted to an individual member of the society from the fund at his
+disposal a confidential secret between himself and the recipient.  Thus
+jealousy was avoided if the sums were unequal; and unequal they generally
+were.  In the present instance the two largest sums were given to the
+"Medecin des Pauvres" and to the delegate from Verviers.  Both were no
+doubt to be distributed among "the poor," at the discretion of the
+trustee appointed.
+
+Whatever rules with regard to the distribution of money M. Lebeau laid
+down were acquiesced in without demur, for the money was found
+exclusively by himself, and furnished without the pale of the Secret
+Council, of which he had made himself founder and dictator.  Some other
+business was then discussed, sealed reports from each member were handed
+to the president, who placed them unopened in his pocket, and resumed,
+"Confreres, our seance is now concluded.  The period for our next meeting
+must remain indefinite, for I myself shall leave Paris as soon as I have
+set on foot the journal, on the details of which I will confer with
+citizen Rameau.  I am not satisfied with the progress made by the two
+travelling missionaries who complete our Council of Ten; and though I do
+not question their zeal, I think my experience may guide it if I take a
+journey to the towns of Bordeaux and Marseilles, where they now are.  But
+should circumstances demanding concert or action arise, you may be sure
+that I will either summon a meeting or transmit instructions to such of
+our members as may be most usefully employed.  For the present,
+confreres, you are relieved.  Remain only you, dear young author."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council
+remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no
+longer moody and overcast,--his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph;
+there was a half-smile of pride on his lips.  Rameau watched him
+curiously and admiringly.  The young man had the impressionable,
+excitable temperament common to Parisian genius,--especially when it
+nourishes itself on absinthe.  He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a
+secret society; he was acute enough to recognize the sagacity by which
+this small conclave was kept out of those crazed combinations for
+impracticable theories more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian
+Rock than to the Capitol, while yet those crazed combinations might, in
+some critical moment, become strong instruments in the hands of practical
+ambition.  Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions in his
+intoxicated vision,--vision indeed intoxicated at this moment, for before
+it floated the realized image of his aspirations,--a journal of which he
+was to be the editor-in-chief; in which his poetry, his prose, should
+occupy space as large as he pleased; through which his name, hitherto
+scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound in salon and club
+and cafe, and become a familiar music on the lips of fashion.  And he
+owed this to the man seated there,--a prodigious man.
+
+"Cher poete," said Lebeau, breaking silence, "it gives me no mean
+pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose talents fit him for
+those goals on which they who reach write names that posterity shall
+read.  Struck with certain articles of yours in the journal made
+celebrated by the wit and gayety of Savarin, I took pains privately to
+inquire into your birth, your history, connections, antecedents.  All
+confirmed my first impression,--that you were exactly the writer I wish
+to secure to our cause.  I therefore sought you in your rooms,
+unintroduced and a stranger, in order to express my admiration of your
+compositions. _Bref_, we soon became friends; and after comparing minds,
+I admitted you, at your request, into this Secret Council.  Now, in
+proposing to you the conduct of the journal I would establish, for which
+I am prepared to find all necessary funds, I am compelled to make
+imperative conditions.  Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: that
+station, if the journal succeeds, will secure you position and fortune;
+if it fail, you fail with it.  But we will not speak of failure; I must
+have it succeed.  Our interest, then, is the same.  Before that interest
+all puerile vanities fade away.  Nominally, I say, you are editor-in-
+chief; but all the real work of editing will, at first, be done by
+others."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Rameau, aghast and stunned.  Lebeau resumed,
+
+"To establish the journal I propose needs more than the genius of youth;
+it needs the tact and experience of mature years."
+
+Rameau sank back on his chair with a sullen sneer on his pale lips.
+Decidedly Lebeau was not so great a man as he had thought.
+
+"A certain portion of the journal," continued Lebeau, "will be
+exclusively appropriated to your pen."
+
+Rameau's lip lost the sneer.
+
+"But your pen must be therein restricted to compositions of pure fancy,
+disporting in a world that does not exist; or, if on graver themes
+connected with the beings of the world that does exist, the subjects will
+be dictated to you and revised.  Yet even in the higher departments of a
+journal intended to make way at its first start, we need the aid, not
+indeed of men who write better than you, but of men whose fame is
+established,--whose writings, good or bad, the public run to read, and
+will find good even if they are bad.  You must consign one column to the
+playful comments and witticisms of Savarin."
+
+"Savarin?  But he has a journal of his own.  He will not, as an author,
+condescend to write in one just set up by me; and as a politician, he as
+certainly will not aid in an ultrademocratic revolution.  If he care for
+politics at all, he is a constitutionalist, an Orleanist."
+
+"Enfant! as an author Savarin will condescend to contribute to your
+journal, first, because it in no way attempts to interfere with his own;
+secondly,--I can tell you a secret, Savarin's journal no longer suffices
+for his existence.  He has sold more than two-thirds of its property; he
+is in debt, and his creditor is urgent; and to-morrow you will offer
+Savarin thirty thousand francs for one column from his pen, and signed by
+his name, for two months from the day the journal starts.  He will
+accept, partly because the sum will clear off the debt that hampers him,
+partly because he will take care that the amount becomes known; and that
+will help him to command higher terms for the sale of the remaining
+shares in the journal he now edits, for the new book which you told me he
+intended to write, and for the new journal which he will be sure to set
+up as soon as he has disposed of the old one.  You say that, as a
+politician, Savarin, an Orleanist, will not aid in an ultra-democratic
+revolution.  Who asks him to do so?  Did I not imply at the meeting that
+we commence our journal with politics the mildest?  Though revolutions
+are not made with rose-water, it is rose-water that nourishes their
+roots.  The polite cynicism of authors, read by those who float on the
+surface of society, prepares the way for the social ferment in its deeps.
+Had there been no Voltaire, there would have been no Camille Desmoulins;
+had there been no Diderot, there would have been no Marat.  We start as
+polite cynics.  Of all cynics Savarin is the politest.  But when I bid
+high for him, it is his clique that I bid for.  Without his clique he is
+but a wit; with his clique, a power.  Partly out of that clique, partly
+out of a circle beyond it, which Savarin can more or less influence, I
+select ten.  Here is the list of them; study it. _Entre nous_, I esteem
+their writings as little as I do artificial flies; but they are the
+artificial flies at which, in this particular season of the year, the
+public rise.  You must procure at least five of the ten; and I leave you
+carte blanche as to the terms.  Savarin gained, the best of them will be
+proud of being his associates.  Observe, none of these messieurs of
+brilliant imagination are to write political articles; those will be
+furnished to you anonymously, and inserted without erasure or omission.
+When you have secured Savarin, and five at least of the collaborateurs in
+the list, write to me at my office.  I give you four days to do this; and
+the day the journal starts you enter into the income of fifteen thousand
+francs a year, with a rise in salary proportioned to profits.  Are you
+contented with the terms?"
+
+"Of course I am; but supposing I do not gain the aid of Savarin, or five
+at least of the list you give, which I see at a glance contains names the
+most _a la mode_ in this kind of writing, more than one of them of high
+social rank, whom it is difficult for me even to approach,--if, I say, I
+fail?"
+
+"What! with a carte blanche of terms? fie!  Are you a Parisian?  Well, to
+answer you frankly, if you fail in so easy a task, you are not the man to
+edit our journal, and I shall find another. _Allez, courage_!  Take my
+advice; see Savarin the first thing to-morrow morning.  Of course, my
+name and calling you will keep a profound secret from him, as from all.
+Say as mysteriously as you can that parties you are forbidden to name
+instruct you to treat with M. Savarin, and offer him the terms I have
+specified, the thirty thousand francs paid to him in advance the moment
+he signs the simple memorandum of agreement.  The more mysterious you
+are, the more you will impose,--that is, wherever you offer money and
+don't ask for it."
+
+Here Lebeau took up his hat, and, with a courteous nod of adieu, lightly
+descended the gloomy stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+At night, after this final interview with Lebeau, Graham took leave for
+good of his lodgings in Montmartre, and returned to his apartment in the
+Rue d'Anjou.  He spent several hours of the next morning in answering
+numerous letters accumulated during his absence.  Late in the afternoon
+he had an interview with M. Renard, who, as at that season of the year he
+was not over-busied with other affairs, engaged to obtain leave to place
+his services at Graham's command during the time requisite for inquiries
+at Aix, and to be in readiness to start the next day.  Graham then went
+forth to pay one or two farewell visits; and these over, bent his way
+through the Champs Elysees towards Isaura's villa, when he suddenly
+encountered Rochebriant on horseback.  The Marquis courteously
+dismounted, committing his horse to the care of the groom, and linking
+his arm in Graham's, expressed his pleasure at seeing him again; then,
+with some visible hesitation and embarrassment, he turned the
+conversation towards the political aspects of France.
+
+"There was," he said, "much in certain words of yours, when we last
+walked together in this very path, that sank deeply into my mind at the
+time, and over which I have of late still more earnestly reflected.  You
+spoke of the duties a Frenchman owed to France, and the 'impolicy' of
+remaining aloof from all public employment on the part of those attached
+to the Legitimist cause."
+
+"True; it cannot be the policy of any party to forget that between the
+irrevocable past and the uncertain future there intervenes the action of
+the present time."
+
+"Should you, as an impartial bystander, consider it dishonourable in me
+if I entered the military service under the ruling sovereign?"
+
+"Certainly not, if your country needed you."
+
+"And it may, may it not?  I hear vague rumours of coming war in almost
+every salon I frequent.  There has been gunpowder in the atmosphere we
+breathe ever since the battle of Sadowa.  What think you of German
+arrogance and ambition?  Will they suffer the swords of France to rust in
+their scabbards?"
+
+"My dear Marquis, I should incline to put the question otherwise.  Will
+the jealous _amour propre_ of France permit the swords of Germany to
+remain sheathed?  But in either case, no politician can see without grave
+apprehension two nations so warlike, close to each other, divided by a
+borderland that one covets and the other will not yield, each armed to
+the teeth,--the one resolved to brook no rival, the other equally
+determined to resist all aggression.  And therefore, as you say, war is
+in the atmosphere; and we may also hear, in the clouds that give no sign
+of dispersion, the growl of the gathering thunder.  War may come any day;
+and if France be not at once the victor--"
+
+"France not at once the victor?" interrupted Alain, passionately; "and
+against a Prussian!  Permit me to say no Frenchman can believe that."
+
+"Let no man despise a foe," said Graham, smiling half sadly.  "However, I
+must not incur the danger of wounding your national susceptibilities.  To
+return to the point you raise.  If France needed the aid of her best and
+bravest, a true descendant of Henri Quatre ought to blush for his ancient
+noblesse were a Rochebriant to say, 'But I don't like the colour of the
+flag.'"
+
+"Thank you," said Alain, simply; "that is enough."  There was a pause,
+the young men walking on slowly, arm in arm.  And then there flashed
+across Graham's mind the recollection of talk on another subject in that
+very path.  Here he had spoken to Alain in deprecation of any possible
+alliance with Isaura Cicogna, the destined actress and public; singer.
+His cheek flushed; his heart smote him.  What! had he spoken slightingly
+of her--of her?  What if she became his own wife?  What! had he himself
+failed in the respect which he would demand as her right from the
+loftiest of his high-born kindred?  What, too, would this man, of fairer
+youth than himself, think of that disparaging counsel, when be heard that
+the monitor had won the prize from which he had warned another?  Would it
+not seem that he had but spoken in the mean cunning dictated by the fear
+of a worthier rival?  Stung by these thoughts, he arrested his steps,
+and, looking the Marquis full in the face, said, "You remind me of one
+subject in our talk many weeks since; it is my duty to remind you of
+another.  At that time you, and, speaking frankly, I myself, acknowledged
+the charm in the face of a young Italian lady.  I told you then that, on
+learning she was intended for the stage, the charm for me had vanished.
+I said bluntly that it should vanish perhaps still more utterly for a
+noble of your illustrious name; you remember?"
+
+"Yes," answered Alain, hesitatingly, and with a look of surprise.
+
+"I wish now to retract all I said thereon.  Mademoiselle Cicogna is not
+bent on the profession for which she was educated.  She would willingly
+renounce all idea of entering it.  The only counterweight which, viewed
+whether by my reason or my prejudices, could be placed in the opposite
+scale to that of the excellences which might make any man proud to win
+her, is withdrawn.  I have become acquainted with her since the date of
+our conversation.  Hers is a mind which harmonizes with the loveliness of
+her face.  In one word, Marquis, I should deem myself honoured, as well
+as blest, by such a bride.  It was due to her that I should say this; it
+was due also to you, in case you should retain the impression I sought in
+ignorance to efface.  And I am bound, as a gentleman, to obey this
+twofold duty, even though in so doing I bring upon myself the affliction
+of a candidate for the hand to which I would fain myself aspire,--a
+candidate with pretensions in every way far superior to my own."
+
+An older or a more cynical man than Alain de Rochebriant might well have
+found something suspicious in a confession thus singularly volunteered;
+but the Marquis was himself so loyal that he had no doubt of the loyalty
+of Graham.
+
+"I reply to you," he said, "with a frankness which finds an example in
+your own.  The first fair face which attracted my fancy since my arrival
+at Paris was that of the Italian demoiselle of whom you speak in terms of
+such respect.  I do think if I had then been thrown into her society, and
+found her to be such as you no doubt truthfully describe, that fancy
+might have become a very grave emotion.  I was then so poor, so
+friendless, so despondent!  Your words of warning impressed me at the
+time, but less durably than you might suppose; for that very night as I
+sat in my solitary attic I said to myself, 'Why should I shrink, with an
+obsolete old-world prejudice, from what my forefathers would have termed
+a mesalliance?  What is the value of my birthright now?  None,--worse
+than none.  It excludes me from all careers; my name is but a load that
+weighs me down.  Why should I make that name a curse as well as a burden?
+Nothing is left to me but that which is permitted to all men,--wedded and
+holy love.  Could I win to my heart the smile of a woman who brings me
+that dower, the home of my fathers would lose its gloom.'  And therefore,
+if at that time I had become familiarly acquainted with her who had thus
+attracted my eye and engaged my thoughts, she might have become my
+destiny; but now!"
+
+"But now?"
+
+"Things have changed.  I am no longer poor, friendless, solitary.  I have
+entered the world of my equals as a Rochebriant; I have made myself
+responsible for the dignity of my name.  I could not give that name to
+one, however peerless in herself, of whom the world would say, 'But for
+her marriage she would have been a singer on the stage!'  I will own
+more: the fancy I conceived for the first fair face, other fair faces
+have dispelled.  At this moment, however, I have no thought of marriage;
+and having known the anguish of struggle, the privations of poverty, I
+would ask no woman to share the hazard of my return to them.  You might
+present me, then, safely to this beautiful Italian,--certain, indeed,
+that I should be her admirer; equally certain that I could not become
+your rival."
+
+There was something in this speech that jarred upon Graham's sensitive
+pride; but on the whole, he felt relieved, both in honour and in heart.
+After a few more words, the two young men shook hands and parted.  Alain
+remounted his horse.  The day was now declining.  Graham hailed a vacant
+fiacre, and directed the driver to Isaura's villa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ISAURA.
+
+The sun was sinking slowly as Isaura sat at her window, gazing dreamily
+on the rose-hued clouds that made the western borderland between earth
+and heaven.  On the table before her lay a few sheets of manuscript
+hastily written, not yet reperused.  That restless mind of hers had left
+its trace on the manuscript.
+
+It is characteristic perhaps of the different genius of the sexes, that
+woman takes to written composition more impulsively, more intuitively,
+than man,--letter-writing, to him a task-work, is to her a recreation.
+Between the age of sixteen and the date of marriage, six well-educated
+clever girls out of ten keep a journal; not one well-educated man in ten
+thousand does.  So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an
+author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy seeks in
+poetry or romance a confessional,--an outpouring of thought and
+sentiment, which are mysteries to herself till she has given them words,
+and which, frankly revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could
+not, utter orally to a living ear.
+
+During the last few days, the desire to create in the realm of fable
+beings constructed by her own breath, spiritualized by her own soul, had
+grown irresistibly upon this fair child of song.  In fact, when Graham's
+words had decided the renunciation of her destined career, her
+instinctive yearnings for the utterance of those sentiments or thoughts
+which can only find expression in some form of art, denied the one vent,
+irresistibly impelled her to the other.  And in this impulse she was
+confirmed by the thought that here at least there was nothing which her
+English friend could disapprove,--none of the perils that beset the
+actress.  Here it seemed as if, could she but succeed, her fame would be
+grateful to the pride of all who loved her.  Here was a career ennobled
+by many a woman, and side by side in rivalry with renowned men.  To her
+it seemed that, could she in this achieve an honoured name, that name
+took its place at once amid the higher ranks of the social world, and in
+itself brought a priceless dowry and a starry crown.  It was, however,
+not till after the visit to Enghien that this ambition took practical
+life and form.  One evening after her return to Paris, by an effort so
+involuntary that it seemed to her no effort, she had commenced a tale,--
+without plan, without method, without knowing in one page what would fill
+the next.  Her slight fingers hurried on as if, like the pretended spirit
+manifestations, impelled by an invisible agency without the pale of the
+world.  She was intoxicated by the mere joy of inventing ideal images.
+In her own special art an elaborate artist, here she had no thought of
+art; if art was in her work, it sprang unconsciously from the harmony
+between herself and her subject,--as it is, perhaps, with the early
+soarings of the genuine lyric poets, in contrast to the dramatic.  For
+the true lyric poet is intensely personal, intensely subjective.  It is
+himself that he expresses, that he represents; and he almost ceases to be
+lyrical when he seeks to go out of his own existence into that of others
+with whom he has no sympathy, no rapport.  This tale was vivid with
+genius as yet untutored,--genius in its morning freshness, full of
+beauties, full of faults.  Isaura distinguished not the faults from the
+beauties.  She felt only a vague persuasion that there was a something
+higher and brighter--a something more true to her own idiosyncrasy--than
+could be achieved by the art that "sings other people's words to other
+people's music."  From the work thus commenced she had now paused; and it
+seemed to her fancies that between her inner self and the scene without,
+whether in the skies and air and sunset, or in the abodes of men
+stretching far and near till lost amid the roofs and domes of the great
+city, she had fixed and riveted the link of a sympathy hitherto
+fluctuating, unsubstantial, evanescent, undefined.  Absorbed in her
+revery, she did not notice the deepening of the short twilight, till the
+servant entering drew the curtains between her and the world without, and
+placed the lamp on the table beside her.  Then she turned away with a
+restless sigh; her eyes fell on the manuscript, but the charm of it was
+gone.  A sentiment of distrust in its worth had crept into her thoughts,
+unconsciously to herself, and the page open before her at an uncompleted
+sentence seemed unwelcome and wearisome as a copy-book is to a child
+condemned to relinquish a fairy tale half told, and apply himself to a
+task half done.  She fell again into a revery, when, starting as from a
+dream, she heard herself addressed by name, and turning round saw Savarin
+and Gustave Rameau in the room.
+
+"We are come, Signorina," said Savarin, "to announce to you a piece of
+news, and to hazard a petition.  The news is this: my young friend here
+has found a Maecenas who has the good taste so to admire his lucubrations
+under the _nom de plume_ of Alphonse de Valcour as to volunteer the
+expenses for starting a new journal, of which Gustave Rameau is to be
+editor-in-chief; and I have promised to assist him as contributor for the
+first two months.  I have given him notes of introduction to certain
+other _feuilletonistes_ and critics whom he has on his list.  But all put
+together would not serve to float the journal like a short _roman_ from
+Madame de Grantmesnil.  Knowing your intimacy with that eminent artist, I
+venture to back Rameau's supplication that you would exert your influence
+on his, behalf.  As to the _honoraires_, she has but to name them."
+
+"Carte blanche," cried Rameau, eagerly.
+
+"You know Eulalie too well, Monsieur Savarin," answered Isaura, with a
+smile half reproachful, "to suppose that she is a mercenary in letters,
+and sells her services to the best bidder."
+
+"Bah, belle enfant!" said Savarin, with his gay light laugh.  "Business
+is business, and books as well as razors are made to sell.  But, of
+course, a proper prospectus of the journal must accompany your request to
+write in it.  Meanwhile Rameau will explain to you, as he has done to me,
+that the journal in question is designed for circulation among readers of
+_haute classe_ it is to be pleasant and airy, full of _bons mots_ and
+anecdote; witty, but not ill-natured.  Politics to be Liberal, of course,
+but of elegant admixture,--champagne and seltzer-water.  In fact,
+however, I suspect that the politics will be a very inconsiderable
+feature in this organ of fine arts and manners; some amateur scribbler in
+the _beau monde_ will supply them.  For the rest, if my introductory
+letters are successful, Madame de Grantmesnil will not be in bad
+company."
+
+"You will write to Madame de Grantmesnil?" asked Rameau, pleadingly.
+
+"Certainly I will, as soon--"
+
+"As soon as you have the prospectus, and the names of the
+collaborateurs," interrupted Rameau.  "I hope to send you these in a very
+few days."
+
+While Rameau was thus speaking, Savarin had seated himself by the table,
+and his eye mechanically resting on the open manuscript lighted by chance
+upon a sentence--an aphorism--embodying a very delicate sentiment in very
+felicitous diction,--one of those choice condensations of thought,
+suggesting so much more than is said, which are never found in mediocre
+writers, and, rare even in the best, come upon us like truths seized by
+surprise.
+
+"Parbleu!" exclaimed Savarin, in the impulse of genuine admiration, "but
+this is beautiful; what is more, it is original,"--and he read the words
+aloud.  Blushing with shame and resentment, Isaura turned and hastily
+placed her hand on the manuscript.
+
+"Pardon," said Savarin, humbly; "I confess my sin, but it was so
+unpremeditated that it does not merit a severe penance.  Do not look at
+me so reproachfully.  We all know that young ladies keep commonplace
+books in which they enter passages that strike them in the works they
+read; and you have but shown an exquisite taste in selecting this gem.
+Do tell me where you found it.  Is it somewhere in Lamartine?"
+
+"No," answered Isaura, half inaudibly, and with an effort to withdraw the
+paper.  Savarin gently detained her hand, and looking earnestly into her
+tell-tale face, divined her secret.
+
+"It is your own, Signorina!  Accept the congratulations of a very
+practised and somewhat fastidious critic.  If the rest of what you write
+resembles this sentence, contribute to Rameau's journal, and I answer for
+its success."
+
+Rameau approached, half incredulous, half envious.
+
+"My dear child," resumed Savarin, drawing away the manuscript from
+Isaura's coy, reluctant clasp, "do permit me to cast a glance over these
+papers.  For what I yet know, there may be here more promise of fame than
+even you could gain as a singer."
+
+The electric chord in Isaura's heart was touched.  Who cannot conceive
+what the young writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, when
+hearing the first cheery note of praise from the lips of a writer of
+established fame?
+
+"Nay, this cannot be worth your reading," said Isaura, falteringly; "I
+have never written anything of the kind before, and this is a riddle to
+me.  I know not," she added, with a sweet low laugh, "why I began, nor
+how I should end it."
+
+"So much the better," said Savarin; and he took the manuscript, withdrew
+to a recess by the farther window, and seated himself there, reading
+silently and quickly, but now and then with a brief pause of reflection.
+
+Rameau placed himself beside Isaura on the divan, and began talking with
+her earnestly,--earnestly, for it was about himself and his aspiring
+hopes.  Isaura, on the other hand, more woman-like than author-like,
+ashamed even to seem absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her back
+turned, in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her
+manuscript,--Isaura listened and sought to interest herself solely in the
+young fellow-author.  Seeking to do so she succeeded genuinely, for ready
+sympathy was a prevalent characteristic of her nature.
+
+"Oh," said Rameau, "I am at the turning-point of my life.  Ever since
+boyhood I have been haunted with the words of Andre Chenier on the
+morning he was led to the scaffold 'And yet there was something here,'
+striking his forehead.  Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching myself headlong
+in the chase of a name; I, underrated, uncomprehended, indebted even for
+a hearing to the patronage of an amiable trifler like Savarin, ranked by
+petty rivals in a grade below themselves,--I now see before me, suddenly,
+abruptly presented, the expanding gates into fame and fortune.  Assist
+me, you!"
+
+"But how?" said Isaura, already forgetting her manuscript; and certainly
+Rameau did not refer to that.
+
+"How!" echoed Rameau; "how!  But do you not see--or at least, do you not
+conjecture--this journal of which Savarin speaks contains my present and
+my future?  Present independence, opening to fortune and renown.  Ay,--
+and who shall say?  renown beyond that of the mere writer.  Behind the
+gaudy scaffolding of this rickety Empire, a new social edifice
+unperceived arises; and in that edifice the halls of State shall be given
+to the men who help obscurely to build it,--to men like me."  Here,
+drawing her hand into his own, fixing on her the most imploring gaze of
+his dark persuasive eyes, and utterly unconscious of bathos in his
+adjuration, he added: "Plead for me with your whole mind and heart; use
+your uttermost influence with the illustrious writer whose pen can assure
+the fates of my journal."
+
+Here the door suddenly opened, and following the servant, who announced
+unintelligibly his name, there entered Graham Vane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Englishman halted at the threshold.  His eye, passing rapidly over
+the figure of Savarin reading in the window-niche, rested upon Rameau and
+Isaura seated on the same divan, he with her hand clasped in both his
+own, and bending his face towards hers so closely that a loose tress of
+her hair seemed to touch his forehead.
+
+The Englishman halted, and no revolution which changes the habitudes and
+forms of States was ever so sudden as that which passed without a word in
+the depths of his unconjectured heart.  The heart has no history which
+philosophers can recognize.  An ordinary political observer,
+contemplating the condition of a nation, may very safely tell us what
+effects must follow the causes patent to his eyes; but the wisest and
+most far-seeing sage, looking at a man at one o'clock, cannot tell us
+what revulsions of his whole being may be made ere the clock strike two.
+
+As Isaura rose to greet her visitor, Savarin came from the window-niche,
+the manuscript in his hand.
+
+"Son of perfidious Albion," said Savarin, gayly, "we feared you had
+deserted the French alliance.  Welcome back to Paris, and the _entente
+cordiale_."
+
+"Would I could stay to enjoy such welcome! but I must again quit Paris."
+
+"Soon to return, _n'est ce pas_?  Paris is an irresistible magnet to _les
+beaux esprits_.  _A propos_ of _beaux esprits_, be sure to leave orders
+with your bookseller, if you have one, to enter your name as subscriber
+to a new journal."
+
+"Certainly, if Monsieur Savarin recommends it."
+
+"He recommends it as a matter of course; he writes in it," said Rameau.
+
+"A sufficient guarantee for its excellence.  What is the name of the
+journal?"
+
+"Not yet thought of," answered Savarin.  "Babes must be born before they
+are christened; but it will be instruction enough to your bookseller to
+order the new journal to be edited by Gustave Rameau."
+
+Bowing ceremoniously to the editor in prospect, Graham said, half
+ironically, "May I hope that in the department of criticism you will not
+be too hard upon poor Tasso?"
+
+"Never fear; the Signorina, who adores Tasso, will take him under her
+special protection," said Savarin, interrupting Rameau's sullen and
+embarrassed reply.
+
+Graham's brow slightly contracted.  "Mademoiselle," he said, "is then to
+be united in the conduct of this journal with M. Gustave Rameau?"
+
+"No, indeed!" exclaimed Isaura, somewhat frightened at the idea.
+
+"But I hope," said Savarin, "that the Signorina may become a contributor
+too important for an editor to offend by insulting her favourites, Tasso
+included.  Rameau and I came hither to entreat her influence with her
+intimate and illustrious friend, Madame de Grantmesnil, to insure the
+success of our undertaking by sanctioning the announcement of her name as
+a contributor."
+
+"Upon social questions,--such as the laws of marriage?" said Graham, with
+a sarcastic smile, which concealed the quiver of his lip and the pain in
+his voice.
+
+"Nay," answered Savarin, "our journal will be too sportive, I hope, for
+matters so profound.  We would rather have Madame de Grantmesnil's aid in
+some short _roman_, which will charm the fancy of all and offend the
+opinions of none.  But since I came into the room, I care less for the
+Signorina's influence with the great authoress," and he glanced
+significantly at the manuscript.
+
+"How so?" asked Graham, his eye following the glance.
+
+"If the writer of this manuscript will conclude what she has begun, we
+shall be independent of Madame de Grantmesnil."
+
+"Fie!" cried Isaura, impulsively, her face and neck bathed in blushes,--
+"fie!  such words are a mockery."
+
+Graham gazed at her intently, and then turned his eyes on Savarin.  He
+guessed aright the truth.  "Mademoiselle then is an author?  In the style
+of her friend Madame de Grantmesnil?"
+
+"Bah!" said Savarin, "I should indeed be guilty of mockery if I paid the
+Signorina so false a compliment as to say that in a first effort she
+attained to the style of one of the most finished sovereigns of language
+that has ever swayed the literature of France.  When I say, 'Give us this
+tale completed, and I shall be consoled if the journal does not gain the
+aid of Madame de Grantmesnil,' I mean that in these pages there is that
+nameless charm of freshness and novelty which compensates for many faults
+never committed by a practised pen like Madame de Grantmesnil's.  My dear
+young lady, go on with this story,--finish it; when finished, do not
+disdain any suggestions I may offer in the way of correction,--and I will
+venture to predict to you so brilliant a career as author, that you will
+not regret should you resign for that career the bravoes you could
+command as actress and singer."
+
+The Englishman pressed his hand convulsively to his heart, as if smitten
+by a sudden spasm.  But as his eyes rested on Isaura's face, which had
+become radiant with the enthusiastic delight of genius when the path it
+would select opens before it as if by a flash from heaven, whatever of
+jealous irritation, whatever of selfish pain he might before have felt;
+was gone, merged in a sentiment of unutterable sadness and compassion.
+Practical man as he was, he knew so well all the dangers, all the snares,
+all the sorrows, all the scandals menacing name and fame, that in the
+world of Paris must beset the fatherless girl who, not less in authorship
+than on the stage, leaves the safeguard of private life forever behind
+her, who becomes a prey to the tongues of the public.  At Paris, how
+slender is the line that divides the authoress from the _Bohemienne_!
+He sank into his chair silently, and passed his hand over his eyes,
+as if to shut out a vision of the future.
+
+Isaura in her excitement did not notice the effect on her English
+visitor.  She could not have divined such an effect as possible.  On the
+contrary, even subordinate to her joy at the thought that she had not
+mistaken the instincts which led her to a nobler vocation than that of
+the singer, that the cage-bar was opened, and space bathed in sunshine
+was inviting the new-felt wings,--subordinate even to that joy was a joy
+more wholly, more simply woman's.  "If," thought she, in this joy, "if
+this be true, my proud ambition is realized; all disparities of worth and
+fortune are annulled between me and him to whom I would bring no shame of
+mesalliance!" Poor dreamer, poor child!
+
+"You will let me see what you have written," said Rameau, somewhat
+imperiously, in the sharp voice habitual to him, and which pierced
+Graham's ear like a splinter of glass.
+
+"No, not now; when finished."
+
+"You will finish it?"
+
+"Oh, yes; how can I help it after such encouragement?"  She held out her
+hand to Savarin, who kissed it gallantly; then her eyes intuitively
+sought Graham's.  By that time he had recovered his self-possession.  He
+met her look tranquilly, and with a smile; but the smile chilled her, she
+knew not why.
+
+The conversation then passed upon books and authors of the day, and was
+chiefly supported by the satirical pleasantries of Savarin, who was in
+high good-spirits.
+
+Graham, who, as we know, had come with the hope of seeing Isaura alone,
+and with the intention of uttering words which, however guarded, might
+yet in absence serve as links of union, now no longer coveted that
+interview, no longer meditated those words.  He soon rose to depart.
+
+"Will you dine with me to-morrow?" asked Savarin.  "Perhaps I may induce
+the Signorina and Rameau to offer you the temptation of meeting them."
+
+"By to-morrow I shall be leagues away."
+
+Isaura's heart sank.  This time the manuscript was fairly forgotten.
+
+"You never said you were going so soon," cried Savarin.  "When do you
+come back, vile deserter?"
+
+"I cannot even guess.  Monsieur Rameau, count me among your subscribers.
+Mademoiselle, my best regards to Signora Venosta.  When I see you again,
+no doubt you will have become famous."
+
+Isaura here could not control herself.  She rose impulsively, and
+approached him, holding out her hand, and attempting a smile.
+
+"But not famous in the way that you warned me from," she said in
+whispered tones.  "You are friends with me still?"  It was like the
+piteous wail of a child seeking to make it up with one who wants to
+quarrel, the child knows not why.  Graham was moved, but what could he
+say?  Could he have the right to warn her from this profession also;
+forbid all desires, all roads of fame to this brilliant aspirant?  Even a
+declared and accepted lover might well have deemed that that would be to
+ask too much.  He replied, "Yes, always a friend, if you could ever need
+one."  Her hand slid from his, and she turned away wounded to the quick.
+
+"Have you your _coupe_ at the door?" asked Savarin.
+
+"Simply a _fiacre_."
+
+"And are going back at once to Paris?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you kindly drop me in the Rue de Rivoli?"
+
+"Charmed to be of use."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+As the _fiacre_ bore to Paris Savarin and Graham, the former said, "I
+cannot conceive what rich simpleton could entertain so high an opinion of
+Gustave Rameau as to select a man so young, and of reputation though
+promising so undecided, for an enterprise which requires such a degree of
+tact and judgment as the conduct of a new journal,--and a journal, too,
+which is to address itself to the beau monde.  However, it is not for me
+to criticise a selection which brings a god-send to myself."
+
+"To yourself?  You jest; you have a journal of your own.  It can only be
+through an excess of good-nature that you lend your name and pen to the
+service of M. Gustave Rameau."
+
+"My good-nature does not go to that extent.  It is Rameau who confers a
+service upon me.  _Peste! mon cher_, we French authors have not the rents
+of you rich English milords.  And though I am the most economical of our
+tribe, yet that journal of mine has failed me of late; and this morning I
+did not exactly see how I was to repay a sum I had been obliged to borrow
+of a money-lender,--for I am too proud to borrow of friends, and too
+sagacious to borrow of publishers,--when in walks _ce cher petit_ Gustave
+with an offer, for a few trifles towards starting this new-born journal,
+which makes a new man of me.  Now I am in the undertaking, my _amour
+propre_ and my reputation are concerned in its success; and I shall take
+care that collaborateurs of whose company I am not ashamed are in the
+same boat.  But that charming girl, Isaura!  What an enigma the gift of
+the pen is!  No one can ever guess who has it until tried."
+
+"The young lady's manuscript, then, really merits the praise you bestowed
+on it?"
+
+"Much more praise, though a great deal of blame, which I did not bestow,
+--for in a first work faults insure success as much as beauties.
+Anything better than tame correctness.  Yes, her first work, to judge by
+what is written, must make a hit,--a great hit.  And that will decide her
+career.  A singer, an actress, may retire,--often does when she marries
+an author; but once an author always an author."
+
+"Ah! is it so?  If you had a beloved daughter, Savarin, would you
+encourage her to be an author?"
+
+"Frankly, no: principally because in that case the chances are that she
+would marry an author; and French authors, at least in the imaginative
+school, make very uncomfortable husbands."
+
+"Ah! you think the Signorina will marry one of those uncomfortable
+husbands,--M. Rameau, perhaps?"
+
+"Rameau!  Hein! nothing more likely.  That beautiful face of his has
+its fascination.  And to tell you the truth, my wife, who is a striking
+illustration of the truth that what woman wills heaven wills, is bent
+upon that improvement in Gustave's moral life which she thinks a union
+with Mademoiselle Cicogna would achieve.  At all events, the fair Italian
+would have in Rameau a husband who would not suffer her to bury her
+talents under a bushel.  If she succeeds as a writer (by succeeding I
+mean making money), he will see that her ink-bottle is never empty; and
+if she don't succeed as a writer, he will take care that the world shall
+gain an actress or a singer.  For Gustave Rameau has a great taste for
+luxury and show; and whatever his wife can make, I will venture to say
+that he will manage to spend."
+
+"I thought you had an esteem and regard for Mademoiselle Cicogna.  It is
+Madame your wife, I suppose, who has a grudge against her?"
+
+"On the contrary, my wife idolizes her."
+
+"Savages sacrifice to their idols the things they deem of value;
+civilized Parisians sacrifice their idols themselves, and to a thing that
+is worthless."
+
+"Rameau is not worthless; he has beauty and youth and talent.  My wife
+thinks more highly of him than I do; but I must respect a man who has
+found admirers so sincere as to set him up in a journal, and give him
+_carte blanche_ for terms to contributors.  I know of no man in Paris
+more valuable to me.  His worth to me this morning is thirty thousand
+francs.  I own I do not think him likely to be a very safe husband; but
+then French female authors and artists seldom take any husbands except
+upon short leases.  There are no vulgar connubial prejudices in the pure
+atmosphere of art.  Women of genius, like Madame de Grantmesnil, and
+perhaps like our charming young friend, resemble canary-birds,--to sing
+their best you must separate them from their mates."
+
+The Englishman suppressed a groan, and turned the conversation.
+
+When he had set down his lively companion, Vane dismissed his _fiacre_,
+and walked to his lodgings musingly.
+
+"No," he said inly; "I must wrench myself from the very memory of that
+haunting face,--the friend and pupil of Madame de Grantmesnil, the
+associate of Gustave Rameau, the rival of Julie Caumartin, the aspirant
+to that pure atmosphere of art in which there are no vulgar connubial
+prejudices!  Could I--whether I be rich or poor--see in her the ideal of
+an English wife?  As it is--as it is--with this mystery which oppresses
+me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insoluble,--as it is, how
+fortunate that I did not find her alone; did not utter the words that
+would fain have leaped from my heart; did not say, 'I may not be the rich
+man I seem, but in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because
+struggle and labour are the sinews of ambition!  Should I be rich, will
+you adorn my station?  Should I be poor, will you enrich poverty with
+your smile?  And can you, in either case, forego--really, painlessly
+forego, as you led me to hope--the pride in your own art?'  My ambition
+were killed did I marry an actress, a singer.  Better that than the
+hungerer after excitements which are never allayed, the struggler in a
+career which admits of no retirement,--the woman to whom marriage is no
+goal, who remains to the last the property of the public, and glories to
+dwell in a house of glass into which every bystander has a right to peer.
+Is this the ideal of an Englishman's wife and home?  No, no!--woe is me,
+no!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 BOOK VI.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A few weeks after the date of the preceding chapter, a gay party of men
+were assembled at supper in one of the private salons of the Maison
+Doree.  The supper was given by Frederic Lemercier, and the guests were,
+though in various ways, more or less distinguished.  Rank and fashion
+were not unworthily represented by Alain de Rochebriant and Enguerrand de
+Vandemar, by whose supremacy as "lion" Frederic still felt rather
+humbled, though Alain had contrived to bring them familiarly together.
+Art, Literature, and the Bourse had also their representatives in Henri
+Bernard, a rising young portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honoured with
+his patronage, the Vicomte de Braze, and M. Savarin.  Science was not
+altogether forgotten, but contributed its agreeable delegate in the
+person of the eminent physician to whom we have been before introduced,
+--Dr. Bacourt.  Doctors in Paris are not so serious as they mostly are in
+London; and Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher of the school of Aristippus,
+was no unfrequent nor ungenial guest at any banquet in which the Graces
+relaxed their zones.  Martial glory was also represented at that social
+gathering by a warrior, bronzed and decorated, lately arrived from
+Algiers, on which arid soil he had achieved many laurels and the rank of
+Colonel.  Finance contributed Duplessis.  Well it might; for Duplessis
+had just assisted the host to a splendid coup at the Bourse.
+
+"Ah, _cher_ Monsieur Savarin," says Enguerrand de Vandemar, whose
+patrician blood is so pure from revolutionary taint that he is always
+instinctively polite, "what a masterpiece in its way is that little paper
+of yours in the 'Sens Commun,' upon the connection between the national
+character and the national diet! so genuinely witty!--for wit is but
+truth made amusing."
+
+"You flatter me," replied Savarin, modestly; "but I own I do think there
+is a smattering of philosophy in that trifle.  Perhaps, however, the
+character of a people depends more on its drinks than its food.  The
+wines of Italy, heady, irritable, ruinous to the digestion, contribute to
+the character which belongs to active brains and disordered livers.  The
+Italians conceive great plans, but they cannot digest them.  The English
+common-people drink beer, and the beerish character is stolid, rude, but
+stubborn and enduring.  The English middle-class imbibe port and sherry;
+and with these strong potations their ideas become obfuscated.  Their
+character has no liveliness; amusement is not one of their wants; they
+sit at home after dinner and doze away the fumes of their beverage in the
+dulness of domesticity.  If the English aristocracy are more vivacious
+and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to the wines of France, which it is the
+mode with them to prefer; but still, like all plagiarists, they are
+imitators, not inventors; they borrow our wines and copy our manners.
+The Germans--"
+
+"Insolent barbarians!" growled the French Colonel, twirling his mustache;
+"if the Emperor were not in his dotage, their Sadowa would ere this have
+cost them their Rhine."
+
+"The Germans," resumed Savarin, unheeding the interruption, "drink acrid
+wines, varied with beer, to which last their commonalty owes a quasi
+resemblance in stupidity and endurance to the English masses.  Acrid
+wines rot the teeth Germans are afflicted with toothache from infancy.
+All people subject to toothache are sentimental.  Goethe was a martyr
+to toothache.  'Werther' was written in one of those paroxysms which
+predispose genius to suicide.  But the German character is not all
+toothache; beer and tobacco step in to the relief of Rhenish acridities,
+blend philosophy with sentiment, and give that patience in detail which
+distinguishes their professors and their generals.  Besides, the German
+wines in themselves have other qualities than that of acridity.  Taken
+with sourkrout and stewed prunes, they produce fumes of self-conceit.
+A German has little of French vanity; he has German self-esteem.  He
+extends the esteem of self to those around him; his home, his village,
+his city, his country,--all belong to him.  It is a duty he owes to
+himself to defend them.  Give him his pipe and his sabre, and, Monsieur
+le Colonel, believe me, you will never take the Rhine from him."
+
+"P-r-r," cried the Colonel; "but we have had the Rhine."
+
+"We did not keep it.  And I should not say I had a francpiece if I
+borrowed it from your purse and had to give it back the next day."
+
+Here there arose a very general hubbub of voices, all raised against M.
+Savarin.  Enguerrand, like a man of good ton, hastened to change the
+conversation.
+
+"Let us leave these poor wretches to their sour wines and toothaches.  We
+drinkers of the champagne, all our own, have only pity for the rest of
+the human race.  This new journal 'Le Sens Commun' has a strange title,
+Monsieur Savarin."
+
+"Yes; 'Le Sens Commun' is not common in Paris, where we all have too much
+genius for a thing so vulgar."
+
+"Pray," said the young painter, "tell me what you mean by the title 'Le
+Sens Commun.' It is mysterious."
+
+"True," said Savarin; "it may mean the _Sensus communis_ of the Latins,
+or the Good Sense of the English.  The Latin phrase signifies the sense
+of the common interest; the English phrase, the sense which persons of
+understanding have in common.  I suppose the inventor of our title meant
+the latter signification."
+
+"And who was the inventor?" asked Bacourt.
+
+"That is a secret which I do not know myself," answered Savarin.
+
+"I guess," said Enguerrand, "that it must be the same person who writes
+the political leaders.  They are most remarkable; for they are so unlike
+the articles in other journals, whether those journals be the best or the
+worst.  For my own part, I trouble my head very little about politics,
+and shrug my shoulders at essays which reduce the government of flesh and
+blood into mathematical problems.  But these articles seem to be written
+by a man of the world, and as a man of the world myself, I read them."
+
+"But," said the Vicomte de Breze, who piqued himself on the polish of his
+style, "they are certainly not the composition of any eminent writer.  No
+eloquence, no sentiment; though I ought not to speak disparagingly of a
+fellow-contributor."
+
+"All that may be very true;" said Savarin; "but M. Enguerrand is right.
+The papers are evidently the work of a man of the world, and it is for
+that reason that they have startled the public, and established the
+success of 'Le Sens Commun.'  But wait a week or two longer, Messieurs,
+and then tell me what you think of a new _roman_ by a new writer, which
+we shall announce in our impression to-morrow.  I shall be disappointed,
+indeed, if that does not charm you.  No lack of eloquence and sentiment
+there."
+
+"I am rather tired of eloquence and sentiment," said Enguerrand.  "Your
+editor, Gustave Rameau, sickens me of them with his 'Starlit Meditations
+in the Streets of Paris,' morbid imitations of Heine's enigmatical
+'Evening Songs.' Your journal would be perfect if you could suppress the
+editor."
+
+"Suppress Gustave Rameau!" cried Bernard, the painter; "I adore his
+poems, full of heart for poor suffering humanity."
+
+"Suffering humanity so far as it is packed up in himself," said the
+physician, dryly,--"and a great deal of the suffering is bile.  But
+_a propos_ of your new journal, Savarin, there is a paragraph in it
+to-day which excites my curiosity.  It says that the Vicomte de Mauleon
+has arrived in Paris, after many years of foreign travel; and then,
+referring modestly enough to the reputation for talent which he had
+acquired in early youth, proceeds to indulge in a prophecy of the future
+political career of a man who, if he have a grain of _sens common_, must
+think that the less said about him the better.  I remember him well; a
+terrible _mauvais sujet_, but superbly handsome.  There was a shocking
+story about the jewels of a foreign duchess, which obliged him to leave
+Paris."
+
+"But," said Savarin, "the paragraph you refer to hints that that story is
+a groundless calumny, and that the true reason for De Mauleon's voluntary
+self-exile was a very common one among young Parisians,--he had lavished
+away his fortune.  He returns, when, either by heritage or his own
+exertions, he has secured elsewhere a competence."
+
+"Nevertheless I cannot think that society will receive him," said
+Bacourt.  "When he left Paris, there was one joyous sigh of relief among
+all men who wished to avoid duels, and keep their wives out of
+temptation.  Society may welcome back a lost sheep, but not a
+reinvigorated wolf."
+
+"I beg your pardon, _mon cher_," said Enguerrand; "society has already
+opened its fold to this poor ill-treated wolf.  Two days ago Louvier
+summoned to his house the surviving relations or connections of De
+Mauleon--among whom are the Marquis de Rochebriant, the Counts de Passy,
+De Beauvilliers, De Chavigny, my father, and of course his two sons--and
+submitted to us the proofs which completely clear the Vicomte de Mauleon
+of even a suspicion of fraud or dishonour in the affair of the jewels.
+The proofs include the written attestation of the Duke himself, and
+letters from that nobleman after De Mauleon's disappearance from Paris,
+expressive of great esteem, and indeed, of great admiration, for the
+Vicomte's sense of honour and generosity of character.  The result of
+this family council was that we all went in a body to call on De Mauleon;
+and he dined with my father that same day.  You know enough of the Comte
+de Vandemar, and, I may add, of my mother, to be sure that they are both,
+in their several ways, too regardful of social conventions to lend their
+countenance even to a relation without well weighing the pros and cons.
+And as for Raoul, Bayard himself could not be a greater stickler on the
+point of honour."
+
+This declaration was followed by a silence that had the character of
+stupor.
+
+At last Duplessis said, "But what has Louvier to do in this galere?
+Louvier is no relation of that well-born _vaurien_; why should he summon
+your family council?"
+
+"Louvier excused his interference on the ground of early and intimate
+friendship with De Mauleon, who, he said, came to consult him on arriving
+at Paris, and who felt too proud or too timid to address relations with
+whom he had long dropped all intercourse.  An intermediary was required,
+and Louvier volunteered to take that part on himself; nothing more
+natural nor more simple.  By the way, Alain, you dine with Louvier
+to-morrow, do you not?--a dinner in honour of our rehabilitated kinsman.
+I and Raoul go."
+
+"Yes, I shall be charmed to meet again a man who, whatever might be his
+errors in youth, on which," added Alain, slightly colouring, "it
+certainly does not become me to be severe, must have suffered the most
+poignant anguish a man of honour can undergo,--namely, honour suspected;
+and who now, whether by years or sorrow, is so changed that I cannot
+recognize a likeness to the character I have just heard given to him as
+_mauvais sujet_ and _vaurien_."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Enguerrand; "all honour to courage!--and at Paris it
+requires great courage to defend the absent."
+
+"Nay," answered Alain, in a low voice.  "The _gentilhomme_ who will not
+defend another _gentilhomme_ traduced, would, as a soldier, betray a
+citadel and desert a flag."
+
+"You say M. de Mauleon is changed," said De Breze; "yes, he must be
+growing old.  No trace left of his good looks?"
+
+"Pardon me," said Enguerrand; "he is _bien conserve_, and has still a
+very handsome head and an imposing presence.  But one cannot help
+doubting whether he deserved the formidable reputation he acquired in
+youth; his manner is so singularly mild and gentle, his conversation so
+winningly modest, so void of pretence, and his mode of life is as simple
+as that of a Spanish hidalgo."
+
+"He does not, then, affect the role of Monte Cristo," said Duplessis,
+"and buy himself into notice like that hero of romance?"
+
+"Certainly not: he says very frankly that he has but a very small income,
+but more than enough for his wants,--richer than in his youth, for he has
+learned content.  We may dismiss the hint in 'Le Sens Commun' about his
+future political career,--at least he evinces no such ambition."
+
+"How could he as a Legitimist?" said Alain, bitterly.  "What department
+would elect him?"
+
+"But is he a Legitimist?" asked De Breze.
+
+"I take it for granted that he must be that," answered Alain, haughtily,
+"for he is a De Mauleon."
+
+"His father was as good a De Mauleon as himself, I presume," rejoined De
+Breze, dryly; "and he enjoyed a place at the Court of Louis Philippe,
+which a Legitimist could scarcely accept.  Victor did not, I fancy,
+trouble his head about politics at all, at the time I remember him; but
+to judge by his chief associates, and the notice he received from the
+Princes of the House of Orleans, I should guess that he had no
+predilections in favour of Henri V."
+
+"I should regret to think so," said Alain, yet more haughtily, "since the
+De Mauleons acknowledge the head of their house in the representative of
+the Rochebriants."
+
+"At all events," said Duplessis, "M. de Mauleon appears to be a
+philosopher of rare stamp.  A Parisian who has known riches and is
+contented to be poor is a phenomenon I should like to study."
+
+"You have that chance to-morrow evening, Monsieur Duplessis," said
+Enguerrand.
+
+"What! at M. Louvier's dinner?  Nay, I have no other acquaintance with
+M. Louvier than that of the Bourse, and the acquaintance is not cordial."
+
+"I did not mean at M. Louvier's dinner, but at the Duchesse de Tarascon's
+ball.  You, as one of her special favourites, will doubtless honour her
+_reunion_."
+
+"Yes; I have promised my daughter to go to the ball.  But the Duchesse is
+Imperialist.  M. de Mauleon seems to be either a Legitimist, according to
+Monsieur le Marquis, or an Orleanist, according to our friend De Breze."
+
+"What of that?  Can there be a more loyal Bourbonite than De
+Rochebriant?--and he goes to the ball.  It is given out of the season,
+in celebration of a family marriage.  And the Duchesse de Tarascon is
+connected with Alain, and therefore with De Mauleon, though but
+distantly."
+
+"Ah! excuse my ignorance of genealogy."
+
+"As if the genealogy of noble names were not the history of France,"
+muttered Alain, indignantly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Yes, the "Sens Commun" was a success: it had made a sensation at
+starting; the sensation was on the increase.  It is difficult for an
+Englishman to comprehend the full influence of a successful journal at
+Paris; the station--political, literary, social--which it confers on the
+contributors who effect the success.  M. Lebeau had shown much more
+sagacity in selecting Gustave Rameau for the nominal editor than Savarin
+supposed or my reader might detect.  In the first place, Gustave himself,
+with all his defects of information and solidity of intellect, was not
+without real genius,--and a sort of genius that when kept in restraint,
+and its field confined to sentiment or sarcasm, was in unison with the
+temper of the day; in the second place, it was only through Gustave that
+Lebeau could have got at Savarin, and the names which that brilliant
+writer had secured at the outset would have sufficed to draw attention to
+the earliest numbers of the "Sens Commun," despite a title which did not
+seem alluring.  But these names alone could not have sufficed to
+circulate the new journal to the extent it had already reached.  This was
+due to the curiosity excited by leading articles of a style new to the
+Parisian public, and of which the authorship defied conjecture.  They
+were signed Pierre Firmin,--supposed to be a _nom de plume_, as, that
+name was utterly unknown in the world of letters.  They affected the tone
+of an impartial observer; they neither espoused nor attacked any
+particular party; they laid down no abstract doctrines of government.
+But somehow or other, in language terse yet familiar, sometimes careless
+yet never vulgar, they expressed a prevailing sentiment of uneasy
+discontent, a foreboding of some destined change in things established,
+without defining the nature of such change, without saying whether it
+would be for good or for evil.  In his criticisms upon individuals, the
+writer was guarded and moderate--the keenest-eyed censor of the press
+could not have found a pretext for interference with expression of
+opinions so polite.  Of the Emperor these articles spoke little, but that
+little was not disrespectful; yet, day after day, the articles
+contributed to sap the Empire.  All malcontents of every shade
+comprehended, as by a secret of freemasonry, that in this journal they
+had an ally.  Against religion not a word was uttered, yet the enemies of
+religion bought that journal; still, the friends of religion bought it
+too, for those articles treated with irony the philosophers on paper who
+thought that their contradictory crotchets could fuse themselves into any
+single Utopia, or that any social edifice, hurriedly run up by the crazy
+few, could become a permanent habitation for the turbulent many, without
+the clamps of a creed.
+
+The tone of these articles always corresponded with the title of the
+journal,--"Common-sense."  It was to common-sense that it appealed,--
+appealed in the utterance of a man who disdained the subtle theories,
+the vehement declamation, the credulous beliefs, or the inflated bombast,
+which constitute so large a portion of the Parisian press.  The articles
+rather resembled certain organs of the English press, which profess to be
+blinded by no enthusiasm for anybody or anything, which find their sale
+in that sympathy with ill-nature to which Huet ascribes the popularity of
+Tacitus, and, always quietly undermining institutions with a covert
+sneer, never pretend to a spirit of imagination so at variance with
+common-sense as a conjecture how the institutions should be rebuilt or
+replaced.
+
+Well, somehow or other the journal, as I was saying, hit the taste of the
+Parisian public.  It intimated, with the easy grace of an unpremeditated
+agreeable talker, that French society in all its classes was rotten; and
+each class was willing to believe that all the others were rotten, and
+agreed that unless the others were reformed, there was something very
+unsound in itself.
+
+The ball at the Duchesse de Tarascon's was a brilliant event.  The summer
+was far advanced; many of the Parisian holiday-makers had returned to the
+capital, but the season had not commenced, and a ball at that time of
+year was a very unwonted event.  But there was a special occasion for
+this fete,--a marriage between a niece of the Duchesse and the son of a
+great official in high favour at the Imperial Court.
+
+The dinner at Louvier's broke up early, and the music for the second
+waltz was sounding when Enguerrand, Alain, and the Vicomte de Mauleon
+ascended the stairs.  Raoul did not accompany them; he went very rarely
+to any balls,--never to one given by an Imperialist, however nearly
+related to him the Imperialist might be.  But in the sweet indulgence of
+his good-nature, he had no blame for those who did go,--not for
+Enguerrand, still less, of course, for Alain.
+
+Something too might well here be said as to his feeling towards Victor de
+Mauleon.  He had joined in the family acquittal of that kinsman as to the
+grave charge of the jewels; the proofs of innocence thereon seemed to him
+unequivocal and decisive, therefore he had called on the Vicomte and
+acquiesced in all formal civilities shown to him.  But such acts of
+justice to a fellow-gentilhomme and a kinsman duly performed, he desired
+to see as little as possible of the Vicomte de Mauleon.  He reasoned
+thus: "Of every charge which society made against this man he is
+guiltless; but of all the claims to admiration which society accorded to
+him before it erroneously condemned, there are none which make me covet
+his friendship, or suffice to dispel doubts as to what he may be when
+society once more receives him.  And the man is so captivating that I
+should dread his influence over myself did I see much of him."
+
+Raoul kept his reasonings to himself, for he had that sort of charity
+which indisposes an amiable man to be severe on bygone offences.  In the
+eyes of Enguerrand and Alain, and such young votaries of the mode as they
+could influence, Victor de Mauleon assumed almost heroic proportions.  In
+the affair which had inflicted on him a calumny so odious, it was clear
+that he had acted with chivalrous delicacy of honour.  And the turbulence
+and recklessness of his earlier years, redeemed as they were, in the
+traditions of his contemporaries, by courage and generosity, were not
+offences to which young Frenchmen are inclined to be harsh.  All question
+as to the mode in which his life might have been passed during his long
+absence from the capital was merged in the respect due to the only facts
+known, and these were clearly proved in his pieces justificatives: First,
+that he had served under another name in the ranks of the army in
+Algiers; had distinguished himself there for signal valour, and received,
+with promotion, the decoration of the cross.  His real name was known
+only to his colonel, and on quitting the service, the colonel placed in
+his hands a letter of warm eulogy on his conduct, and identifying him as
+Victor de Mauleon.  Secondly, that in California he had saved a wealthy
+family from midnight murder, fighting single-handed against and
+overmastering three ruffians, and declining all other reward from those
+he had preserved than a written attestation of their gratitude.  In all
+countries, valour ranks high in the list of virtues; in no country does
+it so absolve from vices as it does in France.
+
+But as yet Victor de Mauleon's vindication was only known by a few, and
+those belonging to the gayer circles of life.  How he might be judged by
+the sober middle class, which constitutes the most important section of
+public opinion to a candidate for political trusts and distinctions, was
+another question.
+
+The Duchesse stood at the door to receive her visitors.  Duplessis was
+seated near the entrance, by the side of a distinguished member of the
+Imperial Government, with whom he was carrying on a whispered
+conversation.  The eye of the financier, however, turned towards the
+doorway as Alain and Enguerrand entered, and passing over their familiar
+faces, fixed itself attentively on that of a mach older man whom
+Enguerrand was presenting to the Duchesse, and in whom Duplessis rightly
+divined the Vicomte de Mauleon.  Certainly if no one could have
+recognized M. Lebeau in the stately personage who had visited Louvier,
+still less could one who had heard of the wild feats of the _roi des
+viveurs_ in his youth reconcile belief in such tales with the quiet
+modesty of mien which distinguished the cavalier now replying, with
+bended head and subdued accents, to the courteous welcome of the
+brilliant hostess.  But for such difference in attributes between the
+past and the present De Mauleon, Duplessis had been prepared by the
+conversation at the Maison Doree.  And now, as the Vicomte, yielding his
+place by the Duchesse to some new-comer, glided on, and, leaning against
+a column, contemplated the gay scene before him with that expression of
+countenance, half sarcastic, half mournful, with which men regard, after
+long estrangement, the scenes of departed joys, Duplessis felt that no
+change in that man had impaired the force of character which had made him
+the hero of reckless coevals.  Though wearing no beard, not even a
+mustache, there was something emphatically masculine in the contour of
+the close-shaven cheek and resolute jaw; in a forehead broad at the
+temples, and protuberant in those organs over the eyebrows which are said
+to be significant of quick perception and ready action; in the lips, when
+in repose compressed, perhaps somewhat stern in their expression, but
+pliant and mobile when speaking, and wonderfully fascinating when they
+smiled.  Altogether, about this Victor de Mauleon there was a nameless
+distinction, apart from that of conventional elegance.  You would have
+said, "That is a man of some marked individuality, an eminence of some
+kind in himself."  You would not be surprised to hear that he was a
+party-leader, a skilled diplomatist, a daring soldier, an adventurous
+traveller; but you would not guess him to be a student, an author, an
+artist.
+
+While Duplessis thus observed the Vicomte de Mauleon, all the while
+seeming to lend an attentive ear to the whispered voice of the Minister
+by his side, Alain passed on into the ball-room.  He was fresh enough to
+feel the exhilaration of the dance.  Enguerrand (who had survived that
+excitement, and who habitually deserted any assembly at an early hour for
+the cigar and whist of his club) had made his way to De Mauleon, and
+there stationed himself.  The lion of one generation has always a mixed
+feeling of curiosity and respect for the lion of a generation before him,
+and the young Vandemar had conceived a strong and almost an affectionate
+interest in this discrowned king of that realm in fashion which, once
+lost, is never to be regained; for it is only Youth that can hold its
+sceptre and command its subjects.
+
+"In this crowd, Vicomte," said Enguerrand, "there must be many old
+acquaintances of yours?"
+
+"Perhaps so, but as yet I have only seen new faces."
+
+As he thus spoke, a middle-aged man, decorated with the grand cross of
+the Legion and half-a-dozen foreign orders, lending his arm to a lady of
+the same age radiant in diamonds, passed by towards the ball-room, and in
+some sudden swerve of his person, occasioned by a pause of his companion
+to adjust her train, he accidentally brushed against De Mauleon, whom he
+had not before noticed.  Turning round to apologize for his awkwardness,
+he encountered the full gaze of the Vicomte, started, changed
+countenance, and hurried on his companion.
+
+"Do you not recognize his Excellency?" said Enguerrand, smiling.  "His
+cannot be a new face to you."
+
+"Is it the Baron de Lacy?" asked De Mauleon.
+
+"The Baron de Lacy, now Comte d'Epinay, ambassador at the Court of -----,
+and, if report speak true, likely soon to exchange that post for the
+_porte feuille_ of Minister."
+
+"He has got on in life since I saw him last, the little Baron.  He was
+then my devoted imitator, and I was not proud of the imitation."
+
+"He has got on by always clinging to the skirts of some one stronger than
+himself,--to yours, I dare say, when, being a _parvenu_ despite his
+usurped title of baron, he aspired to the entree into clubs and salons.
+The entree thus obtained, the rest followed easily; he became a
+millionaire through a wife's dot, and an ambassador through the wife's
+lover, who is a power in the State."
+
+"But he must have substance in himself.  Empty bags can not be made to
+stand upright.  Ah!  unless I mistake, I see some one I knew better.  Yon
+pale, thin man, also with the grand cross--surely that is Alfred
+Hennequin.  Is he too a decorated Imperialist?  I left him a socialistic
+Republican."
+
+"But, I presume, even then an eloquent avocat.  He got into the Chamber,
+spoke well, defended the _coup-d'etat_.  He has just been made _Prefet_
+of the great department of the a popular appointment.  He bears a high
+character.  Pray renew your acquaintance with him; he is coming this
+way."
+
+"Will so grave a dignitary renew acquaintance with me?  I doubt it."
+
+But as De Mauleon said this, he moved from the column, and advanced
+towards the Prefet.  Enguerrand followed him, and saw the Vicomte extend
+his hand to his old acquaintance.
+
+The Prefet stared, and said, with frigid courtesy, "Pardon me,--some
+mistake."
+
+"Allow me, Monsieur Hennequin," said Enguerrand, interposing, and wishing
+good-naturedly to save De Mauleon the awkwardness of introducing
+himself,--"allow me to reintroduce you to my kinsman, whom the lapse of
+years may well excuse you for forgetting, the Vicomte de Mauleon."
+
+Still the Prefet did not accept the hand.  He bowed with formal ceremony,
+said, "I was not aware that Monsieur le Vicomte had returned to Paris,"
+and moving to the doorway, made his salutation to the hostess and
+disappeared.
+
+"The insolent!" muttered Enguerrand.
+
+"Hush!" said De Mauleon, quietly, "I can fight no more duels,--especially
+with a Prefet.  But I own I am weak enough to feel hurt at such a
+reception from Hennequin, for he owed me some obligations,--small,
+perhaps, but still they were such as might have made me select him,
+rather than Louvier, as the vindicator of my name, had I known him to be
+so high placed.  But a man who has raised himself into an authority may
+well be excused for forgetting a friend whose character needs defence.
+I forgive him."
+
+There was something pathetic in the Vicomte's tone which touched
+Enguerrand's warm if light heart.  But De Mauleon did not allow him time
+to answer.  He went on quickly through an opening in the gay crowd, which
+immediately closed behind him, and Enguerrand saw him no more that
+evening.
+
+Duplessis ere this had quitted his seat by the Minister, drawn thence by
+a young and very pretty girl resigned to his charge by a cavalier with
+whom she had been dancing.  She was the only daughter of Duplessis, and
+he valued her even more than the millions he had made at the Bourse.
+"The Princess," she said, "has been swept off in the train of some German
+Royalty; so, _petit pere_, I must impose myself on thee."
+
+The Princess, a Russian of high rank, was the _chaperon_ that evening of
+Mademoiselle Valerie Duplessis.
+
+"And I suppose I must take thee back into the ballroom," said the
+financier, smiling proudly, "and find thee partners."
+
+"I don't want your aid for that, Monsieur; except this quadrille, my list
+is pretty well filled up."
+
+"And I hope the partners will be pleasant.  Let me know who they are," he
+whispered, as they threaded their way into the ball-room.
+
+The girl glanced at her tablet.
+
+"Well, the first on the list is milord somebody, with an unpronounceable
+English name."
+
+"Beau cavalier?"
+
+"No; ugly, old too; thirty at least."
+
+Duplessis felt relieved.  He did not wish his daughter to fall in love
+with an Englishman.
+
+"And the next?"
+
+"The next?" she said hesitatingly, and he observed that a soft blush
+accompanied the hesitation.
+
+"Yes, the next.  Not English too?"
+
+"Oh, no; the Marquis de Rochebriant."
+
+"Ah! who presented him to thee?"
+
+"Thy friend, _petit pere_, M. de Braze."
+
+Duplessis again glanced at his daughter's face; it was bent over her
+bouquet.
+
+"Is he ugly also?"
+
+"Ugly!" exclaimed the girl, indignantly; "why, he is--" she checked
+herself and turned away her head.
+
+Duplessis became thoughtful.  He was glad that he had accompanied his
+child into the ball-room; he would stay there, and keep watch on her and
+Rochebriant also.
+
+Up to that moment he had felt a dislike to Rochebriant.  That young
+noble's too obvious pride of race had nettled him, not the less that the
+financier himself was vain of his ancestry.  Perhaps he still disliked
+Alain, but the dislike was now accompanied with a certain, not hostile,
+interest; and if he became connected with the race, the pride in it might
+grow contagious.
+
+They had not been long in the ball-room before Alain came up to claim his
+promised partner.  In saluting Duplessis, his manner was the same as
+usual, not more cordial, not less ceremoniously distant.  A man so able
+as the financier cannot be without quick knowledge of the human heart.
+
+"If disposed to fall in love with Valerie," thought Duplessis, "he would
+have taken more pains to please her father.  Well, thank heaven, there
+are better matches to be found for her than a noble without fortune and a
+Legitimist without career."
+
+In fact, Alain felt no more for Valerie than for any other pretty girl in
+the room.  In talking with the Vicomte de Braze in the intervals of the
+dance, he had made some passing remark on her beauty.  De Braze had said,
+"Yes, she is charming; I will present you," and hastened to do so before
+Rochebriant even learned her name.  So introduced, he could but invite
+her to give him her first disengaged dance, and when that was fixed, he
+had retired, without entering into conversation.
+
+Now, as they took their places in the quadrille, he felt that effort of
+speech had become a duty, if not a pleasure; and of course, he began with
+the first commonplace which presented itself to his mind.
+
+"Do you not think it a very pleasant ball, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes," dropped, in almost inaudible reply, from Valerie's rosy lips.
+
+"And not over-crowded, as most balls are?"
+
+Valerie's lips again moved, but this time quite inaudibly.  The
+obligations of the figure now caused a pause.  Alain racked his brains
+and began,
+
+"They tell me the last season was more than usually gay; of that I cannot
+judge, for it was well-nigh over when I came to Paris for the first
+time."
+
+Valerie looked up with a more animated expression than her childlike face
+had yet shown, and said, this time distinctly, "This is my first ball,
+Monsieur le Marquis."
+
+"One has only to look at Mademoiselle to divine that fact," replied
+Alain, gallantly.
+
+Again the conversation was interrupted by the dance; but the ice between
+the two was now broken; and when the quadrille was concluded, and
+Rochebriant led the fair Valerie back to her father's side, she felt as
+if she had been listening to the music of the spheres, and that the music
+had now suddenly stopped.  Alain, alas for her! was under no such
+pleasing illusion.  Her talk had seemed to him artless indeed, but very
+insipid, compared with the brilliant conversation of the wedded
+Parisiennes with whom he more habitually danced; and it was with rather a
+sensation of relief that he made his parting bow, and receded into the
+crowd of bystanders.
+
+Meanwhile De Mauleon had quitted the assemblage, walking slowly through
+the deserted streets towards his apartment.  The civilities he had met at
+Louvier's dinner-party, and the marked distinction paid to him by kinsmen
+of rank and position so unequivocal as Alain and Enguerrand, had softened
+his mood and cheered his spirits.  He had begun to question himself
+whether a fair opening to his political ambition was really forbidden to
+him under the existent order of things, whether it necessitated the
+employment of such dangerous tools as those to which anger and despair
+had reconciled his intellect.  But the pointed way in which he had been
+shunned or slighted by the two men who belonged to political life--two
+men who in youth had looked up to himself, and whose dazzling career of
+honours was identified with the Imperial system--reanimated his fiercer
+passions and his more perilous designs.  The frigid accost of Hennequin
+more especially galled him; it wounded not only his pride but his heart;
+it had the venom of ingratitude, and it is the peculiar privilege of
+ingratitude to wound hearts that have learned to harden themselves to the
+hate or contempt of men to whom no services have been rendered.  In some
+private affair concerning his property, De Mauleon had had occasion to
+consult Hennequin, then a rising young avocat.  Out of that consultation
+a friendship had sprung up, despite the differing habits and social
+grades of the two men.  One day, calling on Hennequin, he found him in a
+state of great nervous excitement.  The avocat had received a public
+insult in the salon of a noble, to whom De Mauleon had introduced him,
+from a man who pretended to the hand of a young lady to whom Hennequin
+was attached, and indeed almost affianced.  The man was a notorious
+_spadassin_,--a duellist little less renowned for skill in all weapons
+than De Mauleon himself.  The affair had been such that Hennequin's
+friends assured him he had no choice but to challenge this bravo.
+Hennequin, brave enough at the bar, was no hero before sword-point or
+pistol.  He was utterly ignorant of the use of either weapon; his death
+in the encounter with an antagonist so formidable seemed to him certain,
+and life was so precious,--an honourable and distinguished career opening
+before him, marriage with the woman he loved.  Still he had the
+Frenchman's point of honour.  He had been told that he must fight; well,
+then, he must.  He asked De Mauleon to be one of his seconds, and in
+asking him, sank in his chair, covered his face with his hands, and burst
+into tears.
+
+"Wait till to-morrow," said De Mauleon; "take no step till then.
+Meanwhile, you are in my hands, and I answer for your honour."
+
+On leaving Hennequin, Victor sought the _spadassin_ at the club of which
+they were both members, and contrived, without reference to Hennequin, to
+pick a quarrel with him.  A challenge ensued; a duel with swords took
+place the next morning.  De Mauleon disarmed and wounded his antagonist,
+not gravely, but sufficiently to terminate the encounter.  He assisted to
+convey the wounded man to his apartment, and planted himself by his
+bedside, as if he were a friend.
+
+"Why on earth did you fasten a quarrel on me?" asked the spadassin; "and
+why, having done so, did you spare my life; for your sword was at my
+heart when you shifted its point, and pierced my shoulder?"
+
+"I will tell you, and in so doing, beg you to accept my friendship
+hereafter, on one condition.  In the course of the day, write or dictate
+a few civil words of apology to M. Hennequin.  Ma foi! every one will
+praise you for a generosity so becoming in a man who has given such
+proofs of courage and skill to an avocat who has never handled a sword
+nor fired a pistol."
+
+That same day De Mauleon remitted to Hennequin an apology for heated
+words freely retracted, which satisfied all his friends.  For the service
+thus rendered by De Mauleon, Hennequin declared himself everlastingly
+indebted.  In fact, he entirely owed to that friend his life, his
+marriage, his honour, his career.
+
+"And now," thought De Mauleon, "now, when he could so easily requite me,
+--now he will not even take my hand.  Is human nature itself at war with
+me?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Nothing could be simpler than the apartment of the Vicomte de Mauleon, in
+the second story of a quiet old-fashioned street.  It had been furnished
+at small cost out of his savings.  Yet, on the whole, it evinced the good
+taste of a man who had once been among the exquisites of the polite
+world.  You felt that you were in the apartment of a gentleman, and a
+gentleman of somewhat severe tastes, and of sober matured years.  He was
+sitting the next morning in the room which he used as a private study.
+Along the walls were arranged dwarf bookcases, as yet occupied by few
+books, most of them books of reference, others cheap editions of the
+French classics in prose--no poets, no romance-writers, with a few Latin
+authors also in prose,--Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus.  He was engaged at his
+desk writing,--a book with its leaves open before him, "Paul Louis
+Courier," that model of political irony and masculine style of
+composition.  There was a ring at his door-bell.  The Vicomte kept no
+servant.  He rose and answered the summons.  He recoiled a few paces on
+recognizing his visitor in M. Hennequin.
+
+The _Prefet_ this time did not withdraw his hand; he extended it, but it
+was with a certain awkwardness and timidity.  "I thought it my duty to
+call on you, Vicomte, thus early, having already seen M. Enguerrand de
+Vandemar.  He has shown me the copies of the _pieces_ which were
+inspected by your distinguished kinsmen, and which completely clear you
+of the charge that--grant me your pardon when I say--seemed to me still
+to remain unanswered when I had the honour to meet you last night."
+
+"It appears to me, Monsieur Hennequin, that you, as an _avocat_ so
+eminent, might have convinced yourself very readily of that fact."
+
+"Monsieur le Vicomte, I was in Switzerland with my wife at the time of
+the unfortunate affair in which you were involved."
+
+"But when you returned to Paris, you might perhaps have deigned to make
+inquiries so affecting the honour of one you had called a friend, and for
+whom you had professed"--De Mauleon paused; he disdained to add--"an
+eternal gratitude."
+
+Hennequin coloured slightly, but replied with self-possession.
+
+"I certainly did inquire.  I did hear that the charge against you with
+regard to the abstraction of the jewels was withdrawn, that you were
+therefore acquitted by law; but I heard also that society did not acquit
+you, and that, finding this, you had quitted France.  Pardon me again, no
+one would listen to me when I attempted to speak on your behalf but now
+that so many years have elapsed, that the story is imperfectly
+remembered, that relations so high-placed receive you so cordially,--now
+I rejoice to think that you will have no difficulty in regaining a social
+position never really lost, but for a time resigned."
+
+"I am duly sensible of the friendly joy you express.  I was reading the
+other day in a lively author some pleasant remarks on the effects of
+_medisance_ or calumny upon our impressionable Parisian public.  'If,'
+says the writer, 'I found myself accused of having put the two towers of
+Notre Dame into my waistcoat-pocket I should not dream of defending
+myself; I should take to flight.  And,' adds the writer, 'if my best
+friend were under the same accusation, I should be so afraid of being
+considered his accomplice that I should put my best friend outside the
+door.' Perhaps, Monsieur Hennequin, I was seized with the first alarm.
+Why should I blame you if seized with the second?  Happily, this good
+city of Paris has its reactions.  And you can now offer me your hand.
+Paris has by this time discovered that the two towers of Notre Dame are
+not in my pocket."
+
+There was a pause.  De Mauleon had resettled himself at his desk, bending
+over his papers, and his manner seemed to imply that he considered the
+conversation at an end.
+
+But a pang of shame, of remorse, of tender remembrance, shot across the
+heart of the decorous, worldly, self-seeking man, who owed all that he
+now was to the _ci-devant vaurien_ before him.  Again he stretched forth
+his hand, and this time grasped De Mauleon's warmly.  "Forgive me," he
+said, feelingly and hoarsely; "forgive me, I was to blame.  By character,
+and perhaps by the necessities of my career, I am over-timid to public
+opinion, public scandal.  Forgive me.  Say if in anything now I can
+requite, though but slightly, the service I owe you."
+
+De Mauleon looked steadily at the Prefet, and said slowly, "Would you
+serve me in turn?  Are you sincere?"
+
+The Prefet hesitated a moment, then answered firmly, "Yes."
+
+"Well, then, what I ask of you is a frank opinion,--not as lawyer, not as
+Prefet, but as a man who knows the present state of French society.  Give
+that opinion without respect to my feelings one way or other.  Let it
+emanate solely from your practised judgment."
+
+"Be it so," said Hennequin, wondering what was to come.  De Mauleon
+resumed, "As you may remember, during my former career I had no political
+ambition.  I did not meddle with politics.  In the troubled times that
+immediately succeeded the fall of Louis Philippe I was but an epicurean
+looker-on.  Grant that, so far as admission to the salons is concerned,
+I shall encounter no difficulty in regaining position; but as regards the
+Chamber, public life, a political career, can I have my fair opening
+under the Empire?  You pause.  Answer as you have promised, frankly."
+
+"The difficulties in the way of a political career would be very great."
+
+"Insuperable?"
+
+"I fear so.  Of course, in my capacity of _Prefet_, I have no small
+influence in my department in support of a Government candidate.  But I
+do not think that the Imperial Government could, at this time especially,
+in which it must be very cautious in selecting its candidates, be induced
+to recommend you.  The affair of the jewels would be raked up; your
+vindication disputed, denied; the fact that for so many years you have
+acquiesced in that charge without taking steps to refute it; your
+antecedents, even apart from that charge; your present want of property
+(M. Enguerrand tells me your income is but moderate); the absence of all
+previous repute in public life.  No; relinquish the idea of political
+contest,--it would expose you to inevitable mortifications, to a failure
+that would even jeopardize the admission to the salons which you are now
+gaining.  You could not be a Government candidate."
+
+"Granted.  I may have no desire to be one; but an opposition candidate,
+one of the Liberal party?"
+
+"As an Imperialist," said Hennequin, smiling gravely, "and holding the
+office I do, it would not become me to encourage a candidate against the
+Emperor's Government.  But speaking with the frankness you solicit, I
+should say that your chances there are infinitely worse.  The Opposition
+are in a pitiful minority,--the most eminent of the Liberals can scarcely
+gain seats for themselves; great local popularity or property, high
+established repute for established patriotism, or proved talents of
+oratory and statesmanship, are essential qualifications for a seat in the
+Opposition; and even these do not suffice for a third of the persons who
+possess them.  Be again what you were before,--the hero of salons remote
+from the turbulent vulgarity of politics."
+
+"I am answered.  Thank you once more.  The service I rendered you once is
+requited now."
+
+"No, indeed,--no; but will you dine with me quietly today, and allow me
+to present to you my wife and two children, born since we parted?  I say
+to-day, for to-morrow I return to my _Prefecture_."
+
+"I am infinitely obliged by your invitation, but to-day I dine with the
+Comte de Beauvilliers to meet some of the _Corps Diplomatique_.  I must
+make good my place in the salons, since you so clearly show me that I
+have no chance of one in the Legislature--unless--"
+
+"Unless what?"
+
+"Unless there happen one of those revolutions in which the scum comes
+uppermost."
+
+"No fear of that.  The subterranean barracks and railway have ended
+forever the rise of the scum, the reign of the _canaille_ and its
+barricades."
+
+"Adieu, my dear Hennequin.  My respectful _hommages a Madame_."
+
+After that day the writing of Pierre Firmin in "Le Sens Commun," though
+still keeping within the pale of the law, became more decidedly hostile
+to the Imperial system, still without committing their author to any
+definite programme of the sort of government that should succeed it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The weeks glided on.  Isaura's manuscript bad passed into print; it came
+out in the French fashion of _feuilletons_,--a small detachment at a
+time.  A previous flourish of trumpets by Savarin and the clique at his
+command insured it attention, if not from the general public, at least
+from critical and literary coteries.  Before the fourth instalment
+appeared it had outgrown the patronage of the coteries; it seized hold of
+the public.  It was not in the last school in fashion; incidents were not
+crowded and violent,--they were few and simple, rather appertaining to an
+elder school, in which poetry of sentiment and grace of diction
+prevailed.  That very resemblance to old favourites gave it the
+attraction of novelty.  In a word, it excited a pleased admiration, and
+great curiosity was felt as to the authorship.  When it oozed out that it
+was by the young lady whose future success in the musical world had been
+so sanguinely predicted by all who had heard her sing, the interest
+wonderfully increased.  Petitions to be introduced to her acquaintance
+were showered upon Savarin.  Before she scarcely realized her dawning
+fame, she was drawn from her quiet home and retired habits; she was
+_fetee_ and courted in the literary circle of which Savarin was a chief.
+That circle touched, on one side, Bohemia; on the other, that realm of
+politer fashion which, in every intellectual metropolis, but especially
+in Paris, seeks to gain borrowed light from luminaries in art and
+letters.  But the very admiration she obtained somewhat depressed,
+somewhat troubled her; after all, it did not differ from that which was
+at her command as a singer.
+
+On the one hand, she shrank instinctively from the caresses of female
+authors and the familiar greetings of male authors, who frankly lived in
+philosophical disdain of the conventions respected by sober, decorous
+mortals.  On the other hand, in the civilities of those who, while they
+courted a rising celebrity, still held their habitual existence apart
+from the artistic world, there was a certain air of condescension, of
+patronage, towards the young stranger with no other protector but Signora
+Venosta, the _ci-devant_ public singer, and who had made her _debut_ in a
+journal edited by M. Gustave Rameau, which, however disguised by
+exaggerated terms of praise, wounded her pride of woman in flattering her
+vanity as author.  Among this latter set were wealthy, high-born men, who
+addressed her as woman--as woman beautiful and young--with words of
+gallantry that implied love, but certainly no thought of marriage,--many
+of the most ardent were indeed married already.  But once launched into
+the thick of Parisian hospitalities, it was difficult to draw back.  The
+Venosta wept at the thought of missing some lively soiree, and Savarin
+laughed at her shrinking fastidiousness as that of a child's ignorance of
+the world.  But still she had her mornings to herself; and in those
+mornings, devoted to the continuance of her work (for the commencement
+was in print before a third was completed), she forgot the commonplace
+world that received her in the evenings.  Insensibly to herself the tone
+of this work had changed as it proceeded.  It had begun seriously indeed,
+but in the seriousness there was a certain latent joy.  It might be the
+joy of having found vent of utterance; it might be rather a joy still
+more latent, inspired by the remembrance of Graham's words and looks, and
+by the thought that she had renounced all idea of the professional career
+which he had evidently disapproved.  Life then seemed to her a bright
+possession.  We have seen that she had begun her _roman_ without planning
+how it should end.  She had, however, then meant it to end, somehow or
+other, happily.  Now the lustre had gone from life; the tone of the work
+was saddened; it foreboded a tragic close.  But for the general reader it
+became, with every chapter, still more interesting; the poor child had a
+singularly musical gift of style,--a music which lent itself naturally to
+pathos.  Every very young writer knows how his work, if one of feeling,
+will colour itself from the views of some truth in his innermost self;
+and in proportion as it does so, how his absorption in the work
+increases, till it becomes part and parcel of his own mind and heart.
+The presence of a hidden sorrow may change the fate of the beings he has
+created, and guide to the grave those whom, in a happier vein, he would
+have united at the altar.  It is not till a later stage of experience and
+art that the writer escapes from the influence of his individual
+personality, and lives in existences that take no colourings from his
+own.  Genius usually must pass through the subjective process before it
+gains the objective.  Even a Shakspeare represents himself in the Sonnets
+before no trace of himself is visible in a Falstaff or a Lear.
+
+No news of the Englishman,--not a word.  Isaura could not but feel that
+in his words, his looks, that day in her own garden, and those yet
+happier days at Enghien, there had been more than friendship; there had
+been love,--love enough to justify her own pride in whispering to
+herself, "And I love too."  But then that last parting! how changed he
+was!  how cold!  She conjectured that jealousy of Rameau might, in some
+degree, account for the coldness when he first entered the room, but
+surely not when he left; surely not when she had overpassed the reserve
+of her sex, and implied by signs rarely misconstrued by those who love
+that he had no cause for jealousy of another.  Yet he had gone,--parted
+with her pointedly as a friend, a mere friend.  How foolish she had been
+to think this rich ambitious foreigner could ever have meant to be more!
+In the occupation of her work she thought to banish his image; but in
+that work the image was never absent; there were passages in which she
+pleadingly addressed it, and then would cease abruptly, stifled by
+passionate tears.  Still she fancied that the work would reunite them;
+that in its pages he would hear her voice and comprehend her heart.  And
+thus all praise of the work became very, very dear to her.
+
+At last, after many weeks, Savarin heard from Graham.  The letter was
+dated Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the Englishman said he might yet be some
+time detained.  In the letter Graham spoke chiefly of the new journal:
+in polite compliment of Savarin's own effusions; in mixed praise and
+condemnation of the political and social articles signed Pierre Firmin,--
+praise of their intellectual power, condemnation of their moral cynicism.
+
+     "The writer," he said, "reminds me of a passage in which Montesquieu
+     compares the heathen philosophers to those plants which the earth
+     produces in places that have never seen the heavens.  The soil of
+     his experience does not grow a single belief; and as no community
+     can exist without a belief of some kind, so a politician without
+     belief can but help to destroy; he cannot reconstruct.  Such writers
+     corrupt a society; they do not reform a system."
+
+He closed his letter with a reference to Isaura:
+
+     "Do, in your reply, my dear Savarin, tell me something about your
+     friends Signora Venosta and the Signorina, whose work, so far as yet
+     published, I have read with admiring astonishment at the power of a
+     female writer so young to rival the veteran practitioners of fiction
+     in the creation of interest in imaginary characters, and in
+     sentiments which, if they appear somewhat over-romantic and
+     exaggerated, still touch very fine chords in human nature not
+     awakened in our trite every-day existence.  I presume that the
+     beauty of the _roman_ has been duly appreciated by a public so
+     refined as the Parisian, and that the name of the author is
+     generally known.  No doubt she is now much the rage of the literary
+     circles, and her career as a writer may be considered fixed.  Pray
+     present my congratulations to the Signorina when you see her."
+
+Savarin had been in receipt of this letter some days before he called on
+Isaura, and carelessly showed it to her.  She took it to the window to
+read, in order to conceal the trembling of her hands.  In a few minutes
+she returned it silently.
+
+"Those Englishmen," said Savarin, "have not the heart of compliment.
+I am by no means flattered by what he says of my trifles, and I dare say
+you are still less pleased with this chilly praise of your charming tale;
+but the man means to be civil."
+
+"Certainly," said Isaura, smiling faintly.
+
+"Only think of Rameau!" resumed Savarin.  "On the strength of his salary
+in the 'Sens Commun,' and on the _chateaux en Espagne_ which he
+constructs thereon, he has already furnished an apartment in the Chaussee
+d'Antin, and talks of setting up a coupe in order to maintain the dignity
+of letters when he goes to dine with the duchesses who are some day or
+other to invite him.  Yet I admire his self-confidence, though I laugh at
+it.  A man gets on by a spring in his own mechanism, and he should always
+keep it wound up.  Rameau will make a figure.  I used to pity him;
+I begin to respect.  Nothing succeeds like success.  But I see I am
+spoiling your morning.  Au revoir, mon enfant."
+
+Left alone, Isaura brooded in a sort of mournful wonderment over the
+words referring to herself in Graham's letter.  Read though but once, she
+knew them by heart.  What! did he consider those characters she had
+represented as wholly imaginary?  In one--the most prominent, the most
+attractive--could he detect no likeness to himself?  What! did he
+consider so "over-romantic and exaggerated" sentiments which couched
+appeals from her heart to his?  Alas! in matters of sentiment it is the
+misfortune of us men that even the most refined of us often grate upon
+some sentiment in a woman, though she may not be romantic,--not romantic
+at all, as people go,--some sentiment which she thought must be so
+obvious if we cared a straw about her, and which, though we prize her
+above the Indies, is by our dim, horn-eyed, masculine vision
+undiscernible.  It may be something in itself the airiest of trifles: the
+anniversary of a day in which the first kiss was interchanged, nay, of a
+violet gathered, a misunderstanding cleared up; and of that anniversary
+we remember no more than we do of our bells and coral.  But she--she
+remembers it; it is no bells and coral to her.  Of course, much is to be
+said in excuse of man, brute though he be.  Consider the multiplicity of
+his occupations, the practical nature of his cares.  But granting the
+validity of all such excuse, there is in man an original obtuseness of
+fibre as regards sentiment in comparison with the delicacy of woman's.
+It comes, perhaps, from the same hardness of constitution which forbids
+us the luxury of ready tears.  Thus it is very difficult for the wisest
+man to understand thoroughly a woman.  Goethe says somewhere that the
+highest genius in man must have much of the woman in it.  If this be
+true, the highest genius alone in man can comprehend and explain the
+nature of woman, because it is not remote from him, but an integral part
+of his masculine self.  I am not sure, however, that it necessitates the
+highest genius, but rather a special idiosyncrasy in genius which the
+highest may or may not have.  I think Sophocles a higher genius than
+Euripides; but Euripides has that idiosyncrasy, and Sophocles not.  I
+doubt whether women would accept Goethe as their interpreter with the
+same readiness with which they would accept Schiller.  Shakspeare, no
+doubt, excels all poets in the comprehension of women, in his sympathy
+with them in the woman-part of his nature which Goethe ascribes to the
+highest genius; but, putting aside that "monster," I do not remember any
+English poet whom we should consider conspicuously eminent in that lore,
+unless it be the prose poet, nowadays generally underrated and little
+read, who wrote the letters of Clarissa Harlowe.  I say all this in
+vindication of Graham Vane, if, though a very clever man in his way, and
+by no means uninstructed in human nature, he had utterly failed in
+comprehending the mysteries which to this poor woman-child seemed to need
+no key for one who really loved her.  But we have said somewhere before
+in this book that music speaks in a language which cannot explain itself
+except in music.  So speaks, in the human heart, much which is akin to
+music.  Fiction (that is, poetry, whether in form of rhyme or prose)
+speaks thus pretty often.  A reader must be more commonplace than, I
+trust, my gentle readers are, if he suppose that when Isaura symbolized
+the real hero of her thoughts in the fabled hero of her romance, she
+depicted him as one of whom the world could say, "That is Graham Vane."
+I doubt if even a male poet would so vulgarize any woman whom he
+thoroughly reverenced and loved.  She is too sacred to him to be thus
+unveiled to the public stare; as the sweetest of all ancient love-poets
+says well--
+
+               "Qui sapit in tacito gaudeat ille sinu."
+
+But a girl, a girl in her first untold timid love, to let the world know,
+"that is the man I love and would die for!"--if such a girl be, she has
+no touch of the true woman-genius, and certainly she and Isaura have
+nothing in common.  Well, then, in Isaura's invented hero, though she saw
+the archetypal form of Graham Vane,--saw him as in her young, vague,
+romantic dreams idealized, beautified, transfigured,--he would have been
+the vainest of men if he had seen therein the reflection of himself.  On
+the contrary he said, in the spirit of that jealousy to which he was too
+prone, "Alas! this, then, is some ideal, already seen perhaps, compared
+to which how commonplace am I!" and thus persuading himself, no wonder
+that the sentiments surrounding this unrecognized archetype appeared to
+him over-romantic.  His taste acknowledged the beauty of form which
+clothed them; his heart envied the ideal that inspired them.  But they
+seemed so remote from him; they put the dreamland of the writer farther
+and farther from his workday real life.
+
+In this frame of mind, then, he had written to Savarin, and the answer he
+received hardened it still more.  Savarin had replied, as was his
+laudable wont in correspondence, the very day he received Graham's
+letter, and therefore before he had even seen Isaura.  In his reply, he
+spoke much of the success her work had obtained; of the invitations
+showered upon her, and the sensation she caused in the salons; of her
+future career, with hope that she might even rival Madame de Grantmesnil
+some day, when her ideas became emboldened by maturer experience, and
+a closer study of that model of eloquent style,--saying that the young
+editor was evidently becoming enamoured of his fair contributor; and that
+Madame Savarin had ventured the prediction that the Signorina's _roman_
+would end in the death of the heroine, and the marriage of the writer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+And still the weeks glided on: autumn succeeded to summer, the winter to
+autumn; the season of Paris was at its height.  The wondrous capital
+seemed to repay its Imperial embellisher by the splendour and the joy of
+its _fetes_.  But the smiles on the face of Paris were hypocritical and
+hollow.  The Empire itself had passed out of fashion.  Grave men and
+impartial observers felt anxious.  Napoleon had renounced _les ideas
+Napoleoniennes_.  He was passing into the category of constitutional
+sovereigns, and reigning, not by his old undivided prestige, but by the
+grace of party.  The press was free to circulate complaints as to the
+past and demands as to the future, beneath which the present reeled,
+ominous of earthquake.  People asked themselves if it were possible that
+the Empire could co-exist with forms of government not imperial, yet not
+genuinely constitutional, with a majority daily yielding to a minority.
+The basis of universal suffrage was sapped.  About this time the articles
+in the "Sens Commun" signed Pierre Firmin were creating not only
+considerable sensation, but marked effect on opinion; and the sale
+of the journal was immense.
+
+Necessarily the repute and the position of Gustave Rameau, as the avowed
+editor of this potent journal, rose with its success.  Nor only his
+repute and position; bank-notes of considerable value were transmitted to
+him by the publisher, with the brief statement that they were sent by the
+sole proprietor of the paper as the editor's fair share of profit.  The
+proprietor was never named, but Rameau took it for granted that it was M.
+Lebeau.  M. Lebeau he had never seen since the day he had brought him the
+list of contributors, and was then referred to the publisher, whom he
+supposed M. Lebeau had secured, and received the first quarter of his
+salary in advance.  The salary was a trifle compared to the extra profits
+thus generously volunteered.  He called at Lebeau's office, and saw only
+the clerk, who said that his chef was abroad.
+
+Prosperity produced a marked change for the better, if not in the
+substance of Rameau's character, at least in his manners and social
+converse.  He no longer exhibited that restless envy of rivals, which
+is the most repulsive symptom of vanity diseased.  He pardoned Isaura her
+success; nay, he was even pleased at it.  The nature of her work did not
+clash with his own kind of writing.  It was so thoroughly woman like that
+one could not compare it to a man's.  Moreover, that success had
+contributed largely to the profits by which he had benefited, and to his
+renown as editor of the journal which accorded place to this new-found
+genius.  But there was a deeper and more potent cause for sympathy with
+the success of his fair young contributor.  He had imperceptibly glided
+into love with her,--a love very different from that with which poor
+Julie Caumartin flattered herself she had inspired the young poet.
+Isaura was one of those women for whom, even in natures the least
+chivalric, love, however ardent, cannot fail to be accompanied with a
+certain reverence,--the reverence with which the ancient knighthood, in
+its love for women, honoured the ideal purity of womanhood itself.  Till
+then Rameau had never revered any one.
+
+On her side, brought so frequently into communication with the young
+conductor of the journal in which she wrote, Isaura entertained for him a
+friendly, almost sister-like affection.
+
+I do not think that, even if she had never known the Englishman, she
+would have really become in love with Rameau, despite the picturesque
+beauty of his countenance and the congeniality of literary pursuits; but
+perhaps she might have fancied herself in love with him.  And till one,
+whether man or woman, has known real love, fancy is readily mistaken for
+it.  But little as she had seen of Graham, and that little not in itself
+wholly favourable to him, she knew in her heart of hearts that his image
+would never be replaced by one equally dear.  Perhaps in those qualities
+that placed him in opposition to her she felt his attractions.  The
+poetical in woman exaggerates the worth of the practical in man.  Still
+for Rameau her exquisitely kind and sympathizing nature conceived one of
+those sentiments which in woman are almost angel-like.  We have seen in
+her letters to Madame de Grantmesnil that from the first he inspired her
+with a compassionate interest; then the compassion was checked by her
+perception of his more unamiable and envious attributes.  But now those
+attributes, if still existent, had ceased to be apparent to her, and the
+compassion became unalloyed.  Indeed, it was thus so far increased that
+it was impossible for any friendly observer to look at the beautiful face
+of this youth, prematurely wasted and worn, without the kindliness of
+pity.  His prosperity had brightened and sweetened the expression of that
+face, but it had not effaced the vestiges of decay; rather perhaps
+deepened them, for the duties of his post necessitated a regular labour,
+to which he had been unaccustomed, and the regular labour necessitated,
+or seemed to him to necessitate, an increase of fatal stimulants.  He
+imbibed absinthe with everything he drank, and to absinthe he united
+opium.  This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of his
+_liaison_ with the "Ondine" of his muse; she saw only the increasing
+delicacy of his face and form, contrasted by his increased geniality and
+liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened her.  Intellectually,
+too, she felt for him compassion.  She recognized and respected in him
+the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the
+arrogance of youth, it promised to its ambition.  She saw, too, those
+struggles between a higher and a lower self, to which a weak degree of
+genius united with a strong degree of arrogance is so often subjected.
+Perhaps she overestimated the degree of genius, and what, if rightly
+guided, it could do; but she did, in the desire of her own heavenlier
+instinct, aspire to guide it heavenward.  And as if she were twenty years
+older than himself, she obeyed that desire in remonstrating and warning
+and urging, and the young man took all these "preachments" with a pleased
+submissive patience.  Such, as the new year dawned upon the grave of the,
+old one, was the position between these two.  And nothing more was heard
+from Graham Vane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+It has now become due to Graham Vane, and to his place in the estimation
+of my readers, to explain somewhat more distinctly the nature of the
+quest in prosecution of which he had sought the aid of the Parisian
+police, and under an assumed name made the acquaintance of M. Lebeau.
+
+The best way of discharging this duty will perhaps be to place before the
+reader the contents of the letter which passed under Graham's eyes on the
+day in which the heart of the writer ceased to beat.
+
+
+(Confidential.  To be opened immediately after my death, and before the
+perusal of my will.--Richard King.)
+
+TO GRAHAM VANE, Esq.
+
+My DEAR GRAHAM,--By the direction on the envelope of this letter,
+"Before the perusal of my will," I have wished to save you from the
+disappointment you would naturally experience if you learned my bequest
+without being prevised of the conditions which I am about to impose upon
+your honour.  You will see ere you conclude this letter that you are the
+only man living to whom I could intrust the secret it contains and the
+task it enjoins.
+
+You are aware that I was not born to the fortune that passed to me by the
+death of a distant relation, who had, in my earlier youth, children of
+his own.  I was an only son, left an orphan at the age of sixteen with
+a very slender pittance.  My guardians designed me for the medical
+profession.  I began my studies at Edinburgh, and was sent to Paris to
+complete them,  It so chanced that there I lodged in the same house with
+an artist named Auguste Duval, who, failing to gain his livelihood as a
+painter, in what--for his style was ambitious--is termed the Historical
+School, had accepted the humbler calling of a drawing-master.  He had
+practised in that branch of the profession for several years at Tours,
+having a good clientele among English families settled there.  This
+clientele, as he frankly confessed, he had lost from some irregularities
+of conduct.  He was not a bad man, but of convivial temper, and easily
+led into temptation.  He had removed to Paris a few months before I made
+his acquaintance.  He obtained a few pupils, and often lost them as soon
+as gained.  He was unpunctual and addicted to drink.  But he had a small
+pension, accorded to him, he was wont to say mysteriously, by some high-
+born kinsfolk, too proud to own connection with a drawing-master, and on
+the condition that he should never name them.  He never did name them to
+me, and I do not know to this day whether the story of this noble
+relationship was true or false.  A pension, however, he did receive
+quarterly from some person or other, and it was an unhappy provision for
+him.  It tended to make him an idler in his proper calling; and whenever
+he received the payment he spent it in debauch, to the neglect, while it
+lasted, of his pupils.  This man had residing with him a young daughter,
+singularly beautiful.  You may divine the rest.  I fell in love with
+her,--a love deepened by the compassion with which she inspired me.  Her
+father left her so frequently that, living on the same floor, we saw much
+of each other.  Parent and child were often in great need,--lacking even
+fuel or food.  Of course I assisted them to the utmost of my scanty means
+Much as I was fascinated by Louise Duval, I was not blind to great
+defects in her character.  She was capricious, vain, aware of her beauty,
+and sighing for the pleasures or the gauds beyond her reach.  I knew that
+she did not love me,--there was little, indeed, to  captivate  her fancy
+in  a poor, thread-bare medical student,--and yet I fondly imagined that
+my own persevering devotion would at length win her affections,  I spoke
+to her father more than once of my hope some day to make Louise my wife.
+This hope, I must frankly acknowledge, he never encouraged.  On the
+contrary, he treated it with scorn,--"His child with her beauty would
+look much higher;" but be continued all the same to accept my assistance,
+and to sanction my visits.  At length my slender purse was pretty well
+exhausted, and the luckless drawing-master was so harassed with petty
+debts that further credit became impossible.  At this time I happened to
+hear from a fellow-student that his sister, who was the principal of a
+lady's school in Cheltenham, bad commissioned him to look out for a
+first-rate teacher of drawing with whom her elder pupils could converse
+in French, but who should be sufficiently acquainted with English to make
+his instructions intelligible to the young.  The salary was liberal, the
+school large and of high repute, and his appointment to it would open to
+an able teacher no inconsiderable connection among private families.  I
+communicated this intelligence to Duval.  He caught at it eagerly.  He
+had learned at Tours to speak English fluently; and as his professional
+skill was of high order, and he was popular with several eminent artists,
+he obtained certificates as to his talents, which my fellow-student
+forwarded to England with specimens of Duval's drawings.  In a few days
+the offer of an engagement arrived, was accepted, and Duval and his
+daughter set out for Cheltenham.  At the eve of their departure, Louise,
+profoundly dejected at the prospect of banishment to a foreign country,
+and placing no trust in her father's reform to steady habits, evinced a
+tenderness for me hitherto new; she wept bitterly; she allowed me to
+believe that her tears flowed at the thought of parting with me, and even
+besought me to accompany them to Cheltenham, if only for a few days.  You
+may suppose how delightedly I complied with the request.  Duval had been
+about a week at the watering place, and was discharging the duties he had
+undertaken with such unwonted steadiness and regularity that I began
+sorrowfully to feel I had no longer an excuse for not returning to my
+studies at Paris, when the poor teacher was seized with a fit of
+paralysis.  He lost the power of movement, and his mind was affected.
+The medical attendant called in said that he might linger thus for some
+time, but that, even if he recovered his intellect, which was more than
+doubtful, he would never be able to resume his profession.  I could not
+leave Louise in circumstances so distressing,--I remained.  The little
+money Duval had brought from Paris was now exhausted; and when the day on
+which he had been in the habit of receiving his quarter's pension came
+round, Louise was unable even to conjecture how it was to be applied for.
+It seems he had always gone for it in perscn; but to whom he went was a
+secret which he bad never divulged, and at this critical juncture his
+mind was too enfeebled even to comprehend us when we inquired.  I had
+already drawn from the small capital on the interest of which I had
+maintained myself; I now drew out most of the remainder.  But this was a
+resource that could not last long.  Nor could I, without seriously
+compromising Louise's character, be constantly in the house with a girl
+so young, and whose sole legitimate protector was thus afflicted.  There
+seemed but one alternative to that of abandoning her altogether,--namely,
+to make her my wife, to conclude the studies necessary to obtain my
+diploma, and purchase some partnership in a small country practice with
+the scanty surplus that might be left of my capital.  I placed this
+option before Louise timidly, for I could not bear the thought of forcing
+her inclinations.  She seemed much moved by what she called my
+generosity: she consented; we were married.  I was, as you may conceive,
+wholly ignorant of French law.  We were married according to the English
+ceremony and the Protestant ritual.  Shortly after our marriage we all
+three returned to Paris, taking an apartment in a quarter remote from
+that in which we had before lodged, in order to avoid any, harassment to
+which such small creditors as Duval had left behind him might subject us.
+I resumed my studies with redoubled energy, and Louise was necessarily
+left much alone with her poor father in the daytime.  The defects in her
+character became more and more visible.  She reproached me for the
+solitude to which I condemned her; our poverty galled her; she had no
+kind greeting for me when I returned at evening, wearied out.  Before
+marriage she had not loved me; after marriage, alas!  I fear she hated.
+We had been returned to Paris some months when poor Duval died; he had
+never recovered his faculties, nor had we ever learned from whom his
+pension had been received.  Very soon after her father's death I observed
+a singular change in the humour and manner of Louise.  She was no longer
+peevish, irascible, reproachful; but taciturn and thoughtful.  She seemed
+to me under the influence of some suppressed excitement, her cheeks
+flushed and her eye abstracted.  At length, one evening when I returned
+I found her gone.  She did not come back that night nor the next day.
+It was impossible for me to conjecture what had become of her.  She had
+no friends, so far as I knew; no one had visited at our squalid
+apartment.  The poor house in which we lodged had no concierge whom I
+could question; but the ground-floor was occupied by a small
+tobacconist's shop, and the woman at the counter told me that for some
+days before my wife's disappearance, she had observed her pass the shop-
+window in going out in the afternoon and returning towards the evening.
+Two terrible conjectures beset me either in her walk she had met some
+admirer, with whom she had fled; or, unable to bear the companionship and
+poverty of a union which she had begun to loathe, she had gone forth to
+drown herself in the Seine.  On the third day from her flight I received
+the letter I enclose.  Possibly the handwriting may serve you as a guide
+in the mission I intrust to you.
+
+     MONSIEUR,--You have deceived me vilely,--taken advantage of my
+     inexperienced youth and friendless position to decoy me into an
+     illegal marriage.  My only consolation under my calamity and
+     disgrace is, that I am at least free from a detested bond.  You will
+     not see me again,--it is idle to attempt to do so.  I have obtained
+     refuge with relations whom I have been fortunate enough to discover,
+     and to whom I intrust my fate; and even if you could learn the
+     shelter I have sought, and have the audacity to molest me, you would
+     but subject yourself to the chastisement you so richly deserve.
+
+                                        Louise DUVAL.
+
+At the perusal of this cold-hearted, ungrateful letter, the love I had
+felt for this woman--already much shaken by her wayward and perverse
+temper--vanished from my heart, never to return.  But as an honest man,
+my conscience was terribly stung.  Could it be possible that I had
+unknowingly deceived her,--that our marriage was not legal?  When I
+recovered from the stun which was the first effect of her letter, I
+sought the opinion of an _avoue_ in the neighbourbood, named Sartiges,
+and to my dismay, I learned that while I, marrying according to the
+customs of my own country, was legally bound to Louise in England, and
+could not marry another, the marriage was in all ways illegal for her,--
+being without the consent of her relations while she was under age;
+without the ceremonials of the Roman Catholic Church,--to which, though I
+never heard any profession of religious belief from her or her father, it
+might fairly be presumed that she belonged; and, above all, without the
+form of civil contract which is indispensable to the legal marriage of a
+French subject.
+
+The _avoue_ said that the marriage, therefore, in itself was null, and
+that Louise could, without incurring legal penalties for bigamy, marry
+again in France according to the French laws; but that under the
+circumstances it was probable that her next of kin would apply on her
+behalf to the proper court for the formal annulment of the marriage,
+which would be the most effectual mode of saving her from any molestation
+on my part, and remove all possible questions hereafter as to her single
+state and absolute right to remarry.  I had better remain quiet, and wait
+for intimation of further proceedings.  I knew not what else to do, and
+necessarily submitted.
+
+From this wretched listlessness of mind, alternated now by vehement
+resentment against Louise, now by the reproach of my own sense of honour
+in leaving that honour in so questionable a point of view, I was aroused
+by a letter from the distant kinsman by whom hitherto I had been so
+neglected.  In the previous year he had lost one of his two children; the
+other was just dead.  No nearer relation now surviving stood between me
+and my chance of inheritance from him.  He wrote word of his domestic
+affliction with a manly sorrow which touched me, said that his health was
+failing, and begged me, as soon as possible, to come and visit him in
+Scotland.  I went, and continued to reside with him till his death, some
+months afterwards.  By his will I succeeded to his ample fortune on
+condition of taking his name.
+
+As soon as the affairs connected with this inheritance permitted, I
+returned to Paris, and again saw M. Sartiges.  I had never heard from
+Louise, nor from any one connected with her since the letter you have
+read.  No steps had been taken to annul the marriage, and sufficient time
+had elapsed to render it improbable that such steps would be taken now;
+but if no such steps were taken, however free from the marriage-bond
+Louise might be, it clearly remained binding on myself.
+
+At my request, M. Sartiges took the most vigorous measures that occurred
+to him to ascertain where Louise was, and what and who was the relation
+with whom she asserted she had found refuge.  The police were employed;
+advertisements were issued, concealing names, but sufficiently clear to
+be intelligible to Louise if they came under her eye, and to the effect
+that if any informality in our marriage existed, she was implored for her
+own sake to remove it by a second ceremonial--answer to be addressed to
+the _avoue_.  No answer came; the police had hitherto failed of
+discovering her, but were sanguine of success, when a few weeks after
+these advertisements a packet reached M. Sartiges, enclosing the
+certificates annexed to this letter, of the death of Louise Duval at
+Munich.  The certificates, as you will see, are to appearance.
+officially attested and unquestionably genuine.  So they were considered
+by M. Sartiges as well as by myself.  Here, then, all inquiry ceased; the
+police were dismissed.  I was free.  By little and little I overcame the
+painful impressions which my ill-starred union and the announcement of
+Louise's early death bequeathed.  Rich, and of active mind, I learned to
+dismiss the trials of my youth as a gloomy dream.  I entered into public
+life; I made myself a creditable position; became acquainted with your
+aunt; we were wedded, and the beauty of her nature embellished mine.
+Alas, alas! two years after our marriage--nearly five years after I had
+received the certificates of Louise's death--I and your aunt made a
+summer excursion into the country of the Rhine; on our return we rested
+at Aix-la-Chapelle.  One day while there I was walking alone in the
+environs of the town, when, on the road, a little girl, seemingly about
+five years old, in chase of a butterfly, stumbled and fell just before my
+feet; I took her up, and as she was crying more from the shock of the
+fall than any actual hurt, I was still trying my best to comfort her,
+when a lady some paces behind her came up, and in taking the child from
+my arms as I was bending over her, thanked me in a voice that made my
+heart stand still.  I looked up, and beheld Louise.
+
+It was not till I had convulsively clasped her hand and uttered her name
+that she recognized me.  I was, no doubt, the more altered of the two,--
+prosperity and happiness had left little trace of the needy, care worn,
+threadbare student.  But if she were the last to recognize, she was the
+first to recover self-possession.  The expression of her face became hard
+and set.  I cannot pretend to repeat with any verbal accuracy the brief
+converse that took place between us, as she placed the child on the grass
+bank beside the path, bade her stay there quietly, and walked on with me
+some paces as if she did not wish the child to hear what was said.
+
+The purport of what passed was to this effect: She refused to explain the
+certificates of her death further than that, becoming aware of what she
+called the "persecution" of the advertisements issued and inquiries
+instituted, she had caused those documents to be sent to the address
+given in the advertisement, in order to terminate all further
+molestation.  But how they could have been obtained, or by what art
+so ingeniously forged as to deceive the acuteness of a practised lawyer,
+I know not to this day.  She declared, indeed, that she was now happy, in
+easy circumstances, and that if I wished to make some reparation for the
+wrong I had done her, it would be to leave her in peace; and in case--
+which was not likely--we ever met again, to regard and treat her as a
+stranger; that she, on her part, never would molest me, and that the
+certified death of Louise Duval left me as free to marry again as she
+considered herself to be.
+
+My mind was so confused, so bewildered, while she thus talked, that I did
+not attempt to interrupt her.  The blow had so crushed me that I scarcely
+struggled under it; only, as she turned to leave me, I suddenly
+recollected that the child, when taken from my arms, had called her
+"Maman," and, judging by the apparent age of the child, it must have been
+born but a few months after Louise had left me,--that it must be mine.
+And so, in my dreary woe, I faltered out, "But what of your infant?
+Surely that has on me a claim that you relinquish for yourself.  You were
+not unfaithful to me while you deemed you were my wife?"
+
+"Heavens! can you insult me by such a doubt?  No!" she cried out,
+impulsively and haughtily.  "But as I was not legally your wife, the
+child is not legally yours; it is mine, and only mine.  Nevertheless,
+if you wish to claim it"--here she paused as in doubt.  I saw at once
+that she was prepared to resign to me the child if I had urged her to do
+so.  I must own, with a pang of remorse, that I recoiled from such a
+proposal.  What could I do with the child?  How explain to my wife
+the cause of my interest in it?  If only a natural child of mine, I
+should have shrunk from owning to Janet a youthful error.  But as it
+was,--the child by a former marriage, the former wife still living!--
+my blood ran cold with dread.  And if I did take the child, invent what
+story I might as to its parentage, should I not expose myself, expose
+Janet, to terrible constant danger?  The mother's natural affection might
+urge her at any time to seek tidings of the child, and in so doing she
+might easily discover my new name, and, perhaps years hence, establish on
+me her own claim.
+
+No, I could not risk such perils.  I replied sullenly, "You say rightly;
+the child is yours,--only yours."  I was about to add an offer of
+pecuniary provision for it, but Louise had already turned scornfully
+towards the bank on which she bad left the infant.  I saw her snatch from
+the child's hand some wild flowers the poor thing had been gathering; and
+how often have I thought of the rude way in which she did it,--not as a
+mother who loves her child.  Just then other passengers appeared on the
+road; two of them I knew,--an English couple very intimate with Lady
+Janet and myself.  They stopped to accost me, while Louise passed by with
+the infant towards the town.  I turned in the opposite direction, and
+strove to collect my thoughts.  Terrible as was the discovery thus
+suddenly made, it was evident that Louise had as strong an interest as
+myself to conceal it.  There was little chance that it would ever be
+divulged.  Her dress and that of the child were those of persons in the
+richer classes of life.  After all, doubtless, the child needed not
+pecuniary assistance from me, and was surely best off under the mother's
+care.  Thus I sought to comfort and to delude myself.
+
+The next day Janet and I left Aix-la-Chapelle and returned to England.
+But it was impossible for me to banish the dreadful thought that Janet
+was not legally my wife; that could she even guess the secret lodged in
+my breast she would be lost to me forever, even though she died of the
+separation (you know well how tenderly she loved me).  My nature
+underwent a silent revolution.  I had previously cherished the ambition
+common to most men in public life,--the ambition for fame, for place, for
+power.  That ambition left me; I shrank from the thought of becoming too
+well known, lest Louise or her connections, as yet ignorant of my new
+name, might more easily learn what the world knew; namely that I had
+previously borne another name,--the name of her husband,--and finding me
+wealthy and honoured, might hereafter be tempted to claim for herself or
+her daughter the ties she adjured for both while she deemed me poor and
+despised.  But partly my conscience, partly the influence of the angel by
+my side, compelled me to seek whatever means of doing good to others
+position and circumstances placed at my disposal.  I was alarmed when
+even such quiet exercise of mind and fortune acquired a sort of
+celebrity.  How pain fully I shrank from it!  The world attributed my
+dread of publicity to unaffected modesty.  The world praised me, and I
+knew myself an impostor.  But the years stole on.  I heard no more of
+Louise or her child, and my fears gradually subsided.  Yet I was consoled
+when the two children born to me by Janet died in their infancy.  Had
+they lived, who can tell whether something might not have transpired to
+prove them illegitimate.
+
+I must hasten on.  At last came the great and crushing calamity of my
+life,--I lost the woman who was my all in all.  At least she was spared
+the discovery that would have deprived me of the right of tending her
+deathbed, and leaving within her tomb a place vacant for myself.
+
+But after the first agonies that followed her loss, the conscience I had
+so long sought to tranquillize became terribly reproachful.  Louise had
+forfeited all right to my consideration, but my guiltless child had not
+done so.  Did it live still?  If so, was it not the heir to my fortunes,
+--the only child left to me?  True, I have the absolute right to dispose
+of my wealth: it is not in land; it is not entailed: but was not the
+daughter I had forsaken morally the first claimant; was no reparation due
+to her?  You remember that my physician ordered me, some little time
+after your aunt's death, to seek a temporary change of scene.  I obeyed,
+and went away no one knew whither.  Well, I repaired to Paris; there
+I sought M. Sartiges, the _avoue_.  I found he had been long dead.  I
+discovered his executors, and inquired if any papers or correspondence
+between Richard Macdonald and himself many years ago were in existence.
+All such documents, with others not returned to correspondents at his
+decease, had been burned by his desire.  No possible clew to the
+whereabouts of Louise, should any have been gained since I last saw her,
+was left.  What then to do I knew not.  I did not dare to make inquiries
+through strangers, which, if discovering my child, might also bring to
+light a marriage that would have dishonoured the memory of my lost saint.
+I returned to England, feeling that my days were numbered.  It is to you
+that I transmit the task of those researches which I could not institute.
+I bequeath to you, with the exception of trifling legacies and donations
+to public charities, the whole of my fortune; but you will understand by
+this letter that it is to be held on a trust which I cannot specify in my
+will.  I could not, without dishonouring the venerated name of your aunt,
+indicate as the heiress of my wealth a child by a wife living at the time
+I married Janet.  I cannot form any words for such a devise which would
+not arouse gossip and suspicion, and furnish ultimately a clew to the
+discovery I would shun.  I calculate that, after all deductions, the sum
+that will devolve to you will be about L220,000.  That which I mean to be
+absolutely and at once yours is the comparatively trifling legacy of
+L20,000.  If Louise's child be not living, or if you find full reason to
+suppose that despite appearances the child is not mine, the whole of my
+fortune lapses to you; but should Louise be surviving and need pecuniary
+aid, you will contrive that she may have such an annuity as you may deem
+fitting, without learning whence it come.  You perceive that it is your
+object, if possible, even more than mine, to preserve free from slur the
+name and memory of her who was to you a second mother.  All ends we
+desire would be accomplished could you, on discovering my lost child,
+feel that, without constraining your inclinations, you could make her
+your wife.  She would then naturally share with you my fortune, and all
+claims of justice and duty would be quietly appeased.  She would now be
+of age suitable to yours.  When I saw her at Aix she gave promise of
+inheriting no small share of her mother's beauty.  If Louise's assurance
+of her easy circumstances were true, her daughter has possibly been
+educated and reared with tenderness and care.  You have already assured
+me that you have no prior attachment.  But if, on discovering this child,
+you find her already married, or one whom you could not love nor esteem,
+I leave it implicitly to your honour and judgment to determine what share
+of the L200,000 left in your hands should be consigned to her.  She may
+have been corrupted by her mother's principles.  She may--Heaven forbid!
+--have fallen into evil courses, and wealth would be misspent in her
+hands.  In that case a competence sufficing to save her from further
+degradation, from the temptations of poverty, would be all that I desire
+you to devote from my wealth.  On the contrary, you may find in her one
+who, in all respects, ought to be my chief inheritor.  All this I leave
+in full confidence to you, as being, of all the men I know, the one who
+unites the highest sense of honour with the largest share of practical
+sense and knowledge of life.  The main difficulty, whatever this lost
+girl may derive from my substance, will be in devising some means to
+convey it to her so that neither she nor those around her may trace the
+bequest to me.  She can never be acknowledged as my child,--never!  Your
+reverence for the beloved dead forbids that.  This difficulty your clear
+strong sense must overcome; mine is blinded by the shades of death.  You
+too will deliberately consider how to institute the inquiries after
+mother and child so as not to betray our secret.  This will require great
+caution.  You will probably commence at Paris, through the agency of the
+police, to whom you will be very guarded in your communications.  It is
+most unfortunate that I have no miniature of Louise, and that any
+description of her must be so vague that it may not serve to discover
+her; but such as it is, it may prevent your mistaking for her some other
+of her name.  Louise was above the common height, and looked taller than
+she was, with the peculiar combination of very dark hair, very fair
+complexion, and light-gray eyes.  She would now be somewhat under the age
+of forty.  She was not without accomplishments, derived from the
+companionship with her father.  She spoke English fluently; she drew with
+taste, and even with talent.  You will see the prudence of confining
+research at first to Louise, rather than to the child who is the
+principal object of it; for it is not till you can ascertain what has
+become of her that you can trust the accuracy of any information
+respecting the daughter, whom I assume, perhaps after all erroneously, to
+be mine.  Though Louise talked with such levity of holding herself free
+to marry, the birth of her child might be sufficient injury to her
+reputation to become a serious obstacle to such second nuptials, not
+having taken formal steps to annul her marriage with myself.  If not thus
+remarried, there would be no reason why she should not resume her maiden
+name of Duval, as she did in the signature of her letter to me: finding
+that I had ceased to molest her by the inquiries, to elude which she had
+invented the false statement of her death.  It seems probable, therefore,
+that she is residing somewhere in Paris, and in the name of Duval.  Of
+course the burden of uncertainty as to your future cannot be left to
+oppress you for an indefinite length of time.  If at the end, say, of two
+years, your researches have wholly failed, consider three-fourths of my
+whole fortune to have passed to you, and put by the fourth to accumulate,
+should the child afterwards be discovered, and satisfy your judgment as
+to her claims on me as her father.  Should she not, it will be a reserve
+fund for your own children.  But oh, if my child could be found in time!
+and oh, if she be all that could win your heart, and be the wife you
+would select from free choice!  I can say no more.  Pity me, and judge
+leniently of Janet's husband.
+
+                                   R. K.
+
+The key to Graham's conduct is now given,--the deep sorrow that took him
+to the tomb of the aunt he so revered, and whose honoured memory was
+subjected to so great a risk; the slightness of change in his expenditure
+and mode of life, after an inheritance supposed to be so ample; the
+abnegation of his political ambition; the subject of his inquiries, and
+the cautious reserve imposed upon them; above all, the position towards
+Isaura in which he was so cruelly placed.
+
+Certainly, his first thought in revolving the conditions of his trust had
+been that of marriage with this lost child of Richard King's, should she
+be discovered single, disengaged, and not repulsive to his inclinations.
+Tacitly he subscribed to the reasons for this course alleged by the
+deceased.  It was the simplest and readiest plan of uniting justice to
+the rightful inheritor with care for a secret so important to the honour
+of his aunt, of Richard King himself,--his benefactor,--of the
+illustrious house from which Lady Janet had sprung.  Perhaps, too, the
+consideration that by this course a fortune so useful to his career was
+secured was not without influence on the mind of a man naturally
+ambitious.  But on that consideration he forbade himself to dwell.  He
+put it away from him as a sin.  Yet, to marriage with any one else, until
+his mission was fulfilled, and the uncertainty as to the extent of his
+fortune was dispelled, there interposed grave practical obstacles.  How
+could he honestly present himself to a girl and to her parents in the
+light of a rich man, when in reality he might be but a poor man?  How
+could he refer to any lawyer the conditions which rendered impossible any
+settlement that touched a shilling of the large sum which at any day he
+might have to transfer to another?  Still, when once fully conspicuous
+how deep was the love with which Isaura had inspired him, the idea of
+wedlock with the daughter of Richard King, if she yet lived and was
+single, became inadmissible.  The orphan condition of the young Italian
+smoothed away the obstacles to proposals of marriage which would have
+embarrassed his addresses to girls of his own rank, and with parents who
+would have demanded settlements.  And if he had found Isaura alone on
+that day on which he had seen her last, he would doubtless have yielded
+to the voice of his heart, avowed his love, wooed her own, and committed
+both to the tie of betrothal.  We have seen how rudely such yearnings of
+his heart were repelled on that last interview.  His English prejudices
+were so deeply rooted, that, even if he had been wholly free from the
+trust bequeathed to him, he would have recoiled from marriage with a girl
+who, in the ardour for notoriety, could link herself with such associates
+as Gustave Rameau, by habits a Bohemian, and by principles a Socialist.
+
+In flying from Paris, he embraced the resolve to banish all thought of
+wedding Isaura, and to devote himself sternly to the task which had so
+sacred a claim upon him.  Not that he could endure the idea of marrying
+another, even if the lost heiress should be all that his heart could have
+worshipped, had that heart been his own to give; but he was impatient of
+the burden heaped on him,--of the fortune which might not be his, of the
+uncertainty which paralyzed all his ambitious schemes for the future.
+
+Yet, strive as he would--and no man could strive more resolutely--he
+could not succeed in banishing the image of Isaura.  It was with him
+always; and with it a sense of irreparable loss, of a terrible void,
+of a pining anguish.
+
+And the success of his inquiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, while sufficient to
+detain him in the place, was so slight, and advanced by such slow
+degrees, that it furnished no continued occupation to his restless mind.
+M. Renard was acute and painstaking.  But it was no easy matter to obtain
+any trace of a Parisian visitor to so popular a Spa so many years ago.
+The name Duval, too, was so common, that at Aix, as we have seen at
+Paris, time was wasted in the chase of a Duval who proved not to be the
+lost Louise.  At last M. Renard chanced on a house in which, in the year
+1849, two ladies from Paris had lodged for three weeks.  One was named
+Madame Duval, the other Madame Marigny.  They were both young, both very
+handsome, and much of the same height and colouring.  But Madame Marigny
+was the handsomer of the two.  Madame Duval frequented the gaming-tables
+and was apparently of very lively temper.  Madame Marigny lived very
+quietly, rarely or never stirred out, and seemed in delicate health.
+She, however, quitted the apartment somewhat abruptly, and, to the best
+of the lodging-house-keeper's recollection, took rooms in the country
+near Aix--she could not remember where.  About two months after the
+departure of Madame Marigny, Madame Duval also left Aix, and in company
+with a French gentleman who had visited her much of late,--a handsome man
+of striking appearance.  The lodging house-keeper did not know what or
+who he was.  She remembered that he used to be announced to Madame Duval
+by the name of M. Achille.  Madame Duval had never been seen again by the
+lodging-house-keeper after she had left.  But Madame Marigny she had once
+seen, nearly five years after she had quitted the lodgings,--seen her by
+chance at the railway station, recognized her at once, and accosted her,
+offering her the old apartment.  Madame Marigny had, however, briefly
+replied that she was only at Aix for a few hours, and should quit it the
+same day.
+
+The inquiry now turned towards Madame Marigny.  The date on which the
+lodging-house-keeper had last seen her coincided with the year in which
+Richard King had met Louise.  Possibly, therefore, she might have
+accompanied the latter to Aix at that time, and could, if found, give
+information as to her subsequent history and present whereabouts.
+
+After a tedious search throughout all the environs of Aix, Graham himself
+came, by the merest accident, upon the vestiges of Louise's friend.  He
+had been wandering alone in the country round Aix, when a violent
+thunderstorm drove him to ask shelter in the house of a small farmer,
+situated in a field, a little off the byway which he had taken.  While
+waiting for the cessation of the storm, and drying his clothes by the
+fire in a room that adjoined the kitchen, he entered into conversation
+with the farmer's wife, a pleasant, well-mannered person, and made some
+complimentary observation on a small sketch of the house in water-colours
+that hung upon the wall.  "Ah," said the farmer's wife, "that was done by
+a French lady who lodged here many years ago.  She drew very prettily,
+poor thing."
+
+"A lady who lodged here many years ago,--how many?"
+
+"Well, I guess somewhere about twenty."
+
+"Ah, indeed!  Was it a Madame Marigny?"
+
+"Bon Dieu!  That was indeed her name.  Did you know her?  I should be so
+glad to hear she is well and--I hope--happy."
+
+"I do not know where she is now, and am making inquiries to ascertain.
+Pray help me.  How long did Madame Marigny lodge with you?"
+
+"I think pretty well two months; yes, two months.  She left a month after
+her confinement."
+
+"She was confined here?"
+
+"Yes.  When she first came, I had no idea that she was _enceinte_.  She
+had a pretty figure, and no one would have guessed it, in the way she
+wore her shawl.  Indeed I only began to suspect it a few days before it
+happened; and that was so suddenly, that all was happily over before we
+could send for the _accoucheur_."
+
+"And the child lived?--a girl or a boy?"
+
+"A girl,--the prettiest baby."
+
+"Did she take the child with her when she went?"
+
+"No; it was put out to nurse with a niece of my husband who was confined
+about the same time.  Madame paid liberally in advance, and continued to
+send money half-yearly, till she came herself and took away the little
+girl."
+
+"When was that,--a little less than five years after she had left it?"
+
+"Why, you know all about it, Monsieur; yes, not quite five years after.
+She did not come to see me, which I thought unkind, but she sent me,
+through my niece-in-law, a real gold watch and a shawl.  Poor dear lady--
+for lady she was all over,--with proud ways, and would not bear to be
+questioned.  But I am sure she was none of your French light ones, but an
+honest wife like myself, though she never said so."
+
+"And have you no idea where she was all the five years she was away, or
+where she went after reclaiming her child?"
+
+"No, indeed, Monsieur."
+
+"But her remittances for the infant must have been made by letters, and
+the letters would have had post-marks?"
+
+"Well, I dare say; I am no scholar myself.  But suppose you see Marie
+Hubert, that is my niece-in-law, perhaps she has kept the envelopes."
+
+"''Where does Madame Hubert live?"
+
+"It is just a league off by the short path; you can't miss the way.  Her
+husband has a bit of land of his own, but he is also a carrier--'Max
+Hubert, carrier,'--written over the door, just opposite the first church
+you get to.  The rain has ceased, but it may be too far for you to-day."
+
+"Not a bit of it.  Many thanks."
+
+"But if you find out the dear lady and see her, do tell her how pleased I
+should be to hear good news of her and the little one."
+
+Graham strode on under the clearing skies to the house indicated.  He
+found Madame Hubert at home, and ready to answer all questions; but,
+alas!  she had not the envelopes.  Madame Marigny, on removing the child,
+had asked for all the envelopes or letters, and carried them away with
+her.  Madame Hubert, who was as little of a scholar as her aunt-in-law
+was, had never paid much attention to the post-marks on the envelopes;
+and the only one that she did remember was the first, that contained a
+bank-note, and that post-mark was "Vienna."
+
+"But did not Madame Marigny's letters ever give you an address to which
+to write with news of her child?"
+
+"I don't think she cared much for her child, Monsieur.  She kissed it
+very coldly when she came to take it away.  I told the poor infant that
+that was her own mamma; and Madame said, 'Yes, you may call me maman,' in
+a tone of voice--well, not at all like that of a mother.  She brought
+with her a little bag which contained some fine clothes for the child,
+and was very impatient till the child had got them on."
+
+"Are you quite sure it was the same lady who left the child?"
+
+"Oh, there is no doubt of that.  She was certainly _tres belle_, but
+I did not fancy her as aunt did.  She carried her head very high, and
+looked rather scornful.  However, I must say she behaved very
+generously."
+
+"Still you have not answered my question whether her letters contained no
+address."
+
+She never wrote more than two letters.  One enclosing the first
+remittance was but a few lines, saying that if the child was well and
+thriving, I need not write; but if it died or became dangerously ill, I
+might at any time write a line to Madame  -----, Poste Restante, Vienna.
+She was travelling about, but the letter would be sure to reach her
+sooner or later.  The only other letter I had was to apprise me that she
+was coming to remove the child, and might be expected in three days after
+the receipt of her letter."
+
+"And all the other communications from her were merely remittances in
+blank envelopes?"
+
+"Exactly so."
+
+Graham, finding he could learn no more, took his departure.  On his way
+home, meditating the new idea that his adventure that day suggested, he
+resolved to proceed at once, accompanied by M. Renard, to Munich, and
+there learn what particulars could be yet ascertained respecting those
+certificates of the death of Louise Duval, to which (sharing Richard
+King's very natural belief that they had been skilfully forged) he had
+hitherto attached no importance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+No satisfactory result attended the inquiries made at Munich save indeed
+this certainty,--the certificates attesting the decease of some person
+calling herself Louise Duval had not been forged.  They were indubitably
+genuine.  A lady bearing that name had arrived at one of the principal
+hotels late in the evening, and had there taken handsome rooms.  She was
+attended by no servant, but accompanied by a gentleman, who, however,
+left the hotel as soon as he had seen her lodged to her satisfaction.
+The books of the hotel still retained the entry of her name,--Madame
+Duval, _Francaise rentiere_.  On comparing the handwriting of this entry
+with the letter from Richard King's first wife, Graham found it to
+differ; but then it was not certain, though probable, that the entry had
+been written by the alleged Madame Duval herself.  She was visited the
+next day by the same gentleman who had accompanied her on arriving.  He
+dined and spent the evening with her.  But no one at the hotel could
+remember what was the gentleman's name, nor even if he were announced by
+any name.  He never called again.  Two days afterwards, Madame Duval was
+taken ill; a doctor was sent for, and attended her till her death.  This
+doctor was easily found.  He remembered the case perfectly,--congestion
+of the lungs, apparently caused by cold caught on her journey.  Fatal
+symptoms rapidly manifested themselves, and she died on the third day
+from the seizure.  She was a young and handsome woman.  He had asked her
+during her short illness if he should not write to her friends; if there
+were no one she would wish to be sent for.  She replied that there was
+only one friend, to whom she had already written, and who would arrive in
+a day or two; and on inquiring, it appeared that she had written such a
+letter, and taken it herself to the post on the morning of the day she
+was taken ill.
+
+She had in her purse not a large sum, but money enough to cover all her
+expenses, including those of her funeral, which, according to the law in
+force at the place, followed very quickly on her decease.  The arrival of
+the friend to whom she had written being expected, her effects were, in
+the meanwhile, sealed up.  The day after her death a letter arrived for
+her, which was opened.  It was evidently written by a man, and apparently
+by a lover.  It expressed an impassioned regret that the writer was
+unavoidably prevented returning to Munich so soon as he had hoped, but
+trusted to see his dear _bouton de rose_ in the course of the following
+week; it was only signed Achille, and gave no address.  Two or three days
+after, a lady, also young and handsome, arrived at the hotel, and
+inquired for Madame Duval.  She was greatly shocked at hearing of her
+decease.  When sufficiently recovered to bear being questioned as to
+Madame Duval's relations and position, she appeared confused; said, after
+much pressing, that she was no relation to the deceased; that she
+believed Madame Duval had no relations with whom she was on friendly
+terms,--at least she had never heard her speak of any; and that her own
+acquaintance with the deceased, though cordial, was very recent.  She
+could or would not give any clew to the writer of the letter signed
+Achille, and she herself quitted Munich that evening, leaving the
+impression that Madame Duval had been one of those ladies who, in
+adopting a course of life at variance with conventional regulations,
+are repudiated by their relations, and probably drop even their rightful
+names.
+
+Achille never appeared; but a few days after, a lawyer at Munich received
+a letter from another at Vienna, requesting, in compliance with a
+client's instructions, the formal certificates of Louise Duval's death.
+These were sent as directed, and nothing more about the ill-fated woman
+was heard of.  After the expiration of the time required by law, the
+seals were removed from the effects, which consisted of two _malles_ and
+a dressing-case.  But they only contained the articles appertaining to a
+lady's wardrobe or toilet,--no letters, not even another note from
+Achille,--no clew, in short, to the family or antecedents of the
+deceased.  What then had become of these effects, no one at the hotel
+could give a clear or satisfactory account.  It was said by the mistress
+of the hotel, rather sullenly, that they had, she supposed, been sold by
+her predecessor, and by order of the authorities, for the benefit of the
+poor.
+
+If the lady who had represented herself as Louise Duval's acquaintance
+had given her own name, which doubtless she did, no one recollected it.
+It was not entered in the books of the hotel, for she had not lodged
+there; nor did it appear that she had allowed time for formal examination
+by the civil authorities.  In fact, it was clear that poor Louise Duval
+had been considered as an adventuress by the hotel-keeper and the medical
+attendant at Munich; and her death had excited so little interest, that
+it was strange that even so many particulars respecting it could be
+gleaned.
+
+After a prolonged but fruitless stay at Munich, Graham and M. Renard
+repaired to Vienna; there, at least, Madame Marigny had given an address,
+and there she might be heard of.
+
+At Vienna, however, no research availed to discover a trace of any such
+person; and in despair Graham returned to England in the January of 1870,
+and left the further prosecution of his inquiries to M. Renard, who,
+though obliged to transfer himself to Paris for a time, promised that he
+would leave no stone unturned for the discovery of Madame Marigny; and
+Graham trusted to that assurance when M. Renard, rejecting half of the
+large gratuity offered him, added, "Je suis Francais; this with me has
+ceased to be an affair of money; it has become an affair that involves my
+_amour propre_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+If Graham Vane had been before caressed and courted for himself, he was
+more than ever appreciated by polite society, now that he added the
+positive repute of wealth to that of a promising intellect.  Fine ladies
+said that Graham Vane was a match for any girl.  Eminent politicians
+listened to him with a more attentive respect, and invited him to
+selecter dinner-parties.  His cousin the Duke urged him to announce his
+candidature for the county, and purchase back, at least, the old Stamm-
+schloss.  But Graham obstinately refused to entertain either proposal,
+continued to live as economically as before in his old apartments, and
+bore with an astonishing meekness of resignation the unsolicited load of
+fashion heaped upon his shoulders.  At heart he was restless and
+unhappy.  The mission bequeathed to him by Richard King haunted his
+thoughts like a spectre not to be exorcised.  Was his whole life to be
+passed in the weary sustainment of an imposture which in itself was gall
+and wormwood to a nature constitutionally frank and open?  Was he forever
+to appear a rich man and live as a poor one?  Was he till his deathbed to
+be deemed a sordid miser whenever he refused a just claim on his supposed
+wealth, and to feel his ambition excluded from the objects it earnestly
+coveted, and which he was forced to appear too much of an Epicurean
+philosopher to prize?
+
+More torturing than all else to the man's innermost heart was the
+consciousness that he had not conquered, could not conquer, the yearning
+love with which Isaura had inspired him, and yet that against such love
+all his reasonings, all his prejudices, more stubbornly than ever were
+combined.  In the French newspapers which he had glanced over while
+engaged in his researches in Germany-nay, in German critical journals
+themselves--he had seen so many notices of the young author,--highly
+eulogistic, it is true, but which to his peculiar notions were more
+offensive than if they had been sufficiently condemnatory of her work to
+discourage her from its repetition; notices which seemed to him the
+supreme impertinences which no man likes exhibited towards the woman to
+whom he would render the chivalrous homage of respect.  Evidently this
+girl had become as much public property as if she had gone on the stage.
+Minute details of her personal appearance,--of the dimples on her cheek,
+of the whiteness of her arms, of her peculiar way of dressing her hair;
+anecdotes of her from childhood (of course invented, but how could Graham
+know that?); of the reasons why she had adopted the profession of author
+instead of that of the singer; of the sensation she had created in
+certain salons (to Graham, who knew Paris so well, _salons_ in which he
+would not have liked his wife to appear); of the compliments paid to her
+by _grands seigneurs_ noted for their _liaisons_ with ballet-dancers, or
+by authors whose genius soared far beyond the _flammantia maenia_ of a
+world confined by respect for one's neighbours' land-marks,--all this,
+which belongs to ground of personal gossip untouched by English critics
+of female writers, ground especially favoured by Continental, and, I am
+grieved to say, by American journalists,--all this was to the sensitive
+Englishman much what the minute inventory of Egeria's charms would have
+been to Numa Pompilius.  The nymph, hallowed to him by secret devotion,
+was vulgarized by the noisy hands of the mob, and by the popular voices,
+which said, "We know more about Egeria than you do."  And when he
+returned to England, and met with old friends familiar to Parisian life,
+who said, "of course you have read the Cicogna's _roman_.  What do you
+think of it?  Very fine writing, I dare say, but above me.  I go in for
+'Les Mysteres de Paris' or 'Monte Cristo;' but I even find Georges Sand a
+bore," then as a critic Graham Vane fired up, extolled the _roman_ he
+would have given his ears for Isaura never to have written; but retired
+from the contest muttering inly, "How can I--I, Graham Vane--how can I be
+such an idiot; how can I in every hour of the twenty-four sigh to myself,
+'What are other women to me? Isaura, Isaura!'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                BOOK VII.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It is the first week in the month of May, 1870.  Celebrities are of rapid
+growth in the salons of Paris.  Gustave Rameau has gained the position
+for which he sighed.  The journal he edits has increased its hold on the
+public, and his share of the profits has been liberally augmented by the
+secret proprietor.  Rameau is acknowledged as a power in literary
+circles.  And as critics belonging to the same clique praise each other
+in Paris, whatever they may do in communities more rigidly virtuous, his
+poetry has been declared by authorities in the press to be superior to
+that of Alfred de Musset in vigour--to that of Victor Hugo in refinement;
+neither of which assertions would much, perhaps, shock a cultivated
+understanding.
+
+It is true that it (Gustave's poetry) has not gained a wide audience
+among the public.  But with regard to poetry nowadays, there are plenty
+of persons who say as Dr. Johnson said of the verse of Spratt, "I would
+rather praise it than read."
+
+At all events, Rameau was courted in gay and brilliant circles, and,
+following the general example of French _litterateurs_ in fashion, lived
+well up to the income he received, had a delightful bachelor's apartment,
+furnished with artistic effect, spent largely on the adornment of his
+person, kept a coupe, and entertained profusely at the cafe Anglais and
+the Maison Doree.  A reputation that inspired a graver and more unquiet
+interest had been created by the Vicomte de Mauleon.  Recent articles in
+the Sens Commun, written under the name of Pierre Firmin on the
+discussions on the vexed question of the plebiscite, had given umbrage to
+the Government, and Rameau had received an intimation that he, as editor,
+was responsible for the compositions of the contributors to the journal
+he edited; and that though, so long as Pierre Firmin had kept his caustic
+spirit within proper bounds, the Government had winked at the evasion of
+the law which required every political article in a journal to be signed
+by the real name of its author, it could do so no longer.  Pierre Firmin
+was apparently a _nom de plume_; if not, his identity must be proved, or
+Rameau would pay the penalty which his contributor seemed bent on
+incurring.
+
+Rameau, much alarmed for the journal that might be suspended, and for
+himself who might be imprisoned, conveyed this information through the
+publisher to his correspondent Pierre Firmin, and received the next day
+an article signed Victor de Mauleon, in which the writer proclaimed
+himself to be one and the same with Pierre Firmin, and, taking a yet
+bolder tone than he had before assumed, dared the Government to attempt
+legal measures against him.  The Government was prudent enough to
+disregard that haughty bravado, but Victor de Mauleon rose at once into
+political importance.  He had already in his real name and his quiet way
+established a popular and respectable place in Parisian society.  But if
+this revelation created him enemies whom he had not before provoked, he
+was now sufficiently acquitted, by tacit consent, of the sins formerly
+laid to his charge, to disdain the assaults of party wrath.  His old
+reputation for personal courage and skill in sword and pistol served,
+indeed, to protect him from such charges as a Parisian journalist does
+not reply to with his pen.  If he created some enemies, he created many
+more friends, or, at least, partisans and admirers.  He only needed fine
+and imprisonment to become a popular hero.
+
+A few days after be had thus proclaimed himself, Victor de Mauleon--who
+had before kept aloof from Rameau, and from salons at which he was likely
+to meet that distinguished minstrel--solicited his personal acquaintance,
+and asked him to breakfast.
+
+Rameau joyfully went.  He had a very natural curiosity to see the
+contributor whose articles had so mainly insured the sale of the Sens
+Commun.
+
+In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged man, with
+commanding port and courtly address, he failed to recognise any
+resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be-spectacled, shambling
+sexagenarian whom he had known as Lebeau.  Only now and then a tone of
+voice struck him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had
+heard the voice it resembled.  The thought of Lebeau did not occur to
+him; if it had occurred it would only have struck him as a chance
+coincidence.  Rameau, like most egotists, was rather a dull observer of
+men.  His genius was not objective.
+
+"I trust, Monsieur Rameau," said the Vicomte, as he and his guest were
+seated at the breakfast-table, "that you are not dissatisfied with the
+remuneration your eminent services in the journal have received."
+
+"The proprietor, whoever he be, has behaved most liberally," answered
+Rameau.
+
+"I take that compliment to myself, _cher confrere_; for though the
+expenses of starting the Sens Commun, and the caution money lodged, were
+found by a friend of mine, that was as a loan, which I have long since
+repaid, and the property in the journal is now exclusively mine.  I have
+to thank you not only for your own brilliant contributions, but for those
+of the colleagues you secured.  Monsieur Savarin's piquant criticisms
+were most valuable to us at starting.  I regret to have lost his aid.
+But as he has set up a new journal of his own, even he has not wit enough
+to spare for another.  _A propos_ of our contributors, I shall ask you to
+present me to the fair author of The Artist's Daughter.  I am of too
+prosaic a nature to appreciate justly the merits of a _roman_; but I have
+heard warm praise of this story from the young--they are the best judges
+of that kind of literature; and I can at least understand the worth of a
+contributor who trebled the sale of our journal.  It is a misfortune to
+us, indeed, that her work is completed, but I trust that the sum sent to
+her through our publisher suffices to tempt her to favour us with another
+roman in series."
+
+"Mademoiselle Cicogna," said Rameau, with a somewhat sharper intonation
+of his sharp voice, "has accepted for the republication of her _roman_ in
+a separate form terms which attest the worth of her genius, and has had
+offers from other journals for a serial tale of even higher amount than
+the sum so generously sent to her through your publisher."
+
+"Has she accepted them, Monsieur Rameau?  If so, _tant pis pour vous_.
+Pardon me, I mean that your salary suffers in proportion as the Sens
+Commun declines in sale."
+
+"She has not accepted them.  I advised her not to do so until she could
+compare them with those offered by the proprietor of the Sens Commun."
+
+"And your advice guides her?  Ah, _cher confrere_, you are a happy man!--
+you have influence over this young aspirant to the fame of a De Stael or
+a Georges Sand."
+
+"I flatter myself that I have some," answered Rameau, smiling loftily as
+he helped himself to another tumbler of.  Volnay wine--excellent, but
+rather heady.
+
+"So much the better.  I leave you free to arrange terms with Mademoiselle
+Cicogna, higher than she can obtain elsewhere, and kindly contrive my own
+personal introduction to her--you have breakfasted already?--permit me to
+offer you a cigar--excuse me if I do not bear you company; I seldom
+smoke--never of a morning.  Now to business, and the state of France.
+Take that easy-chair, seat yourself comfortably.  So!  Listen!  If ever
+Mephistopheles revisit the earth, how he will laugh at Universal Suffrage
+and Vote by Ballot in an old country like France, as things to be admired
+by educated men, and adopted by friends of genuine freedom!"
+
+"I don't understand you," said Rameau.
+
+"In this respect at least, let me hope that I can furnish you with
+understanding.
+
+"The Emperor has resorted to a plebiscite--viz., a vote by ballot and
+universal suffrage--as to certain popular changes which circumstances
+compel him to substitute for his former personal rule.  Is there a single
+intelligent Liberal who is not against that plebiscite?--is there any
+such who does not know that the appeal of the Emperor to universal
+suffrage and vote by ballot must result in a triumph over all the
+variations of free thought, by the unity which belongs to Order,
+represented through an able man at the head of the State?  The multitude
+never comprehend principles; principles are complex ideas; they
+comprehend a single idea, and the simplest idea is, a Name that rids
+their action of all responsibility to thought.
+
+"Well, in France there are principles superabundant which you can pit
+against the principle of Imperial rule.  But there is not one name you
+can pit against Napoleon the Third; therefore, I steer our little bark in
+the teeth of the popular gale when I denounce the plebiscite, and Le Sens
+Commun will necessarily fall in sale--it is beginning to fall already.
+We shall have the educated men with us, the rest against.  In every
+country--even in China, where all are highly educated--a few must be yet
+more highly educated than the many.  Monsieur Rameau, I desire to
+overthrow the Empire: in order to do that, it is not enough to have on my
+side the educated men, I must have the _canaille_--the _canaille_ of
+Paris and of the manufacturing towns.  But I use the canaille for my
+purpose--I don't mean to enthrone it.  You comprehend?--the _canaille
+quiescent_ is simply mud at the bottom of a stream; the _canaille_
+agitated is mud at the surface.  But no man capable of three ideas builds
+the palaces and senates of civilised society out of mud, be it at the top
+or the bottom of an ocean.  Can either you or I desire that the destinies
+of France shall be swayed by coxcombical artisans who think themselves
+superior to every man who writes grammar, and whose idea of a common-
+wealth is the confiscation of private property?"  Rameau, thoroughly
+puzzled by this discourse, bowed his head, and replied whisperingly,
+"Proceed.  You are against the Empire, yet against the populace!--What
+are you for? not, surely, the Legitimists?--are you Republican?
+Orleanist? or what?"
+
+"Your questions are very pertinent," answered the Vicomte, courteously,
+"and my answer shall be very frank.  I am against absolute rule, whether
+under a Buonaparte or a Bourbon.  I am for a free State, whether under a
+constitutional hereditary sovereign like the English or Belgian, or
+whether, republican in name, it be less democratic than constitutional
+monarchy in practice, like the American.  But as a man interested in the
+fate of _le Sens Commun_, I hold in profound disdain all crotchets for
+revolutionising the elements of Human Nature.  Enough of this abstract
+talk.  To the point.  You are of course aware of the violent meetings
+held by the Socialists, nominally against the plebiscite, really against
+the Emperor himself?"
+
+"Yes, I know at least that the working class are extremely discontented;
+the numerous strikes last month were not on a mere question of wages--
+they were against the existing forms of society.  And the articles by
+Pierre Firmin which brought me into collision with the Government, seemed
+to differ from what you now say.  They approve those strikes; they
+appeared to sympathise with the revolutionary meetings at Belleville and
+Montmartre."
+
+"Of course--we use coarse tools for destroying; we cast them aside for
+finer ones when we want to reconstruct.
+
+"I attended one of those meetings last night.  See, I have a pass for all
+such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he
+assumes--'Pom-de-Tair.'  A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of
+the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer out
+fragments of would-be thunderbolts.  Commissary of police yawns more
+wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes his
+penknife and pares his nails.  Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed
+silhouette of a man, and affecting a solemnity of mien which might have
+become the virtuous Guizot, moves this resolution: 'The French people
+condemns Charles Louis Napoleon the Third to the penalty of perpetual
+hard labour.'  Then up rises the commissary of police and says quietly,
+'I declare this meeting at an end.'
+
+"Sensation among the audience--they gesticulate--they screech--they
+bellow--the commissary puts on his greatcoat--the secretary gives a last
+touch to his nails and pockets his penknife--the audience disperses--the
+silhouette of a man effaces itself--all is over."
+
+"You describe the scene most wittily," said Rameau, laughing, but the
+laugh was constrained.  A would-be cynic himself, there was a something
+grave and earnest in the real cynic that awed him.
+
+"What conclusion do you draw from such a scene, _cher poete_" asked De
+Mauleon, fixing his keen quiet eyes on Rameau.
+
+"What conclusion?  Well, that--that--"
+
+"Yes, continue."
+
+"That the audience were sadly degenerated from the time when Mirabeau
+said to a Master of the Ceremonies, 'We are here by the power of the
+French people, and nothing but the point of the bayonet shall expel us.'"
+
+"Spoken like a poet, a French poet.  I suppose you admire M. Victor Hugo.
+Conceding that he would have employed a more sounding phraseology,
+comprising more absolute ignorance of men, times, and manners in
+unintelligible metaphor and melodramatic braggadocio, your answer might
+have been his; but pardon me if I add, it would not be that of Common
+Sense."
+
+"Monsieur le Vicomte might rebuke me more politely," said Rameau,
+colouring high.
+
+"Accept my apologies; I did not mean to rebuke, but to instruct.  The
+times are not those of 1789.  And Nature, ever repeating herself in the
+production of coxcombs and blockheads, never repeats herself in the
+production of Mirabeaus.  The Empire is doomed--doomed, because it is
+hostile to the free play of intellect.  Any Government that gives
+absolute preponderance to the many is hostile to intellect, for intellect
+is necessarily confined to the few.
+
+"Intellect is the most revengeful of all the elements of society.  It
+cares not what the materials through which it insinuates or forces its
+way to its seat.
+
+"I accept the aid of Pom-de-Tair.  I do not demean myself to the extent
+of writing articles that may favor the principles of Pom-de-Tair, signed
+in the name of Victor de Mauleon or of Pierre Firinin.
+
+"I will beg you, my dear editor, to obtain clever, smart writers, who
+know nothing about Socialists and Internationalists, who therefore will
+not commit _Le Sens Commun_ by advocating the doctrines of those idiots,
+but who will flatter the vanity of the _canaille_--vaguely; write any
+stuff they please about the renown of Paris, 'the eye of the world,'
+'the sun of the European system,' &c., of the artisans of Paris as
+supplying soul to that eye and fuel to that sun--any _blague_ of that
+sort--_genre Victor Hugo_; but nothing definite against life and
+property, nothing that may not be considered hereafter as the harmless
+extravagance of a poetic enthusiasm.  You might write such articles
+yourself.  In fine, I want to excite the multitude, and yet not to commit
+our journal to the contempt of the few.  Nothing is to be admitted that
+may bring the law upon us except it be signed by my name.  There may be a
+moment in which it would be desirable for somebody to be sent to prison:
+in that case, I allow no substitute--I go myself.
+
+"Now you have my most secret thoughts.  I intrust them to your judgment
+with entire confidence.  Monsieur Lebeau gave you a high character, which
+you have hitherto deserved.  By the way, have you seen anything lately of
+that bourgeois conspirator?"
+
+"No, his professed business of letter-writer or agent is transferred to a
+clerk, who says M. Lebeau is abroad."
+
+"Ah! I don't think that is true.  I fancy I saw him the other evening
+gilding along the lanes of Belleville.  He is too confirmed a conspirator
+to be long out of Paris; no place like Paris for seething brains."
+
+"Have you known M. Lebeau long?" asked Rameau.  "Ay, many years.  We are
+both Norman by birth, as you may perceive by something broad in our
+accent."
+
+"Ha! I knew your voice was familiar to me; certainly it does remind me of
+Lebeau's."
+
+"Normans are like each other in many things besides voice and accent--
+obstinacy, for instance, in clinging to ideas once formed; this makes
+them good friends and steadfast enemies.  I would advise no man to make
+an enemy of Lebeau.
+
+"_Au revoir, cher confrere_.  Do not forget to present me to Mademoiselle
+Cicogna."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+On leaving De Mauleon and regaining his coupe, Rameau felt at once
+bewildered and humbled, for he was not prepared for the tone of careless
+superiority which the Vicomte assumed over him.  He had expected to be
+much complimented, and he comprehended vaguely that he had been somewhat
+snubbed.  He was not only irritated--he was bewildered; for De Mauleon's
+political disquisitions did not leave any clear or definite idea on his
+mind as to the principles which as editor of the Sens Commun he was to
+see adequately represented and carried out.  In truth, Rameau was one of
+those numerous Parisian politicians who have read little and reflected
+less on the government of men and States.  Envy is said by a great French
+writer to be the vice of Democracies.  Envy certainly had made Rameau a
+democrat.  He could talk and write glibly enough upon the themes of
+equality and fraternity, and was so far an ultra-democrat that he thought
+moderation the sign of a mediocre understanding.
+
+De Mauleon's talk, therefore, terribly perplexed him.  It was unlike
+anything he had heard before.  Its revolutionary professions, accompanied
+with so much scorn for the multitude, and the things the multitude
+desired, were Greek to him.  He was not shocked by the cynicism which
+placed wisdom in using the passions of mankind as tools for the interests
+of an individual; but he did not understand the frankness of its avowal.
+
+Nevertheless the man had dominated over and subdued him.  He recognized
+the power of his contributor without clearly analysing its nature--
+a power made up of large experience of life, of cold examination of
+doctrines that heated others--of patrician calm--of intellectual sneer--
+of collected confidence in self.
+
+Besides, Rameau felt, with a nervous misgiving, that in this man, who so
+boldly proclaimed his contempt for the instruments he used, he had found
+a master.  De Mauleon, then, was sole proprietor of the journal from
+which Rameau drew his resources; might at any time dismiss him; might at
+any time involve the journal in penalties which, even if Rameau could
+escape in his official capacity as editor, still might stop the Sens
+Commun, and with it Rameau's luxurious subsistence.
+
+Altogether the visit to De Mauleon had been anything but a pleasant one.
+He sought, as the carriage rolled on, to turn his thoughts to more
+agreeable subjects, and the image of Isaura rose before him.  To do him
+justice he had learned to love this girl as well as his nature would
+permit: he loved her with the whole strength of his imagination, and
+though his heart was somewhat cold, his imagination was very ardent.
+He loved her also with the whole strength of his vanity, and vanity was
+even a more preponderant organ of his system than imagination.  To carry
+off as his prize one who had already achieved celebrity, whose beauty and
+fascination of manner were yet more acknowledged than her genius, would
+certainly be a glorious triumph.
+
+Every Parisian of Rameau's stamp looks forward in marriage to a brilliant
+salon.  What salon more brilliant than that which he and Isaura united
+could command?  He had long conquered his early impulse of envy at
+Isaura's success,--in fact that success had become associated with his
+own, and had contributed greatly to his enrichment.  So that to other
+motives of love he might add the prudential one of interest.  Rameau well
+knew that his own vein of composition, however lauded by the cliques, and
+however unrivalled in his own eyes, was not one that brings much profit
+in the market.  He compared himself to those poets who are too far in
+advance of their time to be quite as sure of bread and cheese as they are
+of immortal fame.
+
+But he regarded Isaura's genius as of a lower order, and a thing in
+itself very marketable.  Marry her, and the bread and cheese were so
+certain that he might elaborate as slowly as he pleased the verses
+destined to immortal fame.  Then he should be independent of inferior
+creatures like Victor de Mauleon.  But while Rameau convinced himself
+that he was passionately in love with Isaura, he could not satisfy
+himself that she was in love with him.
+
+Though during the past year they had seen each other constantly, and
+their literary occupations had produced many sympathies between them--
+though he had intimated that many of his most eloquent love-poems were
+inspired by her--though he had asserted in prose, very pretty prose too,
+that she was all that youthful poets dream of,--yet she had hitherto
+treated such declarations with a playful laugh, accepting them as elegant
+compliments inspired by Parisian gallantry; and he felt an angry and sore
+foreboding that if he were to insist too seriously on the earnestness of
+their import and ask her plainly to be his wife, her refusal would be
+certain, and his visits to her house might be interdicted.
+
+Still Isaura was unmarried, still she had refused offers of marriage from
+men higher placed than himself,--still he divined no one whom she could
+prefer.  And as he now leaned back in his coupe he muttered to himself,
+"Oh, if I could but get rid of that little demon Julie, I would devote
+myself so completely to winning Isaura's heart that I must succeed!--but
+how to get rid of Julie?  She so adores me, and is so headstrong!  She is
+capable of going to Isaura--showing my letters--making such a scene!"
+
+Here he checked the carriage at a cafe on the Boulevard--descended,
+imbibed two glasses of absinthe,--and then feeling much emboldened,
+remounted his coupe and directed the driver to Isaura's apartment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Yes, celebrities are of rapid growth in the salons of Paris.  Far more
+solid than that of Rameau, far more brilliant than that of De Mauleon,
+was the celebrity which Isaura had now acquired.  She had been unable to
+retain the pretty suburban villa at A------.  The owner wanted to alter
+and enlarge it for his own residence, and she had been persuaded by
+Signora Venosta, who was always sighing for fresh salons to conquer,
+to remove (towards the close of the previous year) to apartments in the
+centre of the Parisian _beau monde_.  Without formally professing to
+receive, on one evening in the week her salon was open to those who had
+eagerly sought her acquaintance--comprising many stars in the world of
+fashion, as well as those in the world of art and letters.  And as she
+had now wholly abandoned the idea of the profession for which her voice
+had been cultivated, she no longer shrank from the exercise of her
+surpassing gift of song for the delight of private friends.  Her
+physician had withdrawn the interdict on such exercise.  His skill,
+aided by the rich vitality of her constitution, had triumphed over all
+tendencies to the malady for which he had been consulted.  To hear Isaura
+Cicogna sing in her own house was a privilege sought and prized by many
+who never read a word of her literary compositions.  A good critic of a
+book is rare; but good judges of a voice are numberless.  Adding this
+attraction of song to her youth, her beauty, her frank powers of
+converse--an innocent sweetness of manner free from all conventional
+affectation--and to the fresh novelty of a genius which inspired the
+young with enthusiast and beguiled the old to indulgence, it was no
+wonder that Isaura became a celebrity at Paris.
+
+Perhaps it was a wonder that her head was not turned by the adulation
+that surrounded her.  But I believe, be it said with diffidence, that a
+woman of mind so superior that the mind never pretends to efface the
+heart, is less intoxicated with flattery than a man equally exposed to
+it.
+
+It is the strength of her heart that keeps her head sober.  Isaura had
+never yet overcome her first romance of love; as yet, amid all her
+triumphs, there was not a day in which her thoughts did not wistfully,
+mournfully, fly back to those blessed moments in which she felt her cheek
+colour before a look, her heart beat at the sound of a footfall.  Perhaps
+if there had been the customary _finis_ to this young romance--the
+lover's deliberate renunciation, his formal farewell--the girl's pride
+would ere this have conquered her affection,--possibly--who knows?--
+replaced it.
+
+But, reader, be you male or female, have you ever known this sore trial
+of affection and pride, that from some cause or other, to you mysterious,
+the dear intercourse to which you had accustomed the secret life of your
+life, abruptly ceases; you know that a something has come between you and
+the beloved which you cannot distinguish, cannot measure, cannot guess,
+and therefore cannot surmount; and you say to yourself at the dead of
+solitary night, "Oh for an explanation!  Oh for one meeting more!  All
+might be so easily set right; or if not, I should know the worst, and
+knowing it, could conquer!"
+
+This trial was Isaura's.  There had been no explanation, no last farewell
+between her and Graham.  She divined--no woman lightly makes a mistake
+there--that he loved her!  She knew that this dread something had
+intervened between her and him when he took leave of her before others so
+many months ago; that this dread something still continued--what was it?
+She was certain that it would vanish, could they but once meet again and
+not before others.  Oh for such a meeting!
+
+She could not herself destroy hope.  She could not marry another.  She
+would have no heart to give to another while he was free, while in doubt
+if his heart was still her own.  And thus her pride did not help her to
+conquer her affection.
+
+Of Graham Vane she heard occasionally.  He had ceased to correspond with
+Savarin; but among those who most frequented her salon were the Morleys.
+Americans so well educated and so well placed as the Morleys knew
+something about every Englishman of the social station of Graham Vane.
+Isaura learned from them that Graham, after a tour on the Continent, had
+returned to England at the commencement of the year, had been invited to
+stand for Parliament, had refused, that his name was in the list
+published by the Morning Post of the elite whose arrivals in London, or
+whose presence at dinner-tables, is recorded as an event.  That the
+Athenaeum had mentioned a rumour that Graham Vane was the author of a
+political pamphlet which, published anonymously, had made no
+inconsiderable sensation.  Isaura sent to England for that pamphlet: the
+subject was somewhat dry, and the style, though clear and vigorous, was
+scarcely of the eloquence which wins the admiration of women; and yet she
+learned every word of it by heart.
+
+We know how little she dreamed that the celebrity which she hailed as an
+approach to him was daily making her more remote.  The sweet labours she
+undertook for that celebrity continued to be sweetened yet more by secret
+associations with the absent one.  How many of the passages most admired
+could never have been written had he been never known!
+
+And she blessed those labours the more that they upheld her from the
+absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing
+torture of unsatisfied conjecture.  She did comply with Madame de
+Grantmesnil's command--did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into
+green fields and along flowery river-banks, and did enjoy that ideal by-
+world.
+
+But still the one image which reigned over her human heart moved beside
+her in the gardens of fairyland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Isaura was seated in her pretty salon, with the Venosta, M. Savarin, the
+Morleys, and the financier Louvier, when Rameau was announced.
+
+"Ha!" cried Savarin, "we were just discussing a matter which nearly
+concerns you, _cher poete_.  I have not seen you since the announcement
+that Pierre Firmin is no other than Victor de Mauleon.  _Ma foi_, that
+worthy seems likely to be as dangerous with his pen as he was once with
+his sword.  The article in which he revealed himself makes a sharp lunge
+on the Government.  'Take care of yourself.  When hawks and nightingales
+fly together the hawk may escape, and the nightingale complain of the
+barbarity of kings, in a cage: 'flebiliter gemens infelix avis.''"
+
+"He is not fit to conduct a journal," replied Rameau, magniloquently,
+"who will not brave a danger for his body in defence of the right to
+infinity for his thought."
+
+"Bravo!" said Mrs. Morley, clapping her pretty hands.  "That speech
+reminds me of home.  The French are very much like the Americans in their
+style of oratory."
+
+"So," said Louvier, "my old friend the Vicomte has come out as a writer,
+a politician, a philosopher; I feel hurt that he kept this secret from me
+despite our intimacy.  I suppose you knew it from the first, M. Rameau?"
+
+"No, I was as much taken by surprise as the rest of the world.  You have
+long known M. de Mauleon?"
+
+"Yes, I may say we began life together--that is, much at the same time."
+
+"What is he like in appearance?" asked Mrs. Morley.  "The ladies thought
+him very handsome when he was young," replied Louvier.  "He is still a
+fine-looking man, about my height."
+
+"I should like to know him!" cried Mrs. Morley, "if only to tease that
+husband of mine.  He refuses me the dearest of woman's rights.--I can't
+make him jealous."
+
+"You may have the opportunity of knowing this _ci-devant_ Lovelace very
+soon," said Rameau, "for he has begged me to present him to Mademoiselle
+Cicogna, and I will ask her permission to do so, on Thursday evening when
+she receives."
+
+Isaura, who had hitherto attended very listlessly to the conversation,
+bowed assent.  "Any friend of yours will be welcome.  But I own the
+articles signed in the name of Pierre Firmin do not prepossess me in
+favour of their author."
+
+"Why so?" asked Louvier; "surely you are not an Imperialist?"
+
+"Nay, I do not pretend to be a politician at all, but there is something
+in the writing of Pierre Firmin that pains and chills me."
+
+"Yet the secret of its popularity," said Savarin, "is that it says what
+every one says--only better."
+
+"I see now that it is exactly that which displeases me; it is the Paris
+talk condensed into epigram: the graver it is the less it elevates--the
+lighter it is, the more it saddens."
+
+"That is meant to hit me," said Savarin, with his sunny laugh--"me whom
+you call cynical."
+
+"No, dear M. Savarin; for above all your cynicism is genuine gaiety, and
+below it solid kindness.  You have that which I do not find in M. de
+Mauleon's writing, nor often in the talk of the salon--you have
+youthfulness."
+
+"Youthfulness at sixty--flatterer!"
+
+"Genius does not count its years by the almanac," said Mrs. Morley.
+"I know what Isaura means--she is quite right; there is a breath of
+winter in M. de Mauleon's style, and an odour of fallen leaves.  Not that
+his diction wants vigour; on the contrary, it is crisp with hoar-frost.
+But the sentiments conveyed by the diction are those of a nature sear and
+withered.  And it is in this combination of brisk words and decayed
+feelings that his writing represents the talk and mind of Paris.  He and
+Paris are always fault-finding: fault-finding is the attribute of old
+age."
+
+Colonel Morley looked round with pride, as much as to say, "Clever talker
+my wife."
+
+Savarin understood that look, and replied to it courteously.  "Madame has
+a gift of expression which Emile de Girardin can scarcely surpass.  But
+when she blames us for fault-finding, can she expect the friends of
+liberty to praise the present style of things?"
+
+"I should be obliged to the friends of liberty," said the Colonel, drily,
+"to tell me how that state of things is to be mended.  I find no
+enthusiasm for the Orleanists, none for a Republic; people sneer at
+religion; no belief in a cause, no adherence to an opinion.  But the
+worst of it is that, like all people who are _blases_, the Parisians are
+eager for strange excitement, and ready to listen to any oracle who
+promises a relief from indifferentism.  This it is which makes the Press
+more dangerous in France than it is in any other country.  Elsewhere the
+Press sometimes leads, sometimes follows, public opinion.  Here there is
+no public opinion to consult, and instead of opinion the Press represents
+passion."
+
+"My dear Colonel Morley," said Savarin, "I hear you very often say that
+a Frenchman cannot understand America.  Permit me to observe that an
+American cannot understand France--or at least Paris.  _Apropos_ of Paris
+that is a large speculation of yours, Louvier, in the new suburb."
+
+"And a very sound one; I advise you to invest in it.  I can secure you at
+present 5 per cent. on the rental; that is nothing--the houses will be
+worth double when the Rue de Louvier is completed."
+
+"Alas! I have no money; my new journal absorbs all my capital."
+
+"Shall I transfer the money I hold for you, Signorina, and add to them
+whatever you may have made by your delightful _roman_, as yet lying idle,
+to this investment?  I cannot say more in its favour than this: I have
+embarked a very large portion of my capital in the Rue de Louvier, and I
+flatter myself that I am not one of those men who persuade their friends
+to do a foolish thing by setting them the example."
+
+"Whatever you advise on such a subject," said Isaura, graciously, "is
+sure to be as wise as it is kind!"
+
+"You consent, then?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Here the Venosta, who had been listening with great attention to
+Louvier's commendation of this investment, drew him aside, and whispered
+in his ear: "I suppose, M. Louvier, that one can't put a little money-a
+very little money--poco-poco pocolino, into your street."
+
+"Into my street!  Ah, I understand--into the speculation of the Rue de
+Louvier!  Certainly you can.  Arrangements are made on purpose to suit
+the convenience of the smallest capitalists--from 500 francs upwards."
+
+"And you feel quite sure that we shall double our money when the street
+is completed--I should not like to have my brains in my heels."
+
+     ["'Avere il cervello nella calcagna,"--viz., to act without prudent
+     reflection.]
+
+"More than double it, I hope, long before the street is completed."
+
+"I have saved a little money--very little.  I have no relations, and I
+mean to leave it all to the Signorina; and if it could be doubled, why,
+there would be twice as much to leave her."
+
+"So there would," said Louvier.  "You can't do better than put it all
+into the Rue de Louvier.  I will send you the necessary papers to-morrow,
+when I send hers to the Signorina."
+
+Louvier here turned to address himself to Colonel Morley, but finding
+that degenerate son of America indisposed to get cent. per cent. for his
+money when offered by a Parisian, he very soon took his leave.  The other
+visitors followed his example, except Rameau, who was left alone with the
+Venosta and Isaura.  The former had no liking for Rameau, who showed her
+none of the attentions her innocent vanity demanded, and she soon took
+herself off to her own room to calculate the amount of her savings, and
+dream of the Rue de Louvier and "golden joys."
+
+Rameau approaching his chair to Isaura's then commenced conversation,
+drily enough, upon pecuniary matters; acquitting himself of the mission
+with which De Mauleon had charged him, the request for a new work from
+her pen for the Sens Commun, and the terms that ought to be asked for
+compliance.  The young lady-author shrank from this talk.  Her private
+income, though modest, sufficed for her wants, and she felt a sensitive
+shame in the sale of her thoughts and fancies.
+
+Putting hurriedly aside the mercantile aspect of the question, she said
+that she had no other work in her mind at present--that, whatever her
+vein of invention might be, it flowed at its own will, and could not be
+commanded.
+
+"Nay," said Rameau, "this is not true.  We fancy, in our hours of
+indolence, that we must wait for inspiration; but once force ourselves to
+work, and ideas spring forth at the wave of the pen.  You may believe me
+here, I speak from experience: I, compelled to work, and in modes not to
+my taste--I do my task I know not how.  I rub the lamp, 'the genius
+comes.'"
+
+"I have read in some English author that motive power is necessary to
+continued labour: you have motive power, I have none."
+
+"I do not quite understand you."
+
+"I mean that a strong ruling motive is required to persist in any regular
+course of action that needs effort: the motive with the majority of men
+is the need of subsistence; with a large number (as in trades or
+professions), not actually want, but a desire of gain, and perhaps of
+distinction, in their calling: the desire of professional distinction
+expands into the longings for more comprehensive fame, more exalted
+honours, with the few who become great writers, soldiers, statesmen,
+orators."
+
+"And do you mean to say you have no such motive?"
+
+"None in the sting of want, none in the desire of gain."
+
+"But fame?"
+
+"Alas!  I thought so once.  I know not now--I begin to doubt if fame
+should be sought by women."  This was said very dejectedly.
+
+"Tut, dearest Signorina! what gadfly has stung you?  Your doubt is a
+weakness unworthy of your intellect; and even were it not, genius is
+destiny and will be obeyed: you must write, despite yourself--and your
+writing must bring fame, whether you wish it or not."
+
+Isaura was silent, her head drooped on her breast--there were tears in
+her downcast eyes.
+
+Rameau took her hand, which she yielded to him passively, and clasping it
+in both his own, he rushed on impulsively--
+
+"Oh, I know what these misgivings are when we feel ourselves solitary,
+unloved: how often have they been mine!  But how different would labour
+be if shared and sympathised with by a congenial mind, by a heart that
+beats in unison with one's own!"
+
+Isaura's breast heaved beneath her robe, she sighed softly.
+
+"And then how sweet the fame of which the one we love is proud! how
+trifling becomes the pang of some malignant depreciation, which a word
+from the beloved one can soothe!  O Signorina!  O Isaura! are we not made
+for each other?  Kindred pursuits, hopes, and fears in common; the same
+race to run, the same goal to win!  I need a motive stronger than I have
+yet known for the persevering energy that insures success: supply to me
+that motive.  Let me think that whatever I win in the strife of the world
+is a tribute to Isaura.  No, do not seek to withdraw this hand, let me
+claim it as mine for life.  I love you as man never loved before--do not
+reject my love."
+
+They say the woman who hesitates is lost.  Isaura hesitated, but was not
+yet lost.  The words she listened to moved her deeply.  Offers of
+marriage she had already received: one from a rich middle-aged noble,
+a devoted musical virtuoso; one from a young avocat fresh from the
+provinces, and somewhat calculating on her dot; one from a timid but
+enthusiastic admirer of her genius and her beauty, himself rich,
+handsome, of good birth, but with shy manners and faltering tongue.
+
+But these had made their proposals with the formal respect habitual to
+French decorum in matrimonial proposals.  Words so eloquently impassioned
+as Gustave Rameau's had never before thrilled her ears;  Yes, she was
+deeply moved; and yet, by that very emotion she knew that it was not to
+the love of this wooer that her heart responded.
+
+There is a circumstance in the history of courtship familiar to the
+experience of many women, that while the suitor is pleading his cause,
+his language may touch every fibre in the heart of his listener, yet
+substitute, as it were, another presence for his own.  She may be saying
+to herself, "Oh that another had said those words!" and be dreaming of
+the other, while she hears the one.  Thus it was with Isaura, and not
+till Rameau's voice had ceased did that dream pass away, and with a
+slight shiver she turned her face towards the wooer sadly and pityingly.
+"It cannot be," she said, in a low whisper; "I were not worthy of your
+love could I accept it.  Forget that you have so spoken; let me still be
+a friend admiring your genius, interested in your career.  I cannot be
+more.  Forgive me if I unconsciously led you to think I could, I am so
+grieved to pain you."
+
+"Am I to understand," said Rameau, coldly, for his _amour propre_ was
+resentful, "that the proposals of another have been more fortunate than
+mine?" And he named the youngest and comeliest of those whom she had
+rejected.  "Certainly not," said Isaura.
+
+Rameau rose and went to the window, turning his face from her.  In
+reality he was striving to collect his thoughts and decide on the course
+it were most prudent for him now to pursue.  The fumes of the absinthe
+which had, despite his previous forebodings, emboldened him to hazard his
+avowal, had now subsided into the languid reaction which is generally
+consequent on that treacherous stimulus, a reaction not unfavourable to
+passionless reflection.  He knew that if he said he could not conquer his
+love, he would still cling to hope, and trust to perseverance and time,
+he should compel Isaura to forbid his visits and break off their familiar
+intercourse.  This would be fatal to the chance of yet winning her, and
+would also be of serious disadvantage to his more worldly interests.  Her
+literary aid might become essential to the journal on which his fortunes
+depended; and at all events, in her conversation, in her encouragement,
+in her sympathy with the pains and joys of his career, he felt a support,
+a comfort, nay, an inspiration.  For the spontaneous gush of her fresh
+thoughts and fancies served to recruit his own jaded ideas, and enlarge
+his own stinted range of invention.  No, he could not commit himself to
+the risk of banishment from Isaura.
+
+And mingled with meaner motives for discretion, there was one of which he
+was but vaguely conscious, purer and nobler.  In the society of this
+girl, in whom whatever was strong and high in mental organisation became
+so sweetened into feminine grace by gentleness of temper and kindliness
+of disposition, Rameau felt himself a better man.  The virgin-like
+dignity with which she moved, so untainted by a breath of scandal, amid
+salons in which the envy of virtues doubted sought to bring innocence
+itself into doubt, warmed into a genuine reverence the cynicism of his
+professed creed.
+
+While with her, while under her chastening influence, he was sensible of
+a poetry infused within him far more true to the Camoenae than all he had
+elaborated into verse.  In these moments he was ashamed of the vices he
+had courted as distractions.  He imagined that with her all his own, it
+would be easy to reform.
+
+No; to withdraw wholly from Isaura was to renounce his sole chance of
+redemption.
+
+While these thoughts, which it takes so long to detail, passed rapidly
+through his brain, he felt a soft touch on his arm, and, turning his face
+slowly, encountered the tender, compassionate eyes of Isaura.
+
+"Be consoled, dear friend," she said, with a smile, half cheering, half
+mournful.  "Perhaps for all true artists the solitary lot is the best."
+
+"I will try to think so," answered Rameau; "and meanwhile I thank you
+with a full heart for the sweetness with which you have checked my
+presumption--the presumption shall not be repeated.  Gratefully I accept
+the friendship you deign to tender me.  You bid me forget the words I
+uttered.  Promise in turn that you will forget them--or at least consider
+them withdrawn.  You will receive me still as friend?"
+
+"As friend, surely: yes.  Do we not both need friends?" She held out her
+hand as she spoke; he bent over it, kissed it with respect, and the
+interview thus closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+It was late in the evening that day when a man who had the appearance of
+a decent bourgeois, in the lower grades of that comprehensive class,
+entered one of the streets in the Faubourg Montmartre, tenanted chiefly
+by artisans.  He paused at the open doorway of a tall narrow house, and
+drew back as he heard footsteps descending a very gloomy staircase.
+
+The light from a gas lamp on the street fell full on the face of the
+person thus quitting the house--the face of a young and handsome man,
+dressed with the quiet elegance which betokened one of higher rank or
+fashion than that neighbourhood was habituated to find among its
+visitors.  The first comer retreated promptly into the shade, and,
+as by sudden impulse, drew his hat low down over his eyes.
+
+The other man did not, however, observe him, went his way with a quick
+step along the street, and entered another house some yards distant.
+
+"What can that pious Bourbonite do here?" muttered the first comer.
+"Can he be a conspirator?  Diable! 'tis as dark as Erebus on that
+staircase."
+
+Taking cautious hold of the banister, the man now ascended the stairs.
+On the landing of the first floor there was a gas lamp which threw upward
+a faint ray that finally died at the third story.  But at that third
+story the man's journey ended; he pulled a bell at the door to the right,
+and in another moment or so the door was opened by a young woman of
+twenty-eight or thirty, dressed very simply, but with a certain neatness
+not often seen in the wives of artisans in the Faubourg Montmartre.  Her
+face, which, though pale and delicate, retained much of the beauty of
+youth, became clouded as she recognised the visitor; evidently the visit
+was not welcome to her.
+
+"Monsieur Lebeau again!" she exclaimed, shrinking back.
+
+"At your service, _chere dame_.  The goodman is of course at home?  Ah,
+I catch sight of him," and sliding by the woman, M. Lebeau passed the
+narrow lobby in which she stood, through the open door conducting into
+the room in which Armand Monnier was seated, his chin propped on his
+hand, his elbow resting on a table, looking abstractedly into space.  In
+a corner of the room two small children were playing languidly with a set
+of bone tablets, inscribed with the letters of the alphabet.  But
+whatever the children were doing with the alphabet, they were certainly
+not learning to read from it.
+
+The room was of fair size and height, and by no means barely or shabbily
+furnished.  There was a pretty clock on the mantelpiece.  On the wall
+were hung designs for the decoration of apartments, and shelves on which
+were ranged a few books.
+
+The window was open, and on the sill were placed flowerpots; you could
+scent the odour they wafted into the room.  Altogether it was an
+apartment suited to a skilled artisan earning high wages.  From the room
+we are now in, branched on one side a small but commodious kitchen; on
+the other side, on which the door was screened by a portiere, with a
+border prettily worked by female hands--some years ago, for it was faded
+now--was a bedroom, communicating with one of less size in which the
+children slept.  We do not enter those additional rooms, but it may be
+well here to mention them as indications of the comfortable state of an
+intelligent skilled artisan of Paris, who thinks he can better that state
+by some revolution which may ruin his employer.
+
+Monnier started up at the entrance of Lebeau, and his face showed that he
+did not share the dislike to the visit which that of the female partner
+of his life had evinced.  On the contrary, his smile was cordial, and
+there was a hearty ring in the voice which cried out--
+
+"I am glad to see you--something to do?  Eh!"
+
+"Always ready to work for liberty, _mon brave_."
+
+"I hope so: what's in the wind now?"
+
+"O Armand, be prudent--be prudent!" cried the woman, piteously.  "Do not
+lead him into further mischief, Monsieur Lebeau;" as she faltered forth
+the last words, she bowed her head over the two little ones, and her
+voice died in sobs.
+
+"Monnier," said Lebeau, gravely, "Madame is right.  I ought not to lead
+you into further mischief; there are three in the room who have better
+claims on you than--"
+
+"The cause of millions," interrupted Monnier.
+
+"No."
+
+He approached the woman and took up one of the children very tenderly,
+stroking back its curls and kissing the face, which, if before surprised
+and saddened by the mother's sob, now smiled gaily under the father's
+kiss.
+
+"Canst thou doubt, my Heloise," said the artisan, mildly, "that whatever
+I do thou and these are not uppermost in my thoughts?  I act for thine
+interest and theirs--the world as it exists is the foe of you three.  The
+world I would replace it by will be more friendly."
+
+The poor woman made no reply, but as he drew her towards him, she leant
+her head upon his breast and wept quietly.  Monnier led her thus from the
+room, whispering words of soothing.  The children followed the parents
+into the adjoining chamber.  In a few minutes Monnier returned, shutting
+the door behind him, and drawing the portiere close.
+
+"You will excuse me, Citizen, and my poor wife--wife she is to me and to
+all who visit here, though the law says she is not."
+
+"I respect Madame the more for her dislike to myself," said Lebeau, with
+a somewhat melancholy smile.
+
+"Not dislike to you personally, Citizen, but dislike to the business
+which she connects with your visits, and she is more than usually
+agitated on that subject this evening, because, just before you came,
+another visitor had produced a great effect on her feelings--poor dear
+Heloise!"
+
+"Indeed! how?"
+
+"Well, I was employed in the winter in redecorating the salon, and
+boudoir, of Madame de Vandemar; her son, M. Raoul, took great interest in
+superintending the details.  He would sometimes talk to me very civilly,
+not only on my work, but on other matters.  It seems that Madame now
+wants something done to the _salle-a-manger_, and asked old Gerard--my
+late master, you know--to send me.  Of course he said that was
+impossible--for, though I was satisfied with my own wages, I had induced
+his other men to strike, and was one of the ringleaders in the recent
+strike of artisans in general--a dangerous man, and he would have nothing
+more to do with me.  So M. Raoul came to see and talk to me--scarce gone
+before you rang at the bell--you might have almost met him on the
+stairs."
+
+"I saw a beau monsieur come out of the house.  And so his talk has
+affected Madame."
+
+"Very much; it was quite brother-like.  He is one of the religious set,
+and they always get at the weak side of the soft sex."
+
+"Ay," said Lebeau, thoughtfully; "if religion were banished from the laws
+of men, it would still find a refuge in the hearts of women.  But Raoul
+de Vandemar did not presume to preach to Madame upon the sin of loving
+you and your children?"
+
+"I should like to have heard him preach to her," cried Monnier, fiercely.
+"No, he only tried to reason with me about matters he could not
+understand."
+
+"Strikes?"
+
+"Well, not exactly strikes--he did not contend that we workmen had not
+full right to combine and to strike for obtaining fairer money's worth
+for our work; but he tried to persuade me that where, as in my case, it
+was not a matter of wages, but of political principle--of war against
+capitalists--I could but injure myself and mislead others.  He wanted to
+reconcile me to old Gerard, or to let him find me employment elsewhere;
+and when I told him that my honour forbade me to make terms for myself
+till those with whom I was joined were satisfied, he said, 'But if this
+lasts much longer, your children will not look so rosy;' then poor
+Heloise began to wring her hands and cry, and he took me aside and wanted
+to press money on me--as a loan.  He spoke so kindly that I could not be
+angry; but when he found I would take nothing, he asked me about some
+families in the street of whom he had a list, and who, he was informed,
+were in great distress.  That is true; I am feeding some of them myself
+out of my savings.  You see, this young Monsieur belongs to a society of
+men, many as young as he is, which visits the poor and dispenses charity.
+I did not feel I had a right to refuse aid for others, and I told him
+where his money would be best spent.  I suppose he went there when he
+left me."
+
+"I know the society you mean, that of St. Francois de Sales.  It
+comprises some of the most ancient of that old noblesse to which the
+_ouvriers_ in the great Revolution were so remorseless."
+
+"We _ouvriers_ are wiser now; we see that in assailing them, we gave
+ourselves worse tyrants in the new aristocracy of the capitalists.  Our
+quarrel now is that of artisans against employers."
+
+"Of course, I am aware of that; but to leave general politics, tell me
+frankly, How has the strike affected you as yet?  I mean in purse?  Can
+you stand its pressure?  If not, you are above the false pride of not
+taking help from me, a fellow-conspirator, though you were justified in
+refusing it when offered by Raoul de Vandemar, the servant of the
+Church."
+
+"Pardon, I refuse aid from any one, except for the common cause.  But do
+not fear for me, I am not pinched as yet.  I have had high wages for some
+years, and since I and Heloise came together, I have not wasted a sous
+out of doors, except in the way of public duty, such as making converts
+at the Jean Jacques and elsewhere; a glass of beer and a pipe don't cost
+much.  And Heloise is such a house-wife, so thrifty, scolds me if I buy
+her a ribbon, poor love!  No wonder that I would pull down a society that
+dares to scoff at her--dares to say she is not my wife, and her children
+are base born.  No, I have some savings left yet.  War to society, war to
+the knife!"
+
+"Monnier," said Lebeau, in a voice that evinced emotion, "listen to me: I
+have received injuries from society which, when they were fresh, half-
+maddened me--that is twenty years ago.  I would then have thrown myself
+into any plot against society that proffered revenge; but society, my
+friend, is a wall of very strong masonry, as it now stands; it may be
+sapped in the course of a thousand years, but stormed in a day--no.  You
+dash your head against it--you scatter your brains, and you dislodge a
+stone.  Society smiles in scorn, effaces the stain, and replaces the
+stone.  I no longer war against society.  I do war against a system in
+that society which is hostile to me--systems in France are easily
+overthrown.  I say this because I want to use you, and I do not want to
+deceive."
+
+"Deceive me, bah!  You are an honest man," cried Monnier; and he seized
+Lebeau's hand, and shook it with warmth and vigour.
+
+"But for you I should have been a mere grumbler.  No doubt I should have
+cried out where the shoe pinched, and railed against laws that vex me;
+but from the moment you first talked to me I became a new man.  You
+taught me to act, as Rousseau and Madame de Grantmesnil had taught me to
+think and to feel.  There is my brother, a grumbler too, but professes to
+have a wiser head than mine.  He is always warning me against you--
+against joining a strike--against doing any thing to endanger my skin.
+I always went by his advice till you taught me that it was well enough
+for women to talk and complain; men should dare and do."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Lebeau, "your brother is a safer counsellor to a
+_pere de famille_ than I.  I repeat what I have so often said before: I
+desire, and I resolve, that the Empire of M. Bonaparte shall be
+overthrown.  I see many concurrent circumstances to render that desire
+and resolve of practicable fulfilment.  You desire and resolve the same
+thing.  Up to that point we can work together.  I have encouraged your
+action only so far as it served my design; but I separate from you the
+moment you would ask me to aid your design in the hazard of experiments
+which the world has never yet favoured, and trust me, Monnier, the world
+never will favour."
+
+"That remains to be seen," said Monnier, with compressed, obstinate lips.
+"Forgive me, but you are not young; you belong to an old school."
+
+"Poor young man!" said Lebeau, readjusting his spectacles, "I recognise
+in you the genius of Paris, be the genius good or evil.  Paris is never
+warned by experience.  Be it so.  I want you so much, your enthusiasm is
+so fiery, that I can concede no more to the mere sentiment which makes me
+say to myself, 'It is a shame to use this great-hearted, wrong-headed
+creature for my personal ends.'  I come at once to the point--that is,
+the matter on which I seek you this evening.  At my suggestion, you have
+been a ringleader in strikes which have terribly shaken the Imperial
+system, more than its Ministers deem; now I want a man like you to assist
+in a bold demonstration against the Imperial resort to a rural priest-
+ridden suffrage, on the part of the enlightened working class of Paris."
+
+"Good!" said Monnier.
+
+"In a day or two the result of the plebiscite will be known.  The result
+of universal suffrage will be enormously in favour of the desire
+expressed by one man."
+
+"I don't believe it," said Monnier, stoutly.  "France cannot be so
+hoodwinked by the priests."
+
+"Take what I say for granted," resumed Lebeau, calmly.  "On the 8th of
+this month we shall know the amount of the majority--some millions of
+French votes.  I want Paris to separate itself from France, and declare
+against those blundering millions.  I want an _emeute_, or rather a
+menacing demonstration--not a premature revolution, mind.  You must avoid
+bloodshed."
+
+"It is easy to say that beforehand; but when a crowd of men once meets in
+the streets of Paris--"
+
+"It can do much by meeting, and cherishing resentment if the meeting be
+dispersed by an armed force, which it would be waste of life to resist."
+
+"We shall see when the time comes," said Monnier, with a fierce gleam in
+his bold eyes.
+
+"I tell you, all that is required at this moment is an evident protest of
+the artisans of Paris against the votes of the 'rurals' of France.  Do
+you comprehend me?"
+
+"I think so; if not, I obey.  What we _ouvriers_ want is what we have not
+got--a head to dictate action to us."
+
+"See to this, then.  Rouse the men you can command.  I will take care
+that you have plentiful aid from foreigners.  We may trust to the
+_confreres_ of our council to enlist Poles and Italians; Gaspard le Noy
+will turn out the volunteer rioters at his command.  Let the _emeute_ be
+within, say a week, after the vote of the plebiscite is taken.  You will
+need that time to prepare."
+
+"Be contented--it shall be done."
+
+"Good night, then."  Lebeau leisurely took up his hat and drew on his
+gloves--then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he turned briskly on the
+artisan and said in quick blunt tones:
+
+"Armand Monnier, explain to me why it is that you--a Parisian artisan,
+the type of a class the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited that
+exists on the face of earth--take without question, with so docile a
+submission, the orders of a man who plainly tells you he does not
+sympathise in your ultimate objects, of whom you really know very little,
+and whose views you candidly own you think are those of an old and
+obsolete school of political reasoners."
+
+"You puzzle me to explain," said Monnier, with an ingenuous laugh, that
+brightened up features stern and hard, though comely when in repose.
+"Partly, because you are so straightforward, and do not talk _blague_;
+partly, because I don't think the class I belong to would stir an inch
+unless we had a leader of another class--and you give me at least that
+leader.  Again, you go to that first stage which we all agree to take,
+and--well, do you want me to explain more?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"_Et bien_!  you have warned me, like an honest man; like an honest man I
+warn you.  That first step we take together; I want to go a step further;
+you retreat, you say, 'No:' I reply you are committed; that further step
+you must take, or I cry '_Traitre_!--_au la lanterne_!'  You talk of
+'superior experience:' bah! what does experience really tell you?  Do you
+suppose that Philippe Egalite, when he began to plot against Louis XVI.,
+meant to vote for his kinsman's execution by the guillotine?  Do you
+suppose that Robespierre, when he commenced his career as the foe of
+capital punishment, foresaw that he should be the Minister of the Reign
+of Terror?  Not a bit of it.  Each was committed by his use of those he
+designed for his tools: so must you be--or you perish."
+
+Lebeau, leaning against the door, heard the frank avowal he had courted
+without betraying a change of countenance.  But when Armand Monnier had
+done, a slight movement of his lips showed emotion; was it of fear or
+disdain?
+
+"Monnier," he said, gently; "I am so much obliged to you for the manly
+speech you have made.  The scruples which my conscience had before
+entertained are dispelled.  I dreaded lest I, a declared wolf, might
+seduce into peril an innocent sheep.  I see I have to deal with a wolf of
+younger vigour and sharper fangs than myself, so much the better: obey my
+orders now; leave it to time to say whether I obey yours later.  _Au
+revoir_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Isaura's apartment, on the following Thursday evening, was more filled
+than usual.  Besides her habitual devotees in the artistic or literary
+world, there were diplomatists and deputies commixed with many fair
+chiefs of _la jeunesse doree_; amongst the latter the brilliant
+Enguerrand de Vandemar, who, deeming the acquaintance of every celebrity
+essential to his own celebrity in either Carthage, the _beau monde_, or
+the _demi-monde_, had, two Thursdays before, made Louvier attend her
+soiree and present him.  Louvier, though gathering to his own salons
+authors and artists, very rarely favoured their rooms with his presence;
+he did not adorn Isaura's party that evening.  But Duplessis was there,
+in compensation.  It had chanced that Valerie had met Isaura at some
+house in the past winter, and conceived an enthusiastic affection for
+her: since then, Valerie came very often to see her, and made a point of
+dragging with her to Isaura's Thursday reunions her obedient father.
+Soirees, musical or literary, were not much in his line; but he had no
+pleasure like that of pleasing his spoilt child.  Our old friend Frederic
+Lemercier was also one of Isaura's guests that night.  He had become more
+and more intimate with Duplessis, and Duplessis had introduced him to the
+fair Valerie as "_un jeune homme plein de moyens, qui ira loin_."
+
+Savarin was there of course, and brought with him an English gentleman of
+the name of Bevil, as well known at Paris as in London--invited
+everywhere--popular everywhere,--one of those welcome contributors to the
+luxuries of civilised society who trade in gossip, sparing no pains to
+get the pick of it, and exchanging it liberally sometimes for a haunch of
+venison, sometimes for a cup of tea.  His gossip not being adulterated
+with malice was in high repute for genuine worth.
+
+If Bevil said, "This story is a fact," you no more thought of doubting
+him than you would doubt Rothschild if he said, "This is Lafitte of '48."
+
+Mr. Bevil was at present on a very short stay at Paris, and, naturally
+wishing to make the most of his time, he did not tarry beside Savarin,
+but, after being introduced to Isaura, flitted here and there through the
+assembly.
+
+                         "Apis Matinae--
+                         More modoque--
+                         Grata carpentis thyma"--
+
+The bee proffers honey, but bears a sting.
+
+The room was at its fullest when Gustave Rameau entered, accompanied by
+Monsieur de Mauleon.
+
+Isaura was agreeably surprised by the impression made on her by the
+Vicomte's appearance and manner.  His writings, and such as she had heard
+of his earlier repute, had prepared her to see a man decidedly old, of
+withered aspect and sardonic smile--aggressive in demeanour--forward or
+contemptuous in his very politeness--a Mephistopheles engrafted on the
+stem of a Don Juan.  She was startled by the sight of one who, despite
+his forty-eight years--and at Paris a man is generally older at forty-
+eight than he is elsewhere--seemed in the zenith of ripened manhood--
+startled yet more by the singular modesty of a deportment too thoroughly
+high-bred not to be quietly simple--startled most by a melancholy
+expression in eyes that could be at times soft, though always so keen,
+and in the grave pathetic smile which seemed to disarm censure of past
+faults in saying, "I have known sorrows."
+
+He did not follow up his introduction to his young hostess by any of the
+insipid phrases of compliment to which she was accustomed; but, after
+expressing in grateful terms his thanks for the honour she had permitted
+Rameau to confer on him, he moved aside, as if he had no right to detain
+her from other guests more worthy her notice, towards the doorway, taking
+his place by Enguerrand amidst a group of men of whom Duplessis was the
+central figure.
+
+At that time--the first week in May, 1870--all who were then in Paris
+will remember that there were two subjects uppermost in the mouths of
+men: first, the plebiscite; secondly, the conspiracy to murder the
+Emperor--which the disaffected considered to be a mere fable, a pretence
+got up in time to serve the plebiscite and prop the Empire.
+
+Upon this latter subject Duplessis had been expressing himself with
+unwonted animation.  A loyal and earnest Imperialist, it was only with
+effort that he could repress his scorn of that meanest sort of gossip
+which is fond of ascribing petty motives to eminent men.
+
+To him nothing could be more clearly evident than the reality of this
+conspiracy, and he had no tolerance for the malignant absurdity of
+maintaining that the Emperor or his Ministers could be silly and wicked
+enough to accuse seventy-two persons of a crime which the police had been
+instructed to invent.
+
+As De Mauleon approached, the financier brought his speech to an abrupt
+close.  He knew in the Vicomte de Mauleon the writer of articles which
+had endangered the Government, and aimed no pointless shafts against its
+Imperial head.
+
+"My cousin," said Enguerrand, gaily, as he exchanged a cordial shake of
+the hand with Victor, "I congratulate you on the fame of journalist, into
+which you have vaulted, armed cap-a pie, like a knight of old into his
+saddle; but I don't sympathise with the means you have taken to arrive at
+that renown.  I am not myself an Imperialist--a Vandemar can be scarcely
+that.  But if I am compelled to be on board a ship, I don't wish to take
+out its planks and let in an ocean, when all offered to me instead is a
+crazy tub and a rotten rope."
+
+"_Tres bien_," said Duplessis, in Parliamentary tone and phrase.
+
+"But," said De Mauleon, with his calm smile, "would you like the captain
+of the ship, when the sky darkened and the sea rose, to ask the common
+sailors 'whether they approved his conduct on altering his course or
+shortening his sail'?  Better trust to a crazy tub and a rotten rope than
+to a ship in which the captain consults a plebiscite."
+
+"Monsieur," said Duplessis, "your metaphor is ill chosen no metaphor
+indeed is needed.  The head of the State was chosen by the voice of the
+people, and, when required to change the form of administration which the
+people had sanctioned, and inclined to do so from motives the most
+patriotic and liberal, he is bound again to consult the people from whom
+he holds his power.  It is not, however, of the plebiscite we were
+conversing, so much as of the atrocious conspiracy of assassins--so
+happily discovered in time.  I presume that Monsieur de Mauleon must
+share the indignation which true Frenchmen of every party must feel
+against a combination united by the purpose of murder."
+
+The Vicomte bowed as in assent.  "But do you believe," asked a Liberal
+Depute, "that such a combination existed, except in the visions of the
+police or the cabinet of a Minister?"
+
+Duplessis looked keenly at De Mauleon while this question was put to him.
+Belief or disbelief in the conspiracy was with him, and with many, the
+test by which a sanguinary revolutionist was distinguished from an honest
+politician.
+
+"Ma foi," answered De Mauleon, shrugging his shoulders, "I have only one
+belief left; but that is boundless.  I believe in the folly of mankind in
+general, and of Frenchmen in particular.  That seventy-two men should
+plot the assassination of a sovereign on whose life interests so numerous
+and so watchful depend, and imagine they could keep a secret which any
+drunkard amongst them would blab out, any tatterdemalion would sell, is a
+_betise_ so gross that I think it highly probable.  But pardon me if I
+look upon the politics of Paris much as I do upon its mud--one must pass
+through it when one walks in the street.  One changes one's shoes before
+entering the salon.  A word with you, Enguerrand,"--and taking his
+kinsman's arm he drew him aside from the circle.  "What has become of
+your brother?  I see nothing of him now."
+
+"Oh, Raoul," answered Enguerrand, throwing himself on a couch in a
+recess, and making room for De Mauleon beside him--"Raoul is devoting
+himself to the distressed _ouvriers_ who have chosen to withdraw from
+work.  When he fails to persuade them to return, he forces food and fuel
+on their wives and children.  My good mother encourages him in this
+costly undertaking, and no one but you who believe in the infinity of
+human folly would credit me when I tell you that his eloquence has drawn
+from me all the _argent de poche_ I get from our shop.  As for himself,
+he has sold his horses, and even grudges a cab-fare, saying, 'That is a
+meal for a family.'  Ah! if he had but gone into the Church, what a saint
+would have deserved canonisation!"
+
+"Do not lament--he will probably have what is a better claim than mere
+saintship on Heaven--martyrdom," said De Mauleon, with a smile in which
+sarcasm disappeared in melancholy.  "Poor Raoul!--and what of my other
+cousin, the _beau Marquis_?  Several months ago his Legitimist faith
+seemed vacillating--he talked to me very fairly about the duties a
+Frenchman owed to France, and hinted that he should place his sword at
+the command of Napoleon III.  I have not yet heard of him as a _soldat de
+France_--I hear a great deal of him as a _viveur de Paris_."
+
+"Don't you know why his desire for a military career was frost-bitten?"
+
+"No! why?"
+
+"Alain came from Bretagne profoundly ignorant of most things known to a
+_gamin_ of Paris.  When he conscientiously overcame the scruples natural
+to one of his name and told the Duchesse de Tarascon that he was ready to
+fight under the flag of France whatever its colour, he had a vague
+reminiscence of ancestral Rochebriants earning early laurels at the head
+of their regiments.  At all events he assumed as a matter of course that
+he, in the first rank as _gentilhomme_, would enter the army, if as a
+_sous-lieutenant_, still as _gentilhomme_.  But when told that, as he had
+been at no military college, he could only enter the ranks as a private
+soldier--herd with private soldiers--for at least two years before,
+passing through the grade of corporal, his birth, education, habits of
+life could, with great favour, raise him to the station of a sous-
+lieutenant, you may conceive that the martial ardour of a Rochebriant was
+somewhat cooled."
+
+"If he knew what the dormitory of French privates is, and how difficult
+a man well educated well brought up, finds it, first, to endure the
+coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blasphemy, and then, having endured and
+been compelled to share them, ever enforce obedience and discipline as a
+superior among those with whom just before he was an equal, his ardour
+would not have been merely cooled--it would have been changed into
+despair for the armies of France, if hereafter they are met by those
+whose officers have been trained to be officers from the outset and have
+imbibed from their cradle an education not taught to the boy-pedants from
+school--the two-fold education how with courtesy to command, how with
+dignity to obey.  To return to Rochebriant, such salons as I frequent are
+somewhat formal--as befits my grave years and my modest income; I may
+add, now that you know my vocation, befits me also as a man who seeks
+rather to be instructed than amused.  In those salons I did, last year
+sometimes, however, meet Rochebriant--as I sometimes still meet you; but
+of late he has deserted such sober reunions, and I hear with pain that he
+is drifting among those rocks against which my own youth was shipwrecked.
+Is the report true?"
+
+"I fear," said Enguerrand, reluctantly, "that at least the report is not
+unfounded.  And my conscience accuses me of having been to blame in the
+first instance.  You see, when Alain made terms with Louvier by which he
+obtained a very fair income, if prudently managed, I naturally wished
+that a man of so many claims to social distinction, and who represents
+the oldest branch of my family, should take his right place in our world
+of Paris.  I gladly therefore presented him to the houses and the men
+most _a la mode_--advised him as to the sort of establishment, in
+apartments, horses, &c., which it appeared to me that he might reasonably
+afford--I mean such as, with his means, I should have prescribed to
+myself--"
+
+"Ah! I understand.  But you, dear Enguerrand, are a born Parisian, every
+inch of you: and a born Parisian is, whatever be thought to the contrary,
+the best manager in the world.  He alone achieves the difficult art of
+uniting thrift with show.  It is your Provincial who comes to Paris in
+the freshness of undimmed youth, who sows his whole life on its barren
+streets.  I guess the rest: Alain is ruined."  Enguerrand, who certainly
+was so far a born Parisian that with all his shrewdness and _savoir
+faire_, he had a wonderfully sympathetic heart, very easily moved, one
+way or the other--Enguerrand winced at his elder kinsman's words
+complimentarily reproachful, and said in unwonted tones of humility:
+"Cousin, you are cruel, but you are in the right.  I did not calculate
+sufficiently on the chances of Alain's head being turned.  Hear my
+excuse.  He seemed to me so much more thoughtful than most at our age
+are, so much more stately and proud; well, also so much more pure, so
+impressed with the responsibilities of station, so bent on retaining the
+old lands in Bretagne; by habit and rearing so simple and self-denying,
+--that I took it for granted he was proof against stronger temptations
+than those which a light nature like my own puts aside with a laugh.  And
+at first I had no reason to think myself deceived, when, some months ago,
+I heard that he was getting into debt, losing at play, paying court to
+female vampires, who drain the life-blood of those on whom they fasten
+their fatal lips.  Oh, then I spoke to him earnestly!"
+
+"And in vain?"
+
+"In vain.  A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, whom you may have
+heard of--"
+
+"Certainly, and met; a friend of Louvier's--"
+
+"The same man--has obtained over him an influence which so far subdues
+mine, that he almost challenged me when I told him his friend was a
+scamp.  In fine, though Alain and I have not actually quarrelled, we pass
+each other with, '_Bon jour, mon ami._'"
+
+"Hum!  My dear Enguerrand, you have done all you could.  Flies will be
+flies, and spiders, spiders, till the earth is destroyed by a comet.
+Nay, I met a distinguished naturalist in America who maintained that we
+shall find flies and spiders in the next world."
+
+"You have been in America?  Ah, true--I remember, California!"
+
+"Where have I not been?  Tush! music--shall I hear our fair hostess
+sing?"
+
+"I am afraid not to-night: because Madame S---------- is to favour us,
+and the Signorina makes it a rule not to sing at her own house when
+professional artists do.  You must hear the Cicogna quietly some day;
+such a voice, nothing like it."
+
+Madame S---------, who, since she had learned that there was no cause to
+apprehend that Isaura might become her professional rival, conceived for
+her a wonderful affection, and willingly contributed her magnificent
+gifts of song to the charms of Isaura's salon, now began a fragment from
+_I Puritani_, which held the audience as silent as the ghosts listening
+to Sappho, and when it was over, several of the guests slipped away,
+especially those who disliked music, and feared Madame S--------- might
+begin again.  Enguerrand was not one of such soulless recreants, but he
+had many other places to go to.  Besides, Madame S-------- was no novelty
+to him.
+
+De Mauleon now approached Isaura, who was seated next to Valerie, and
+after well-merited encomium on Madame S------'s performance, slid into
+some critical comparisons between that singer and those of a former
+generation, which interested Isaura, and evinced to her quick perceptions
+that kind of love for music which has been refined by more knowledge of
+the art than is common to mere amateurs.
+
+"You have studied music, Monsieur de Mauleon," she said.  "Do you not
+perform yourself?"
+
+"I?  No.  But music has always had a fatal attraction for me.  I ascribe
+half the errors of my life to that temperament which makes me too
+fascinated by harmonies--too revolted by discords."
+
+"I should have thought such a temperament would have led from errors--are
+not errors discords?"
+
+"To the inner sense, yes; but to the outer sense not always.  Virtues are
+often harsh to the ear--errors very sweet-voiced.  The sirens did not
+sing out of tune.  Better to stop one's ears than glide on Scylla or be
+merged into Charybdis."
+
+"Monsieur," cried Valerie, with a pretty _brusquerie_ which became her
+well, "you talk like a Vandal."
+
+"It is, I think, by Mademoiselle Duplessis that I have the honour to be
+rebuked.  Is Monsieur your father very susceptible to music?"
+
+"Well, I cannot say that he cares much for it.  But then his mind is so
+practical--"
+
+"And his life so successful.  No Scylla, no Charybdis for him.  However,
+Mademoiselle, I am not quite the Vandal you suppose, I do not say that
+susceptibility to the influence of music may not be safe, nay, healthful,
+to others it was not so to me in my youth.  It can do me no harm now."
+
+Here Duplessis came up and whispered his daughter "it was time to leave;
+they had promised the Duchesse de Tarascon to assist at the soiree she
+gave that night."  Valerie took her father's arm with a brightening smile
+and a heightened colour.  Alain de Rochebriant might probably be at the
+Duchesse's.
+
+"Are you not going also to the Hotel de Tarascon, M. de Mauleon?" asked
+Duplessis.
+
+"No; I was never there but once.  The Duchesse is an Imperialist, at once
+devoted and acute, and no doubt very soon divined my lack of faith in her
+idols."
+
+Duplessis frowned, and hastily led Valerie away.
+
+In a few minutes the room was comparatively deserted.  De Mauleon,
+however, lingered by the side of Isaura till all the other guests were
+gone.  Even then he lingered still, and renewed the interrupted
+conversation with her, the Venosta joining therein; and so agreeable did
+he make himself to her Italian tastes by a sort of bitter-sweet wisdom
+like that of her native proverbs--comprising much knowledge of mankind on
+the unflattering side of humanity in that form of pleasantry which has a
+latent sentiment of pathos--that the Venosta exclaimed, "Surely you must
+have been brought up in Florence!"
+
+There was that in De Mauleon's talk hostile to all which we call romance
+that excited the imagination of Isaura, and compelled her instinctive
+love for whatever is more sweet, more beautiful, more ennobling on the
+many sides of human life, to oppose what she deemed the paradoxes of a
+man who had taught himself to belie even his own nature.  She became
+eloquent, and her countenance, which in ordinary moments owed much of its
+beauty to an expression of meditative gentleness, was now lighted up by
+the energy of earnest conviction--the enthusiasm of an impassioned zeal.
+
+Gradually De Mauleon relaxed his share in the dialogue, and listened to
+her, rapt and dreamily as in his fiery youth he had listened to the songs
+of the sirens.  No siren Isaura!  She was defending her own cause, though
+unconsciously--defending the vocation of art as the embellisher of
+external nature, and more than embellisher of the nature which dwells
+crude, but plastic in the soul of man: indeed therein the creator of a
+new nature, strengthened, expanded, and brightened in proportion as it
+accumulates the ideas that tend beyond the boundaries of the visible and
+material nature, which is finite; for ever seeking in the unseen and the
+spiritual the goals in the infinite which it is their instinct to divine.
+"That which you contemptuously call romance," said Isaura, "is not
+essential only to poets and artists.  The most real side of every life,
+from the earliest dawn of mind in the infant, is the romantic."
+
+"When the child is weaving flower-chains, chasing butterflies, or sitting
+apart and dreaming what it will do in the future, is not that the child's
+real life, and yet is it not also the romantic?"
+
+"But there comes a time when we weave no flower-chains, and chase no
+butterflies."
+
+"Is it so?--still on one side of life, flowers and butterflies may be
+found to the last; and at least to the last are there no dreams of the
+future?  Have you no such dreams at this moment? and without the romance
+of such dreams, would there be any reality to human life which could
+distinguish it from the life of the weed that rots on Lethe?"
+
+"Alas, Mademoiselle," said De Mauleon, rising to take leave, "your
+argument must rest without answer.  I would not, if I could, confute the
+beautiful belief that belongs to youth, fusing into one rainbow all the
+tints that can colour the world.  But the Signora Venosta will
+acknowledge the truth of an old saying expressed in every civilised
+language, but best, perhaps in that of the Florentine--'You might as well
+physic the dead as instruct the old.'"
+
+"But you are not old!" said the Venosta, with Florentine politeness,--"
+you! not a grey hair."
+
+"'Tis not by the grey of the hair that one knows the age of the heart,"
+answered De Mauleon, in another paraphrase of Italian proverb, and he was
+gone.
+
+As he walked homeward, through deserted streets, Victor de Mauleon
+thought to himself, "Poor girl, how I pity her! married to a Gustave
+Rameau--married to any man--nothing in the nature of man, be he the best
+and the cleverest, can ever realise the dream of a girl who is pure and
+has genius.  Ah, is not the converse true?  What girl, the best and the
+cleverest, comes up to the ideal of even a commonplace man--if he ever
+dreamed of an ideal!"
+
+Then he paused, and in a moment or so afterwards his thought knew such
+questionings no more.  It turned upon personalities, on stratagems and
+plots, on ambition.  The man had more than his share of that peculiar
+susceptibility which is one of the characteristics of his countrymen--
+susceptibility to immediate impulse--susceptibility to fleeting
+impressions.  It was a key to many mysteries in his character when he
+owned his subjection to the influence of music, and in music recognised
+not the seraph's harp, but the siren's song.  If you could have
+permanently fixed Victor de Mauleon in one of the good moments of his
+life--even now--some moment of exquisite kindness--of superb generosity
+--of dauntless courage--you would have secured a very rare specimen of
+noble humanity.  But so to fix him was impossible.
+
+That impulse of the moment vanished the moment after; swept aside by the
+force of his very talents--talents concentrated by his intense sense of
+individuality--sense of wrongs or of rights--interests or objects
+personal to himself.  He extended the royal saying, "_L'etat, c'est moi_,"
+to words far more grandiloquent.  "The universe, 'tis I."  The Venosta
+would have understood him and smiled approvingly, if he had said with
+good-humoured laugh, "I dead, the world is dead!"  That is an Italian
+proverb, and means much the same thing.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                BOOK VIII.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+On the 8th of May the vote of the plebiscite was recorded,--between seven
+and eight millions of Frenchmen in support of the Imperial programme--in
+plain words, of the Emperor himself--against a minority of 1,500,000.
+But among the 1,500,000 were the old throne-shakers-those who compose and
+those who lead the mob of Paris.  On the 14th, as Rameau was about to
+quit the editorial bureau of his printing-office, a note was brought in
+to him which strongly excited his nervous system.  It contained a request
+to see him forthwith, signed by those two distinguished foreign members
+of the Secret Council of Ten, Thaddeus Loubinsky and Leonardo Raselli.
+
+The meetings of that Council had been so long suspended that Rameau
+had almost forgotten its existence.  He gave orders to admit the
+conspirators.  The two men entered, the Pole, tall, stalwart, and with
+martial stride--the Italian, small, emaciated, with skulking, noiseless,
+cat-like step, both looking wondrous threadbare, and in that state called
+"shabby genteel," which belongs to the man who cannot work for his
+livelihood, and assumes a superiority over the man who can.  Their
+outward appearance was in notable discord with that of the poet-
+politician--he all new in the last fashions of Parisian elegance, and
+redolent of Parisian prosperity and _extrait de Mousseline_!
+
+"Confrere," said the Pole, seating himself on the edge of the table,
+while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece, and glanced round the
+room with furtive eye, as if to detect its innermost secrets, or decide
+where safest to drop a Lucifer-match for its conflagration,--
+"_confrere_," said the Pole, "your country needs you--"
+
+"Rather the cause of all countries," interposed the Italian softly,--
+"Humanity."
+
+"Please to explain yourselves; but stay, wait a moment," said Rameau; and
+rising, he went to the door, opened it, looked forth, ascertained that
+the coast was clear, then reclosed the door as cautiously as a prudent
+man closes his pocket whenever shabby-genteel visitors appeal to him in
+the cause of his country, still more if they appeal in that of Humanity.
+
+"Confrere," said the Pole, "this day a movement is to be made--a
+demonstration on behalf of your country--"
+
+"Of Humanity," again softly interposed the Italian.  "Attend and share
+it," said the Pole.
+
+"Pardon me," said Rameau, "I do not know what you mean.  I am now the
+editor of a journal in which the proprietor does not countenance
+violence; and if you come to me as a member of the Council, you must be
+aware that I should obey no orders but that of its president, whom I--
+I have not seen for nearly a year; indeed I know not if the Council still
+exists."
+
+"The Council exists, and with it the obligation it imposes," replied
+Thaddeus.
+
+"Pampered with luxury," here the Pole raised his voice, "do you dare to
+reject the voice of Poverty and Freedom?"
+
+"Hush, dear but too vehement confrere," murmured the bland Italian;
+"permit me to dispel the reasonable doubts of our _confrere_," and he
+took out of his breast-pocket a paper which he presented to Rameau; on it
+were written these words:
+
+"This evening May 24th.  Demonstration.--Faubourg du Temple.--Watch
+events, under orders of A. M. Bid the youngest member take that first
+opportunity to test nerves and discretion.  He is not to act, but to
+observe."
+
+No name was appended to this instruction, but a cipher intelligible to
+all members of the Council as significant of its president, Jean Lebeau.
+
+"If I err not," said the Italian, "Citizen Rameau is our youngest
+confrere."
+
+Rameau paused.  The penalties for disobedience to an order of the
+President of the Council were too formidable to be disregarded.  There
+could be no doubt that,--though his name was not mentioned, he, Rameau,
+was accurately designated as the youngest member of the Council.  Still,
+however he might have owed his present position to the recommendation of
+Lebeau, there was nothing in the conversation of M. de Mauleon which
+would warrant participation in a popular _emeute_ by the editor of a
+journal belonging to that mocker of the mob.  Ah! but--and here again he
+glanced over the paper--he was asked "not to act; but to observe."  To
+observe was the duty of a journalist.  He might go to the demonstration
+as De Mauleon confessed he had gone to the Communist Club, a
+philosophical spectator.
+
+"You do not disobey this order?" said the Pole, crossing his arms.
+
+"I shall certainly go into the Faubourg du Temple this evening," answered
+Rameau, drily, "I have business that way."
+
+"Bon!" said the Pole; "I did not think you would fail us, though you do
+edit a journal which says not a word on the duties that bind the French
+people to the resuscitation of Poland."
+
+"And is not pronounced in decided accents upon the cause of the human
+race," put in the Italian, whispering.
+
+"I do not write the political articles in Le Seas Commun," answered
+Rameau; "and I suppose that our president is satisfied with them since he
+recommended me to the preference of the person who does.  Have you more
+to say?  Pardon me, my time is precious, for it does not belong to me."
+
+"Eno'!" said the Italian, "we will detain you no longer."  Here, with a
+bow and a smile, he glided towards the door.
+
+"Confrere," muttered the Pole, lingering, "you must have become very
+rich!--do not forget the wrongs of Poland--I am their Representative--I
+--speaking in that character, not as myself individually--I have not
+breakfasted!"
+
+Rameau, too thoroughly Parisian not to be as lavish of his own money as
+he was envious of another's, slipped some pieces of gold in the Pole's
+hand.  The Pole's bosom heaved with manly emotion: "These pieces bear the
+effigies of the tyrant--I accept them as redeemed from disgrace by their
+uses to Freedom."
+
+"Share them with Signor Raselli in the name of the same cause," whispered
+Rameau, with a smile he might have plagiarised from De Mauleon.
+
+The Italian, whose ear was inured to whispers, heard and turned round as
+he stood at the threshold.
+
+"No, confrere of France--no, confrere of Poland--I am Italian.  All ways
+to take the life of an enemy are honourable--no way is honourable which
+begs money from a friend."
+
+An hour or so later, Rameau was driven in his comfortable coupe to the
+Faubourg du Temple.
+
+Suddenly, at the angle of a street, his coachman was stopped--a rough-
+looking man appeared at the door--__"Descends, mon petit bourgeois__."
+Behind the rough-looking man were menacing faces.
+
+Rameau was not physically a coward--very few Frenchmen are, still fewer
+Parisians; and still fewer no matter what their birthplace, the men whom
+we call vain--the men who over-much covet distinction, and over-much
+dread reproach.
+
+"Why should I descend at your summons?" said Rameau, haughtily.  "Bah!
+Coachman, drive on!"
+
+The rough-looking man opened the door, and silently extended a hand to
+Rameau, saying gently: "Take my advice, _mon bourgeois_.  Get out--we
+want your carriage.  It is a day of barricades--every little helps, even
+your coupe!"
+
+While this man spoke others gesticulated; some shrieked out, "He is an
+employer! he thinks he can drive over the employed!"
+
+Some leader of the crowd--a Parisian crowd always has a classical leader,
+who has never read the classics--thundered forth, "Tarquin's car!  Down
+with Tarquin!"  Therewith came a yell, "_A la lanterne_--Tarquin!"
+
+We Anglo-Saxons, of the old country or the new, are not familiarised to
+the dread roar of a populace delighted to have a Roman authority for
+tearing us to pieces; still Americans know what is Lynch law.  Rameau was
+in danger of Lynch law, when suddenly a face not unknown to him
+interposed between himself and the rough-looking man.
+
+"Ha!" cried this new comer, "my young confrere, Gustave Rameau, welcome!
+Citizens, make way.  I answer for this patriot--I, Armand Monnier.  He
+comes to help use!  Is this the way you receive him?"  Then in a low
+voice to Rameau, "Come out.  Give your coupe to the barricade.  What
+matters such rubbish?  Trust to me--I expected you.  Hist!--Lebeau bids
+me see that you are safe."  Rameau then, seeking to drape himself in
+majesty,--as the aristocrats of journalism in a city wherein no other
+aristocracy is recognised naturally and commendably do, when ignorance
+combined with physical strength asserts itself to be a power, beside
+which the power of knowledge is what a learned poodle is to a tiger--
+Rameau then descended from his coupe, and said to this Titan of labour,
+as a French marquis might have said to his valet, and as, when the French
+marquis has become a ghost of the past, the man who keeps a coupe says to
+the man who mends its wheels, "Honest fellow, I trust you."
+
+Monnier led the journalist through the mob to the rear of the barricade
+hastily constructed.  Here were assembled very motley groups.
+
+The majority were ragged boys, the _gamins_ of Paris, commingled with
+several women of no reputable appearance, some dingily, some gaudily
+apparelled.  The crowd did not appear as if the business in hand was a
+very serious one.  Amidst the din of voices the sounds of laughter rose
+predominant, jests and _bon mots_ flew from lip to lip.  The astonishing
+good-humour of the Parisians was not yet excited into the ferocity that
+grows out of it by a street contest.  It was less like a popular _emeute_
+than a gathering of schoolboys, bent not less on fun than on mischief.
+But, still, amid this gayer crowd were sinister, lowering faces; the
+fiercest were not those of the very poor, but rather of artisans, who,
+to judge by their dress, seemed well off of men belonging to yet higher
+grades.  Rameau distinguished amongst these the _medecin des pauvres_,
+the philosophical atheist, sundry young, long-haired artists, middle aged
+writers for the Republican press, in close neighbourhood with ruffians of
+villainous aspect, who might have been newly returned from the galleys.
+None were regularly armed; still revolvers and muskets and long knives
+were by no means unfrequently interspersed among the rioters.  The whole
+scene was to Rameau a confused panorama, and the dissonant tumult of
+yells and laughter, of menace and joke, began rapidly to act on his
+impressionable nerves.  He felt that which is the prevalent character of
+a Parisian riot--the intoxication of an impulsive sympathy; coming there
+as a reluctant spectator, if action commenced he would have been borne
+readily into the thick of the action--he could not have helped it;
+already he grew impatient of the suspense of strife.  Monnier having
+deposited him safely with his back to a wall, at the corner of a street
+handy for flight, if flight became expedient, had left him for several
+minutes, having business elsewhere.  Suddenly the whisper of the Italian
+stole into his ear--"These men are fools.  This is not the way to do
+business; this does not hurt the robber of Nice--Garibaldi's Nice: they
+should have left it to me."
+
+"What would you do?"
+
+"I have invented a new machine," whispered the Friend of humanity; "it
+would remove all at one blow--lion and lioness, whelp and jackals--and
+then the Revolution if you will! not this paltry tumult.  The cause of
+the human race is being frittered away.  I am disgusted with Lebeau.
+Thrones are not overturned by _gamins_."
+
+Before Rameau could answer, Monnier rejoined him.  The artisan's face was
+overcast--his lips compressed, yet quivering with indignation.
+"Brother," he said to Rameau, "to-day the cause is betrayed"--(the word
+_trahi_ was just then coming into vogue at Paris)--"the blouses I counted
+on are recreant.  I have just learned that all is quiet in the other
+_quartiers_ where the rising was to have been simultaneous with this.  We
+are in a _guet-apens_--the soldiers will be down on us in a few minutes;
+hark! don't you hear the distant tramp?  Nothing for us but to die like
+men.  Our blood will be avenged later.  Here," and he thrust a revolver
+into Rameau's hand.  Then with a lusty voice that rang through the crowd,
+he shouted "_Vive le peuple_!"  The rioters caught and re-echoed the cry,
+mingled with other cries,' "_Vive la Republique_!" "_Vive le drapeau
+rouge_!"
+
+The shouts were yet at their full when a strong hand grasped Monnier's
+arm, and a clear, deep, but low voice thrilled through his ear: "Obey!
+I warned you.  No fight to-day.  Time not ripe.  All that is needed is
+done--do not undo it.  Hist! the _sergens de ville_ are force enough to
+disperse the swarm of those gnats.  Behind the _sergens_ come soldiers
+who will not fraternise.  Lose not one life to-day.  The morrow when we
+shall need every man--nay, every _gamin_--will dawn soon.  Answer not.
+Obey!"  The same strong hand quitting its hold on Monnier, then seized
+Rameau by the wrist, and the same deep voice said, "Come with me."
+Rameau, turning in amaze, not unmixed with anger, saw beside him a tall
+man with sombrero hat pressed close over his head, and in the blouse of a
+labourer, but through such disguise he recognized the pale grey whiskers
+and green spectacles of Lebeau.  He yielded passively to the grasp that
+led him away down the deserted street at the angle.
+
+At the further end of that street, however, was heard the steady thud of
+hoofs.
+
+"The soldiers are taking the mob at its rear," said Lebeau, calmly; "we
+have not a moment to lose--this way," and he plunged into a dismal court,
+then into a labyrinth of lanes, followed mechanically by Rameau.  They
+issued at last on the Boulevards, in which the usual loungers were
+quietly sauntering, wholly unconscious of the riot elsewhere.  "Now, take
+that _fiacre_ and go home; write down your impressions of what you have
+seen, and take your MS. to M. de Mauleon."  Lebeau here quitted him.
+
+Meanwhile all happened as Lebeau had predicted.  The _sergens de ville_
+showed themselves in front of the barricades, a small troop of mounted
+soldiers appeared in the rear.  The mob greeted the first with yells and
+a shower of stones; at the sight of the last they fled in all directions;
+and the _sergens de ville_, calmly scaling the barricades, carried off in
+triumph, as prisoners of war, 4 gamins, 3 women, and 1 Irishman loudly
+protesting innocence, and shrieking "Murther!"  So ended the first
+inglorious rise against the plebiscite and the Empire, on the 14th of
+May, 1870.
+
+
+From Isaura Cicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil.
+Saturday.  May 21.
+
+"I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of impressions wholly
+new to me.  I have this day witnessed one of those scenes which take us
+out of our private life, not into the world of fiction, but of history,
+in which we live as in the life of a nation.  You know how intimate I
+have become with Valerie Duplessis.  She is in herself so charming in her
+combination of petulant wilfulness and guileless _naivete_, that she
+might sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines.  Her father, who
+is in great favour at Court, had tickets for the _Salle des Etats_ of the
+Louvre today--when, as the journals will tell you, the results of the
+_plebiscite_ were formally announced to the Emperor--and I accompanied
+him and Valerie.  I felt, on entering the hall, as if I had been living
+for months in an atmosphere of false rumours, for those I chiefly meet in
+the circles of artists and men of letters, and the wits and _flaneurs_
+who haunt such circles, are nearly all hostile to the Emperor.  They
+agree, at least, in asserting the decline of his popularity--the failure
+of his intellectual powers; in predicting his downfall--deriding the
+notion of a successor in his son.  Well, I know not how to reconcile
+these statements with the spectacle I have beheld to-day.
+
+"In the chorus of acclamation amidst which the Emperor entered the hall,
+it seemed as if one heard the voice of the France he had just appealed
+to.  If the Fates are really weaving woe and shame in his woof, it is in
+hues which, to mortal eyes, seem brilliant with glory and joy.
+
+"You will read the address of the President of the _Corps Legislatif_;
+I wonder how it will strike you!  I own fairly that me it wholly carried
+away.  At each sentiment I murmured to myself, 'Is not this true?  and,
+if true, are France and human nature ungrateful?'
+
+"'It is now,' said the President, 'eighteen years since France, wearied
+with confusion, and anxious for security, confiding in your genuis and
+the Napoleonic dynasty, placed in your hands, together with the Imperial
+Crown, the authority which the public necessity demanded.'  Then the
+address proceeded to enumerate the blessings that ensued--social order
+speedily restored--the welfare of all classes of society promoted--
+advances in commerce and manufactures to an extent hitherto unknown.
+Is not this true?  and, if so, are you, noble daughter of France,
+ungrateful?
+
+"Then came words which touched me deeply--me, who, knowing nothing of
+politics, still feel the link that unites Art to Freedom: 'But from the
+first your Majesty has looked forward to the time when this concentration
+of power would no longer correspond to the aspirations of a tranquil and
+reassured country, and, foreseeing the progress of modern society, you
+proclaimed that 'Liberty must be the crowning of the edifice.''  Passing
+then over the previous gradual advances in popular government, the
+President came to the 'present self-abnegation, unprecedented in
+history,' and to the vindication of that plebiscite which I have heard so
+assailed--viz., Fidelity to the great principle upon which the throne was
+founded, required that so important a modification of a power bestowed by
+the people should not be made without the participation of the people
+themselves.  Then, enumerating the millions who had welcomed the new form
+of government--the President paused a second or two, as if with
+suppressed emotion--and every one present held his breath, till, in a
+deeper voice, through which there ran a quiver that thrilled through the
+hall, he concluded with--'France is with you; France places the cause of
+liberty under the protection of your dynasty and the great bodies of the
+State.'  Is France with him?  I know not; but if the malcontents of
+France had been in the hall at that moment, I believe they would have
+felt the power of that wonderful sympathy which compels all the hearts in
+great audiences to beat in accord, and would have answered, 'It is true.'
+
+"All eyes now fixed on the Emperor, and I noticed few eyes which were not
+moist with tears.  You know that calm unrevealing face of his--a face
+which sometimes disappoints expectation.  But there is that in it which I
+have seen in no other, but which I can imagine to have been common to the
+Romans of old, the dignity that arises from self-control--an expression
+which seems removed from the elation of joy, the depression of sorrow--
+not unbecoming to one who has known great vicissitudes of Fortune, and is
+prepared alike for her frowns or her smiles.
+
+"I had looked at that face while M. Schneider was reading the address--
+it moved not a muscle, it might have been a face of marble.  Even when at
+moments the words were drowned in applause and the Empress, striving at
+equal composure, still allowed us to see a movement of her eye lids, a
+tremble on her lips.  The boy at his right, heir to his dynasty, had his
+looks fixed on the President, as if eagerly swallowing each word in the
+address, save once or twice, when he looked around the hall curiously,
+and with a smile as a mere child might look.  He struck me as a mere
+child.  Next to the Prince was one of those countenances which once seen
+are never to be forgotten--the true Napoleonic type, brooding,
+thoughtful, ominous, beautiful.  But not with the serene energy that
+characterises the head of the first Napoleon when Emperor, and wholly
+without the restless eagerness for action which is stamped in the lean
+outline of Napoleon when First Consul: no--in Prince Napoleon there is a
+beauty to which, as woman, I could never give my heart--were I a man, the
+intellect that would not command my trust.  But, nevertheless, in beauty,
+it is signal, and in that beauty the expression of intellect is
+predominant.
+
+"Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing!  The Emperor spoke--and believe
+me, Eulalie, whatever the journals or your compatriots may insinuate,
+there is in that man no sign of declining intellect or failing health.
+I care not what may be his years, but that man is in mind and in health
+as young as Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon.
+
+"The old cling to the past--they do not go forward to the future.  There
+was no going back in that speech of the Emperor.  There was something
+grand and something young in the modesty with which he put aside all
+references to that which his Empire had done in the past, and said with a
+simple earnestness of manner which I cannot adequately describe--
+
+"'We must more than ever look fearlessly forward to the future.  Who can
+be opposed to the progressive march of a regime founded by a great people
+in the midst of political disturbance, and which now is fortified by
+liberty?'
+
+"As he closed, the walls of that vast hall seemed to rock with an
+applause that must have been heard on the other side of the Seine.
+
+"'Vive l'Empereur!'"  "'Vive l'Imperatrice!'" "'Vive le Prince
+Imperial!'"--and the last  cry was yet more prolonged than the others,
+as if to affirm the dynasty.
+
+"Certainly I can imagine no Court in the old days of chivalry more
+splendid than the audience in that grand hall of the Louvre.  To the
+right of the throne all the ambassadors of the civilised world in the
+blaze of their rich costumes and manifold orders.  In the gallery at the
+left, yet more behind, the dresses and jewels of the dames d'honneur and
+of the great officers of State.  And when the Empress rose to depart,
+certainly my fancy cannot picture a more queenlike image, or one that
+seemed more in unison with the representation of royal pomp and power.
+The very dress, of colour which would have been fatal to the beauty of
+most women equally fair--a deep golden colour--(Valerie profanely called
+it buff)--seemed so to suit the splendour of the ceremony and the day; it
+seemed as if that stately form stood in the midst of a sunlight reflected
+from itself.  Day seemed darkened when that sunlight passed away.
+
+"I fear you will think I have suddenly grown servile to the gauds and
+shows of mere royalty.  I ask myself if that be so--I think not.  Surely
+it is a higher sense of greatness which has been impressed on me by the
+pageant of to-day I feel as if there were brought vividly before me the
+majesty of France, through the representation of the ruler she has
+crowned.
+
+"I feel also as if there, in that hall, I found a refuge from all the
+warring contests in which no two seem to me in agreement as to the sort
+of government to be established in place of the present.  The 'Liberty'
+clamoured for by one would cut the throat of the 'Liberty' worshipped by
+another.
+
+"I see a thousand phantom forms of LIBERTY--but only one living symbol of
+ORDER--that which spoke from a throne to-day."
+
+
+Isaura left her letter uncompleted.  On the following Monday she was
+present at a crowded soiree given by M. Louvier.  Among the guests were
+some of the most eminent leaders of the Opposition, including that
+vivacious master of sharp sayings, M. P-------, whom Savarin entitled
+"the French Sheridan;" if laws could be framed in epigrams he would be
+also the French Solon.
+
+There, too, was Victor de Mauleon, regarded by the Republican party with
+equal admiration and distrust.  For the distrust, he himself pleasantly
+accounted in talk with Savarin.
+
+"How can I expect to be trusted?  I represent 'Common Sense;' every
+Parisian likes Common Sense in print, and cries '_Je suis trahi_' when
+Common Sense is to be put into action."
+
+A group of admiring listeners had collected round one (perhaps the most
+brilliant) of those oratorical lawyers by whom, in France, the respect
+for all laws has been so often talked away: he was speaking of the
+Saturday's ceremonial with eloquent indignation.  It was a mockery to
+France to talk of her placing Liberty under the protection of the Empire.
+
+There was a flagrant token of the military force under which civil
+freedom was held in the very dress of the Emperor and his insignificant
+son: the first in the uniform of a General of Division; the second,
+forsooth, in that of a _sous-lieutenant_.  The other liberal chiefs
+chimed in: "The army," said one, "was an absurd expense; it must be put
+down:"  "The world was grown too civilised for war," said another: "The
+Empress was priest-ridden," said a third: "Churches might be tolerated;
+Voltaire built a church, but a church simply to the God of Nature, not of
+priestcraft,"--and so on.
+
+Isaura, whom any sneer at religion pained and revolted, here turned away
+from the orators to whom she bad before been listening with earnest
+attention, and her eyes fell on the countenance of De Mauleon, who was
+seated opposite.
+
+The countenance startled her, its expression was so angrily scornful;
+that expression, however, vanished at once as De Mauleon's eyes met her
+own, and drawing his chair near to her, he said, smiling: "Your look
+tells me that I almost frightened you by the ill-bred frankness with
+which my face must have betrayed my anger, at hearing such imbecile
+twaddle from men who aspire to govern our turbulent France.  You remember
+that after Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake a quack advertised
+'pills against earthquakes.'  These _messieurs_ are not so cunning as
+the quack; he did not name the ingredients of his pills."
+
+"But, M. de Mauleon," said Isaura, "if you, being opposed to the Empire,
+think so ill of the wisdom of those who would destroy it, are you
+prepared with remedies for earthquakes more efficacious than their
+pills?"
+
+"I reply as a famous English statesman, when in opposition, replied to a
+somewhat similar question,--'I don't prescribe till I'm called in.'"
+
+"To judge by the seven millions and a half whose votes were announced on
+Saturday, and by the enthusiasm with which the Emperor was greeted, there
+is too little fear of an earthquake for a good trade of the pills of
+these _messieurs_, or for fair play to the remedies you will not disclose
+till called in."
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle! playful wit from lips not formed for politics makes
+me forget all about emperors and earthquakes.  Pardon that commonplace
+compliment--remember I am a Frenchman, and cannot help being frivolous."
+
+"You rebuke my presumption too gently.  True, I ought not to intrude
+political subjects on one like you--I understand so little about them--
+but this is my excuse, I do so desire to know more."
+
+M. de Mauleon paused, and looked at her earnestly with a kindly, half
+compassionate look, wholly free from the impertinence of gallantry.
+"Young poetess," he said, softly, "you care for politics.  Happy, indeed,
+is he--and whether he succeed or fail in his ambition abroad, proud
+should he be of an ambition crowned at home--he who has made you desire
+to know more of politics!"
+
+The girl felt the blood surge to her temples.  How could she have been so
+self-confessed?  She made no reply, nor did M. de Mauleon seem to expect
+one; with that rare delicacy of high breeding which appears in France to
+belong to a former generation, he changed his tone, and went on as if
+there had been no interruption to the question her words implied.
+
+"You think the Empire secure--that it is menaced by on earthquake?  You
+deceive yourself.  The Emperor began with a fatal mistake, but a mistake
+it needs many years to discover.  He disdained the slow natural process
+of adjustment between demand and supply--employer and workmen.  He
+desired--no ignoble ambition--to make Paris the wonder of the world,
+the eternal monument of his reign.  In so doing, he sought to create
+artificial modes of content for revolutionary workmen.  Never has any
+ruler had such tender heed of manual labour to the disparagement of
+intellectual culture.  Paris is embellished; Paris is the wonder of the
+world; other great towns have followed its example; they, too, have their
+rows of palaces and temples.  Well, the time comes when the magician can
+no longer give work to the spirits he raises; then they must fall on him
+and rend: out of the very houses he built for the better habitation of
+workmen will flock the malcontents who cry, 'Down with the Empire!'  On
+the 21st of May you witnessed the pompous ceremony which announces to the
+Empire a vast majority of votes, that will be utterly useless to it
+except as food for gunpowder in the times that are at hand.  Seven days
+before, on the 14th of May, there was a riot in the Faubourg d'Temple--
+easily put down--you scarcely hear of it.  That riot was not the less
+necessary to those who would warn the Empire that it is mortal.  True,
+the riot disperses--but it is unpunished; riot unpunished is a revolution
+begun.  The earthquake is nearer than you think; and for that earthquake
+what are the pills you quacks advertise?  They prate of an age too
+enlightened for war; they would mutilate the army--nay, disband it if
+they could--with Prussia next door to France.  Prussia, desiring, not
+unreasonably, to take that place in the world which France now holds,
+will never challenge France; if she did, she would be too much in the
+wrong to find a second: Prussia knowing that she has to do with the
+vainest, the most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever flourished
+a rapier in the face of a _spadassin_--Prussia will make France challenge
+her.
+
+"And how do _ces messieurs_ deal with the French army?  Do they dare to
+say to the ministers, 'Reform it'?  Do they dare say, 'Prefer for men
+whose first duty it is to obey, discipline to equality--insist on the
+distinction between the officer and the private, and never confound it;
+Prussian officers are well-educated gentlemen, see that yours are'?  Oh
+no; they are democrats too stanch not to fraternise with an armed mob;
+they content themselves with grudging an extra sou to the Commissariat,
+and winking at the millions fraudulently pocketed by some 'Liberal
+contractor.' _Dieu des dieux_!  France to be beaten, not as at Waterloo
+by hosts combined, but in fair duel by a single foe!  Oh, the shame! the
+shame!  But as the French army is now organised, beaten she must be, if
+she meets the march of the German."
+
+"You appal me with your sinister predictions," said Isaura; "but,
+happily, there is no sign of war.  M. Duplessis, who is in the confidence
+of the Emperor, told us only the other day that Napoleon, on learning the
+result of the plebiscite, said: 'The foreign journalists who have been
+insisting that the Empire cannot coexist with free institutions, will no
+longer hint that it can be safely assailed from without.'  And more than
+ever I may say _L'Empire c'est la paix_!"
+
+Monsieur de Mauleon shrugged his shoulders.  "The old story--Troy and the
+wooden horse."
+
+"Tell me, M. de Mauleon, why do you, who so despise the Opposition, join
+with it in opposing the Empire?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, the Empire opposes me; while it lasts I cannot be even a
+_Depute_; when it is gone, Heaven knows that I may be, perhaps Dictator;
+one thing, you may rely upon, that I would, if not Dictator myself,
+support any man who was better fitted for that task."
+
+"Better fitted to destroy the liberty which he pretended to fight for."
+
+"Not exactly so," replied M. de Mauleon, imperturbably--"better fitted to
+establish a good government in lieu of the bad one he had fought against,
+and the much worse governments that would seek to turn France into a
+madhouse, and make the maddest of the inmates the mad doctor!"  He turned
+away, and here their conversation ended.
+
+But it so impressed Isaura, that the same night she concluded her letter
+to Madame de Grantmesnil, by giving a sketch of its substance, prefaced
+by an ingenuous confession that she felt less sanguine confidence in the
+importance of the applauses which had greeted the Emperor at the
+Saturday's ceremonial, and ending thus: "I can but confusedly transcribe
+the words of this singular man, and can give you no notion of the manner
+and the voice which made them eloquent.  Tell me, can there be any truth
+in his gloomy predictions?  I try not to think so, but they seem to rest
+over that brilliant hall of the Louvre like an ominous thunder-cloud."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Marquis de Rochebriant was seated in his pleasant apartment, glancing
+carelessly at the envelopes of many notes and letters lying yet unopened
+on his breakfast-table.  He had risen late at noon, for he had not gone
+to bed till dawn.  The night had been spent at his club--over the card-
+table--by no means to the pecuniary advantage of the Marquis.  The reader
+will have learned, through the conversation recorded in a former chapter
+between De Mauleon and Enguerrand de Vandemar, that the austere Seigneur
+Breton had become a fast _viveur_ of Paris.  He had long since spent the
+remnant of Louvier's premium of L10,000., and he owed a year's interest.
+For this last there was an excuse.  M. Collot, the contractor to whom he
+had been advised to sell the yearly fall of his forest-trees, had removed
+the trees, but had never paid a sou beyond the preliminary deposit; so
+that the revenue, out of which the mortgagee should be paid his interest,
+was not forthcoming.  Alain had instructed M. Hebert to press the
+contractor; the contractor had replied, that if not pressed he could soon
+settle all claims--if pressed, he must declare himself bankrupt.  The
+Chevalier de Finisterre had laughed at the alarm which Alain conceived
+when he first found himself in the condition of debtor for a sum he could
+not pay--creditor for a sum he could not recover.
+
+"Bagatelle!" said the Chevalier.  "Tschu!  Collot, if you give him time,
+is as safe as the Bank of France, and Louvier knows it.  Louvier will not
+trouble you--Louvier, the best fellow in the world!  I'll call on him and
+explain matters."
+
+It is to be presumed that the Chevalier did so explain; for though both
+at the first, and quite recently at the second default of payment, Alain
+received letters from M. Louvier's professional agent, as reminders of
+interest due, and as requests for its payment, the Chevalier assured him
+that these applications were formalities of convention--that Louvier, in
+fact, knew nothing about them; and when dining with the great financier
+himself, and cordially welcomed and called "Mon cher," Alain had taken
+him aside and commenced explanation and excuse, Louvier had cut him
+short.  "Peste! don't mention such trifles.  There is such a thing as
+business--that concerns my agent; such a thing as friendship--that
+concerns me.  Allez!"
+
+Thus M. de Rochebriant, confiding in debtor and in creditor, had suffered
+twelve months to glide by without much heed of either, and more than live
+up to an income amply sufficient indeed for the wants of an ordinary
+bachelor, but needing more careful thrift than could well be expected
+from the head of one of the most illustrious houses in France, cast so
+young into the vortex of the most expensive capital in the world.
+
+The poor Marquis glided into the grooves that slant downward, much as the
+French Marquis of tradition was wont to glide; not that he appeared to
+live extravagantly, but he needed all he had for his pocket-money, and
+had lost that dread of being in debt which he had brought up from the
+purer atmosphere of Bretagne.
+
+But there were some debts which; of course, a Rochebriant must pay--debts
+of honour--and Alain had, on the previous night, incurred such a debt and
+must pay it that day.  He had been strongly tempted, when the debt rose
+to the figure it had attained, to risk a change of luck; but whatever his
+imprudence, he was incapable of dishonesty.  If the luck did not change,
+and he lost more, he would be without means to meet his obligations.  As
+the debt now stood, he calculated that he could just discharge it by the
+sale of his coupe and horses.  It is no wonder he left his letters
+unopened, however charming they might be; he was quite sure they would
+contain no cheque which would enable him to pay his debt and retain his
+equipage.
+
+The door opened, and the valet announced M. le Chevalier de Finisterre--
+a man with smooth countenance and air _distinque_, a pleasant voice and
+perpetual smile.
+
+"Well, mon cher," cried the Chevalier, "I hope that you recovered the
+favour of Fortune before you quitted her green table last night.  When I
+left she seemed very cross with you."
+
+"And so continued to the end," answered Alain, with well-simulated
+gaiety--much too _bon gentilhomme_ to betray rage or anguish for
+pecuniary loss.
+
+"After all," said de Finisterre, lighting his cigarette, "the uncertain
+goddess could not do you much harm; the stakes were small, and your
+adversary, the Prince, never goes double or quits."
+
+"Nor I either.  'Small,' however, is a word of relative import; the
+stakes might be small to you, to me large. _Entre nous, cher ami_, I am
+at the end of my purse, and I have only this consolation_-I am cured of
+play: not that I leave the complaint, the complaint leaves me; it can no
+more feed on me than a fever can feed on a skeleton."
+
+"Are you serious?"
+
+"As serious as a mourner who has just buried his all."
+
+"His all?  Tut, with such an estate as Rochebriant!"
+
+For the first time in that talk Alain's countenance became overcast.
+
+"And how long will Rochebriant be mine?  You know that I hold it at the
+mercy of the mortgagee, whose interest has not been paid, and who could
+if, he so pleased, issue notice, take proceedings--that--"
+
+"Peste!" interrupted de Finisterre; "Louvier take proceedings!  Louvier,
+the best fellow in the world!  But don't I see his handwriting on that
+envelope?  No doubt an invitation to dinner."
+
+Alain took up the letter thus singled forth from a miscellany of
+epistles, some in female handwritings, unsealed but ingeniously twisted
+into Gordian knots--some also in female handwritings, carefully sealed--
+others in ill-looking envelopes, addressed in bold, legible, clerk-like
+caligraphy.  Taken altogether, these epistles had a character in common;
+they betokened the correspondence of a _viveur_, regarded from the female
+side as young, handsome, well-born--on the male side, as a _viveur_ who
+had forgotten to pay his hosier and tailor.
+
+Louvier wrote a small, not very intelligible, but very masculine hand, as
+most men who think cautiously and act promptly do write.  The letter ran
+thus:
+
+"_Cher petit Marquis_" (at that commencement Alain haughtily raised his
+head and bit his lips).
+
+     "_CHER PETIT MARQUIS_,--It is an age since I have seen you.  No
+     doubt my humble soirees are too dull for a _beau seigueur_ so
+     courted.  I forgive you.  Would I were a beau seigneur at your age!
+     Alas!  I am only a commonplace man of business, growing old, too.
+     Aloft from the world in which I dwell, you can scarcely be aware
+     that I have embarked a great part of my capital in building
+     speculations.  There is a Rue de Louvier that runs its drains right
+     through my purse.  I am obliged to call in the moneys due to me.  My
+     agent informs me that I am just 7000 louis short of the total I
+     need--all other debts being paid in--and that there is a trifle more
+     than 7000 louis owned to me as interest on my hypotheque on
+     Rochebriant: kindly pay into his hands before the end of this week
+     that sum.  You have been too lenient to Collot, who must owe you
+     more than that.  Send agent to him. _Desole_ to trouble you, and am
+     au _desespoir_ to think that my own pressing necessities compel me
+     to urge you to take so much trouble.  _Mais que faire_?  The Rue de
+     Louvier stops the way, and I must leave it to my agent to clear it.
+
+     "Accept all my excuses, with the assurance of my sentiments the most
+     cordial.  PAUL LOUVIER."
+
+
+Alain tossed the letter to De Finisterre.  "Read that from the best
+fellow in the world."
+
+The Chevalier laid down his cigarette and read.  "_Diable_!" he said,
+when he returned the letter and resumed the cigarette--"_Diable_!
+Louvier must be much pressed for money, or he would not have written in
+this strain.  What does it matter?  Collot owes you more than 7000 louis.
+Let your lawyer get them, and go to sleep with both ears on your pillow."
+
+"Ah! you think Collot can pay if he will?"
+
+"_Ah! foi_!  did not M. Gandrin tell you that M. Collot was safe to buy
+your wood at more money than any one else would give?"
+
+"Certainly," said Alain, comforted.  "Gandrin left that impression on my
+mind.  I will set him on the man.  All will come right, I dare say; but
+if it does not come right, what would Louvier do?"
+
+"Louvier do!" answered Finisterre, reflectively.  "Well do you ask my
+opinion and advice?"
+
+"Earnestly, I ask."
+
+"Honestly, then, I answer.  I am a little on the Bourse myself--most
+Parisians are.  Louvier has made a gigantic speculation in this new
+street, and with so many other irons in the fire he must want all the
+money he can get at.  I dare say that if you do not pay him what you owe,
+he must leave it to his agent to take steps for announcing the sale of
+Rochebriant.  But he detests scandal; he hates the notion of being
+severe; rather than that, in spite of his difficulties, he will buy
+Rochebriant of you at a better price than it can command at public sale.
+Sell it to him.  Appeal to him to act generously, and you will flatter
+him.  You will get more than the old place is worth.  Invest the surplus
+--live as you have done, or better--and marry an heiress.  Morbleu! a
+Marquis de Rochebriant, if he were sixty years old, would rank high in
+the matrimonial market.  The more the democrats have sought to impoverish
+titles and laugh down historical names, the more do rich democrat
+fathers-in-law seek to decorate their daughters with titles and give
+their grandchildren the heritage of historical names.  You look shocked,
+_pauvre anti_.  Let us hope, then, that Collot will pay.  Set your dog--
+I mean your lawyer--at him; seize him by the throat!"
+
+Before Alain had recovered from the stately silence with which he had
+heard this very practical counsel, the valet again appeared, and ushered
+in M. Frederic Lemercier.
+
+There was no cordial acquaintance between the visitors.  Lemercier was
+chafed at finding himself supplanted in Alain's intimate companionship by
+so new a friend, and De Finisterre affected to regard Lemercier as a
+would-be exquisite of low birth and bad taste.
+
+Alain, too, was a little discomposed at the sight of Lemercier,
+remembering the wise cautious which that old college friend had wasted on
+him at the commencement of his Parisian career, and smitten with vain
+remorse that the cautions had been so arrogantly slighted.
+
+It was with some timidity that he extended his hand to Frederic, and he
+was surprised as well as moved by the more than usual warmth with which
+it was grasped by the friend he had long neglected.  Such affectionate
+greeting was scarcely in keeping with the pride which characterised
+Frederic Lemercier.
+
+"Ma foi!" said the Chevalier, glancing towards the clock, "how time
+flies!  I had no idea it was so late.  I must leave you now, my dear
+Rochebriant.  Perhaps we shall meet at the club later--I dine there
+to-day.  Au plaisir, M. Lemercier."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+When the door had closed on the Chevalier, Frederic's countenance became
+very grave.  Drawing his chair near to Alain, he said: "We have not seen
+much of each other lately,--nay, no excuses; I am well aware that it
+could scarcely be otherwise.  Paris has grown so large and so subdivided
+into sets, that the best friends belonging to different sets become as
+divided as if the Atlantic flowed between them.  I come to-day in
+consequence of something I have just heard from Duplessis.  Tell me, have
+you got the money for the wood you sold to M. Collot a year ago?"
+
+"No," said Alain, falteringly.
+
+"Good heavens! none of it?"
+
+"Only the deposit of ten per cent., which of course I spent, for it
+formed the greater part of my income.  What of Collot?  Is he really
+unsafe?"
+
+"He is ruined, and has fled the country.  His flight was the talk of the
+Bourse this morning.  Duplessis told me of it."
+
+Alain's face paled.  "How is Louvier to be paid?  Read that letter!"
+
+Lemercier rapidly scanned his eye over the contents of Louvier's letter.
+
+"It is true, then, that you owe this man a year's interest--more than
+7,000 louis?"
+
+"Somewhat more--yes.  But that is not the first care that troubles me
+--Rochebriant may be lost, but with it not my honour.  I owe the Russian
+Prince 300 louis, lost to him last night at _ecarte_.  I must find a
+purchaser for my coupe and horses; they cost me 600 louis last year,--do
+you know any one who will give me three?"
+
+"Pooh!  I will give you six; your _alezan_ alone is worth half the
+money!"
+
+"My dear Frederic, I will not sell them to you on any account.  But you
+have so many friends--"
+
+"Who would give their soul to say, 'I bought these horses of
+Rochebriant.'  Of course I do.  Ha! young Rameau, you are acquainted with
+him?"
+
+"Rameau!  I never heard of him!"
+
+"Vanity of vanities, then what is fame?  Rameau is the editor of Le Sens
+Commun.  You read that journal?"
+
+"Yes, it has clever articles,  and I  remember how I was absorbed in the
+eloquent _romance_ which appeared in it."
+
+"Ah! by the Signora Cicogna, with whom I think you were somewhat smitten
+last year."
+
+"Last year--was I?  How a year can alter a man!  But my debt to the
+Prince.  What has Le Sens Commun to do with my horses?"
+
+"I met Rameau at Savarin's the other evening.  He was making himself out
+a hero and a martyr! his coupe had been taken from him to assist in a
+barricade in that senseless _emeute_ ten days ago; the _coupe_ got
+smashed, the horses disappeared.  He will buy one of your horses and
+_coupe_.
+
+"Leave it to me!  I know where to dispose of the other two horses.  At
+what hour do you want the money?"
+
+"Before I go to dinner at the club."
+
+"You shall have it within two hours; but you must not dine at the club
+to-day.  I have a note from Duplessis to invite you to dine with him
+to-day!"
+
+"Duplessis!  I know so little of him!"
+
+"You should know him better.  He is the only man who can give you sound
+advice as to this difficulty with Louvier; and he will give it the more
+carefully and zealously because he has that enmity to Louvier which one
+rival financier has to another.  I dine with him too.  We shall find an
+occasion to consult him quietly; he speaks of you most kindly.  What a
+lovely girl his daughter is!"
+
+"I dare say.  Ah! I wish I had been less absurdly fastidious.  I wish I
+had entered the army as a private soldier six months ago; I should have
+been a corporal by this time!  Still it is not too late.  When
+Rochebriant is gone, I can yet say with the _Mouszquetaire_ in the
+melodrame: 'I am rich--I have my honour and my sword!'"
+
+"Nonsense!  Rochebriant shall be saved; meanwhile I hasten to Rameau.
+_Au revoir_, at the Hotel Duplessis--seven o'clock."
+
+Lemercier went, and in less than two hours sent the Marquis bank-notes
+for 600 louis, requesting an order for the delivery of the horses and
+carriage.
+
+That order written and signed, Alain hastened to acquit himself of his
+debt of honour, and contemplating his probable ruin with a lighter heart
+presented himself at the Hotel Duplessis.
+
+Duplessis made no pretensions to vie with the magnificent existence of
+Louvier.  His house, though agreeably situated and flatteringly styled
+the Hotel Duplessis, was of moderate size, very unostentatiously
+furnished; nor was it accustomed to receive the brilliant motley crowds
+which assembled in the salons of the elder financier.
+
+Before that year, indeed, Duplessis had confined such entertainments as
+he gave to quiet men of business, or a few of the more devoted and loyal
+partisans of the Imperial dynasty; but since Valerie came to live with
+him he had extended his hospitalities to wider and livelier circles,
+including some celebrities in the world of art and letters as well as of
+fashion.  Of the party assembled that evening at dinner were Isaura, with
+the Signora Venosta, one of the Imperial Ministers, the Colonel whom
+Alain had already met at Lemercier's supper, _Deputes_ (ardent
+Imperialists), and the Duchesse de Tarascon; these, with Alain and
+Frederic, made up the party.  The conversation was not particularly gay.
+Duplessis himself, though an exceedingly well-read and able man, had not
+the genial accomplishments of a brilliant host.  Constitutionally grave
+and habitually taciturn--though there were moments in which he was roused
+out of his wonted self into eloquence or wit--he seemed to-day absorbed
+in some engrossing train of thought.  The Minister, the _Deputes_ and the
+Duchesse de Tarascon talked politics, and ridiculed the trumpery _emeute_
+of the 14th;  exulted in the success of the plebiscite; and admitting,
+with indignation, the growing strength of Prussia, and--with scarcely
+less indignation, but more contempt, censuring the selfish egotism of
+England in disregarding the due equilibrium of the European balance of
+power,--hinted at the necessity of annexing Belgium as a
+set-off against the results of Sadowa.
+
+Alain found himself seated next to Isaura--to the woman who had so
+captivated his eye and fancy on his first arrival in Paris.
+
+Remembering his last conversation with Graham nearly a year ago, he felt
+some curiosity to ascertain whether the rich Englishman had proposed to
+her, and if so, been refused or accepted.
+
+The first words that passed between them were trite enough, but after a
+little pause in the talk, Alain said:
+
+"I think Mademoiselle and myself have an acquaintance in common-Monsieur
+Vane, a distinguished Englishman.  Do you know if he be in Paris at
+present?  I have not seen him for many months."
+
+"I believe he is in London; at least, Colonel Morley met the other day a
+friend of his who said so."
+
+Though Isaura strove to speak in a tone of indifference, Alain's ear
+detected a ring of pain in her voice; and watching her countenance, he
+was impressed with a saddened change in its expression.  He was touched,
+and his curiosity was mingled with a gentler interest as he said "When I
+last saw M. Vane I should have judged him to be too much under the spell
+of an enchantress to remain long without the pale of the circle she draws
+around her."
+
+Isaura turned her face quickly towards the speaker, and her lips moved,
+but she said nothing audibly.
+
+"Can there have been quarrel or misunderstanding?" thought Alain; and
+after that question his heart asked itself, "Supposing Isaura were free,
+her affections disengaged, could he wish to woo and to win her?" and his
+heart answered--"Eighteen months ago thou wert nearer to her than now.
+Thou wert removed from her for ever when thou didst accept the world as a
+barrier between you; then, poor as thou wert, thou wouldst have preferred
+her to riches.  Thou went then sensible only of the ingenuous impulses of
+youth, but the moment thou saidst, 'I am Rochebriaut, and having once
+owned the claims of birth and station, I cannot renounce them for love,
+Isaura became but a dream.  Now that ruin stares thee in the face--now
+that thou must grapple with the sternest difficulties of adverse fate--
+thou hast lost the poetry of sentiment which could alone give to that
+dream the colours and the form of human life."  He could not again think
+of that fair creature as a prize that he might even dare to covet.  And
+as he met her inquiring eyes, and saw her quivering lip, he felt
+instinctively that Graham was dear to her, and that the tender interest
+with which she inspired himself was untroubled by one pang of jealousy.
+He resumed:
+
+"Yes, the last time I saw the Englishman he spoke with such respectful
+homage of one lady, whose hand he would deem it the highest reward of
+ambition to secure, that I cannot but feel deep compassion for him if
+that ambition has been foiled; and thus only do I account for his absence
+from Paris."
+
+"You are an intimate friend of Mr. Vane's?"
+
+"No, indeed, I have not that honour; our acquaintance is but slight, but
+it impressed me with the idea of a man of vigorous intellect, frank
+temper, and perfect honour."
+
+Isaura's face brightened with the joy we feel when we hear the praise of
+those we love.
+
+At this moment, Duplessis, who had been observing the Italian and the
+young Marquis, for the first time during dinner, broke silence.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said, addressing Isaura across the table, "I hope I
+have not been correctly informed that your literary triumph has induced
+you to forego the career in which all the best judges concur that your
+successes would be not less brilliant; surely one art does not exclude
+another."
+
+Elated by Alain's report of Graham's words, by the conviction that these
+words applied to herself, and by the thought that her renunciation of the
+stage removed a barrier between them, Isaura answered, with a sort of
+enthusiasm:
+
+"I know not, M. Duplessis, if one art excludes another; if there be
+desire to excel in each.  But I have long lost all desire to excel in the
+art you refer to, and resigned all idea of the career in which it opens."
+
+"So M. Vane told me," said Alain, in a whisper.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Last year--on the day that he spoke in terms of admiration so merited of
+the lady whom M. Duplessis has just had the honour to address."
+
+All this while, Valerie, who was seated at the further end of the table
+beside the Minister, who had taken her in to dinner, had been watching,
+with eyes, the anxious tearful sorrow of which none but her father had
+noticed, the low-voiced confidence between Alain and the friend, whom
+till that day she had so enthusiastically loved.  Hitherto she had been
+answering in monosyllables all attempts of the great man to draw her into
+conversation; but now, observing how Isaura blushed and looked down, that
+strange faculty in women, which we men call dissimulation, and which in
+them is truthfulness to their own nature, enabled her to carry off the
+sharpest anguish she had ever experienced, by a sudden burst of levity of
+spirit.  She caught up some commonplace the Minister had adapted to what
+he considered the poverty of her understanding, with a quickness of
+satire which startled that grave man, and he gazed at her astonished.  Up
+to that moment he had secretly admired her as a girl well brought up--as
+girls fresh from a French convent are supposed to be; now, hearing her
+brilliant rejoinder to his stupid observation, he said inly: "Dame! the
+low birth of a financier's daughter shows itself."
+
+But, being a clever man himself, her retort put him on his mettle, and he
+became, to his own amazement, brilliant himself.  With that matchless
+quickness which belongs to Parisians, the guests around him seized the
+new esprit de conversation which had been evoked between the statesman
+and the childlike girl beside him; and as they caught up the ball,
+lightly flung among them, they thought within themselves how much more
+sparkling the financier's pretty, lively daughter was than that dark-eyed
+young muse, of whom all the journalists of Paris were writing in a chorus
+of welcome and applause, and who seemed not to have a word to say worth
+listening to, except to the handsome young Marquis, whom, no doubt, she
+wished to fascinate.
+
+Valerie fairly outshone Isaura in intellect and in wit; and neither
+Valerie nor Isaura cared, to the value of a bean-straw, about that
+distinction.  Each was thinking only of the prize which the humblest
+peasant women have in common with the most brilliantly accomplished of
+their sex--the heart of a man beloved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+On the Continent generally, as we all know, men do not sit drinking wine
+together after the ladies retire.  So when the signal was given all the
+guests adjourned to the salon; and Alain quitted Isaura to gain the ear
+of the Duchesse de Tarascon.
+
+"It is long--at, least long for Paris life," said the Marquis--"since my
+first visit to you, in company with Enguerrand de Vandemar.  Much that
+you then said rested on my mind, disturbing the prejudices I took from
+Bretagne."
+
+"I am proud to hear it, my kinsman."
+
+"You know that I would have taken military service under the Emperor, but
+for the regulation which would have compelled me to enter the ranks as a
+private soldier."
+
+"I sympathise with that scruple; but you are aware that the Emperor
+himself could not have ventured to make any exception even in your
+favour."
+
+"Certainly not.  I repent me of my pride; perhaps I may enlist still in
+some regiment sent to Algiers."
+
+"No; there are other ways in which a Rochebriant can serve a throne.
+There will be an office at Court vacant soon, which would not misbecome
+your birth."
+
+"Pardon me; a soldier serves his country--a courtier owns a master; and I
+cannot take the livery of the Emperor, though I could wear the uniform of
+France."
+
+"Your distinction is childish, my kinsman," said the Duchesse,
+impetuously.  "You talk as if the Emperor had an interest apart from the
+nation.  I tell you that he has not a corner of his heart--not even one
+reserved for his son and his dynasty--in which the thought of France does
+not predominate."
+
+"I do not presume, Madame la Duchesse, to question the truth of what you
+say; but I have no reason to suppose that the same thought does not
+predominate in the heart of the Bourbon.  The Bourbon would be the first
+to say to me: 'If France needs your sword against her foes, let it not
+rest in the scabbard.'  But would the Bourbon say, 'The place of a
+Rochebriant is among the _valetaille_ of the Corsican's successor'?"
+
+"Alas for poor France!" said the Duchesse; "and alas for men like you, my
+proud cousin, if the Corsican's successors or successor be--"
+
+"Henry V." interrupted Alain, with a brightening eye.  "Dreamer!  No;
+some descendant of the mob-kings who gave Bourbons and nobles to the
+guillotine."
+
+While the Duchesse and Alain were thus conversing, Isaura had seated
+herself by Valerie, and, unconscious of the offence she had given,
+addressed her in those pretty caressing terms with which young-lady
+friends are wont to compliment each other; but Valerie answered curtly or
+sarcastically, and turned aside to converse with the Minister.  A few
+minutes more, and the party began to break up.  Lemercier, however,
+detained Alain, whispering, "Duplessis will see us on your business so
+soon as the other guests have gone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+"Monsieur le Marquis," said Duplessis, when the salon was cleared of all
+but himself and the two friends, "Lemercier has confided to me the state
+of your affairs in connection with M. Louvier, and flatters me by
+thinking my advice may be of some service; if so, command me."
+
+"I shall most gratefully accept your advice," answered Alain, "but I fear
+my condition defies even your ability and skill."
+
+"Permit me to hope not, and to ask a few necessary questions.  M. Louvier
+has constituted himself your sole mortgagee; to what amount, at what
+interest, and from what annual proceeds is the interest paid?"
+
+Herewith Alain gave details already furnished to the reader.  Duplessis
+listened, and noted down the replies.
+
+"I see it all," he said, when Alain had finished.  "M. Louvier had
+predetermined to possess himself of your estate: he makes himself
+mortgagee at a rate of interest so low, that I tell you fairly, at the
+present value of money, I doubt if you could find any capitalist who
+would accept the transfer of the mortgage at the same rate.  This is not
+like Louvier, unless he had an object to gain, and that object is your
+land.  The revenue from your estate is derived chiefly from wood, out of
+which the interest due to Louvier is to be paid.  M. Gandrin, in a
+skilfully-guarded letter, encourages you to sell the wood from your
+forests to a man who offers you several thousand francs more than it
+could command from customary buyers.  I say nothing against M. Gandrin,
+but every man who knows Paris as I do, knows that M. Louvier can put, and
+has put, a great deal of money into M. Gandrin's pocket.  The purchaser
+of your wood does not pay more than his deposit, and has just left the
+country insolvent.  Your purchaser, M. Collot, was an adventurous
+speculator; he would have bought anything at any price, provided he
+had time to pay; if his speculations had been lucky he would have paid.
+M. Louvier knew, as I knew, that M. Collot was a gambler, and the chances
+were that he would not pay.  M. Louvier allows a year's interest on his
+hypotheque to become due-notice thereof duly given to you by his agent--
+now you come under the operation of the law.  Of course, you know what
+the law is?"
+
+"Not exactly," answered Alain, feeling frostbitten by the congealing
+words of his counsellor; "but I take it for granted that if I cannot pay
+the interest of a sum borrowed on my property, that property itself is
+forfeited."
+
+"No, not quite that--the law is mild.  If the interest which should be
+paid half-yearly remains unpaid at the end of a year, the mortgagee has a
+right to be impatient, has he not?"
+
+"Certainly he has."
+
+"Well, then, _on fait un commandement tendant de saisie immobiliere_,
+viz: The mortgagee gives a notice that the property shall be put up for
+sale.  Then it is put up for sale, and in most cases the mortgagee buys
+it in.  Here, certainly, no competitors in the mere business way would
+vie with Louvier; the mortgage at three and a half per cent. covers more
+than the estate is apparently worth.  Ah! but stop, M. le Marquis; the
+notice is not yet served: the whole process would take six months from
+the day it is served to the taking possession after the sale; in the
+meanwhile, if you pay the interest due, the action drops.  Courage, M. le
+Marquis!  Hope yet, if you condescend to call me friend."
+
+"And me," cried Lemercier; "I will sell out of my railway shares to-
+morrow-see to it, Duplessis--enough to pay off the damnable interest.
+See to it, _mon ami_."
+
+"Agree to that, M. le Marquis, and you are safe for another year," said
+Duplessis, folding up the paper on which he had made his notes, but
+fixing on Alain quiet eyes half concealed under drooping lids.
+
+"Agree to that!" cried Rochebriant, rising--"agree to allow even my worst
+enemy to pay for me moneys I could never hope to repay--agree to allow
+the oldest and most confiding friends to do so--M. Duplessis, never!
+If I carried the porter's knot of an Auverguat, I should still remain
+gentilhomme and Breton."
+
+Duplessis, habitually the driest of men, rose with a moistened eye and
+flushing cheek--"Monsieur le Marquis, vouchsafe me the honour to shake
+hands with you.  I, too, am by descent gentilhomme, by profession a
+speculator on the Bourse.  In both capacities I approve the sentiment you
+have uttered.  Certainly, if our friend Frederic lent you 7000 Louis or
+so this year, it would be impossible for you even to foresee the year in
+which you could repay it; but,"--here Duplessis paused a minute, and then
+lowering the tone of his voice, which had been somewhat vehement and
+enthusiastic, into that of a colloquial good-fellowship, equally rare to
+the measured reserve of the financier, he asked, with a lively twinkle of
+his grey eye, "Did you never hear, Marquis, of a little encounter between
+me and M. Louvier?"
+
+"Encounter at arms--does Louvier fight?" asked Alain, innocently.
+
+"In his own way he is always fighting; but I speak metaphorically.  You
+see this small house of mine--so pinched in by the houses next to it that
+I can neither get space for a ball-room for Valerie, nor a dining-room
+for more than a friendly party like that which has honoured me to-day.
+_Eh bien_!  I bought this house a few years ago, meaning to buy the one
+next to it and throw the two into one.  I went to the proprietor of the
+next house, who, as I knew, wished to sell.  'Aha,' he thought, 'this is
+the rich Monsieur Duplessis;' and he asked me 2000 louis more than the
+house was worth.  We men of business cannot bear to be too much cheated;
+a little cheating we submit to--much cheating raises our gall. _Bref_--
+this was on Monday.  I offered the man 1000 louis above the fair price,
+and gave him till Thursday to decide.  Somehow or other Louvier hears of
+this.  'Hillo!' says Louvier, 'here is a financier who desires a hotel to
+vie with mine!'  He goes on Wednesday to my next-door neighbour.
+'Friend, you want to sell your house.  I want to buy--the price?'  The
+proprietor, who does not know him by sight, says: 'It is as good as sold.
+M. Duplessis and I shall agree.'  'Bah!  What sum did you ask M.
+Duplessis?'  He names the sum; 2000 louis more than he can get elsewhere.
+'But M. Duplessis will give me the sum.'  'You ask too little.  I will
+give 3000.  A fig for M. Duplessis.  I am Monsieur Louvier.'  So when I
+call on Thursday the house is sold.  I reconcile myself easily enough to
+the loss of space for a larger dining-room; but though Valerie was then a
+child at a convent, I was sadly disconcerted by the thought that I could
+have no _salle de bal_ ready for her when she came to reside with me.
+Well, I say to myself, patience; I owe M. Louvier a good turn; my time to
+pay him off will come.  It does come, and very soon.  M. Louvier buys an
+estate near Paris--builds a superb villa.  Close to his property is a
+rising forest ground for sale.  He goes to the proprietor: says the
+proprietor to himself, 'The great Louvier wants this,' and adds 5000
+louis to its market price.  Louvier, like myself, can't bear to be
+cheated egregiously.  Louvier offers 2000 louis more than the man could
+fairly get, and leaves him till Saturday to consider.  I hear of this--
+speculators hear of everything.  On Friday night I go to the man and I
+give him 6000 louis, where he had asked 5000.  Fancy Louvier's face the
+next day!  But there my revenge only begins," continued Duplessis,
+chuckling inwardly.  "My forest looks down on the villa he is building.
+I only wait till his villa is built, in order to send to my architect and
+say, Build me a villa at least twice as grand as M. Louvier's, then clear
+away the forest trees, so that every morning he may see my palace
+dwarfing into insignificance his own."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Lemercier, clapping his hands.  Lemercier had the spirit
+of party, and felt for Duplessis against Louvier much as in England Whig
+feels against Tory, or vice versa.
+
+"Perhaps now," resumed Duplessis, more soberly,--"perhaps now, M. le
+Marquis, you may understand why I humiliate you by no sense of obligation
+if I say that M. Louvier shall not be the Seigneur de Rochebriant if I
+can help it.  Give me a line of introduction to your Breton lawyer and to
+Mademoiselle your aunt--let me have your letters early to-morrow.  I will
+take the afternoon train.  I know not how many days I may be absent, but
+I shall not return till I have carefully examined the nature and
+conditions of your property.  If I see my way to save your estate, and
+give a _mauvais quart d'heure_ to Louvier, so much the better for you, M.
+le Marquis; if I cannot, I will say frankly, 'Make the best terms you can
+with your creditor.'"  "Nothing can be more delicately generous than the
+way you put it," said Alain; "but pardon me, if I say that the pleasantry
+with which you narrate your grudge against M. Louvier does not answer its
+purpose in diminishing my sense of obligation."  So, linking his arm in
+Lemercier's, Alain made his bow and withdrew.
+
+When his guests had gone, Duplessis remained seated in meditation--
+apparently pleasant meditation, for he smiled while indulging it; he then
+passed through the reception-rooms to one at the far end appropriated to
+Valerie as a boudoir or morning-room, adjoining her bed-chamber; he
+knocked gently at the door, and, all remaining silent within, he opened
+it noiselessly and entered.  Valerie was reclining on the sofa near the
+window-her head drooping, her hands clasped on her knees.  Duplessis
+neared her with tender stealthy steps, passed his arm round her, and drew
+her head towards his bosom.  "Child!" he murmured; "my child, my only
+one!"
+
+At that soft loving voice, Valerie flung her arms round him, and wept
+aloud like an infant in trouble.  He seated himself beside her, and
+wisely suffered her to weep on, till her passion had exhausted itself;
+he then said, half fondly, half chillingly: "Have you forgotten our
+conversation only three days ago?  Have you forgotten that I then drew
+forth the secret of your heart?  Have you forgotten what I promised you
+in return for your confidence?  and a promise to you have I ever yet
+broken?"
+
+"Father! father!  I am so wretched and so ashamed of myself for being
+wretched!  Forgive me.  No, I do not forget your promise; but who can
+promise to dispose of the heart of another?  and that heart will never be
+mine.  But bear with me a little, I shall soon recover."
+
+"Valerie, when I made you the promise you now think I cannot keep, I
+spoke only from that conviction of power to promote the happiness of a
+child which nature implants in the heart of parents; and it may be also
+from the experience of my own strength of will, since that which I have
+willed I have always won.  Now I speak on yet surer ground.  Before the
+year is out you shall be the beloved wife of Alain de Rochebriant.  Dry
+your tears and smile on me, Valerie.  If you will not see in me mother
+and father both, I have double love for you, motherless child of her who
+shared the poverty of my youth, and did not live to enjoy the wealth
+which I hold as a trust for that heir to mine all which she left me."
+
+As this man thus spoke you would scarcely have recognized in him the old
+saturnine Duplessis, his countenance became so beautified by the one soft
+feeling which care and contest, ambition and money-seeking, had left
+unaltered in his heart.  Perhaps there is no country in which the love of
+parent and child, especially of father and daughter, is so strong as it
+is in France; even in the most arid soil, among the avaricious, even
+among the profligate, it forces itself into flower.  Other loves fade
+away: in the heart of the true Frenchman that parent love blooms to the
+last.  Valerie felt the presence of that love as a divine protecting
+guardianship.  She sank on her knees and covered his hand with grateful
+kisses.
+
+"Do not torture yourself, my child, with jealous fears of the fair
+Italian.  Her lot and Alain de Rochebriant's can never unite; and
+whatever you may think of their whispered converse, Alain's heart at this
+moment is too filled with anxious troubles to leave one spot in it
+accessible even to a frivolous gallantry.  It is for us to remove these
+troubles; and then, when he turns his eyes towards you, it will be with
+the gaze of one who beholds his happiness.  You do not weep now,
+Valerie!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE.  (BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.)
+
+The Parisians and Kenelm Chillingly were begun about the same time, and
+had their common origin in the same central idea.  That idea first found
+fantastic expression in The Coming Race; and the three books, taken
+together, constitute a special group distinctly apart from all the other
+works of their author.
+
+The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social
+respectabilities; the humour of his later ones is a protest against the
+disrespect of social realities.  By the first he sought to promote social
+sincerity, and the free play of personal character; by the last, to
+encourage mutual charity and sympathy amongst all classes on whose
+interrelation depends the character of society itself.  But in these
+three books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and
+exclusive.  Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed to him
+the perilous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a
+warning against the influence of certain intellectual tendencies upon
+individual character and national life.  This purpose, however, though
+common to the three fictions, is worked out in each of them by a
+different method.  The Coming Race is a work of pure fancy, and the
+satire of it is vague and sportive.  The outlines of a definite purpose
+are more distinctly drawn in Chillingly-a romance which has the source of
+its effect in a highly-wrought imagination.  The humour and pathos of
+Chillingly are of a kind incompatible with the design of The Parisians,
+which is a work of dramatised observation.  Chillingly is a romance; The
+Parisians is a Novel.  The subject of Chillingly is psychological; that
+of The Parisians is social.  The author's object in Chillingly being to
+illustrate the effects of "modern ideas" upon an individual character,
+he has confined his narrative to the biography of that one character.
+Hence the simplicity of plot and small number of dramatis personae;
+whereby the work gains in height and depth what it loses in breadth of
+surface.  The Parisians, on the contrary, is designed to illustrate the
+effect of "modern ideas" upon a whole community.  This novel is
+therefore panoramic in the profusion and variety of figures presented by
+it to the reader's imagination.  No exclusive prominence is vouchsafed to
+any of these figures.  All of them are drawn and coloured with an equal
+care, but by means of the bold broad touches necessary for their
+effective presentation on a canvas so large and so crowded.  Such figures
+are, indeed, but the component features of one great Form, and their
+actions only so many modes of one collective impersonal character-that of
+the Parisian Society of Imperial and Democratic France;-a character
+everywhere present and busy throughout the story, of which it is the real
+hero or heroine.  This society was doubtless selected for characteristic
+illustration as being the most advanced in the progress of "modern
+ideas."  Thus, for a complete perception of its writer's fundamental
+purpose, The Parisians should be read in connection with Chillingly, and
+these two books in connection with The Coming Race.  It will then be
+perceived that, through the medium of alternate fancy, sentiment, and
+observation assisted by humour and passion, these three books (in all
+other respects so different from each other) complete the presentation of
+the same purpose under different aspects; and thereby constitute a group
+of fictions which claims a separate place of its own in any thoughtful
+classification of their author's works.
+
+One last word to those who will miss from these pages the connecting and
+completing touches of the master's hand.  It may be hoped that such a
+disadvantage, though irreparable, is somewhat mitigated by the essential
+character of the work itself.  The aesthetic merit of this kind of novel
+is in the vivacity of a general effect produced by large swift strokes of
+character; and in such strokes, if they be by a great artist, force and
+freedom of style must still be apparent, even when they are left rough
+and unfinished.  Nor can any lack of final verbal correction much
+diminish the intellectual value which many of the more thoughtful
+passages of the present work derive from a long, keen, and practical
+study of political phenomena, guided by personal experience of public
+life, and enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of the human
+heart.
+
+Such a belief is, at least, encouraged by the private communications
+spontaneously made, to him who expresses it, by persons of political
+experience and social position in France; who have acknowledged the
+general accuracy of the author's descriptions, and noticed the suggestive
+sagacity and penetration of his occasional comments on the circumstances
+and sentiments he describes.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 BOOK IX.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+On waking some morning, have you ever felt, reader, as if a change for
+the brighter in the world, without and within you, had suddenly come to
+pass-some new glory has been given to the sunshine, some fresh balm to
+the air-you feel younger, and happier, and lighter, in the very beat of
+your heart-you almost fancy you hear the chime of some spiritual music
+far off, as if in the deeps of heaven?  You are not at first conscious
+how, or wherefore, this change has been brought about.  Is it the effect
+of a dream in the gone sleep, that has made this morning so different
+from mornings that have dawned before?  And while vaguely asking yourself
+that question, you become aware that the cause is no mere illusion, that
+it has its substance in words spoken by living lips, in things that
+belong to the work-day world.
+
+It was thus that Isaura woke the morning after the conversation with
+Alain de Rochebriant, and as certain words, then spoken, echoed back on
+her ear, she knew why she was so happy, why the world was so changed.
+
+In those words she heard the voice of Graham Vane--nor she had not
+deceived herself--she was loved!  she was loved!  What mattered that long
+cold interval of absence?  She had not forgotten--she could not believe
+that absence had brought forgetfulness.  There are moments when we
+insist on judging another's heart by our own.  All would be explained
+some day--all would come right.
+
+How lovely was the face that reflected itself in the glass as she stood
+before it, smoothing back her long hair, murmuring sweet snatches of
+Italian love-song, and blushing with sweeter love-thoughts as she sang!
+All that had passed in that year so critical to her outer life--the
+authorship, the fame, the public career, the popular praise--vanished
+from her mind as a vapour that rolls from the face of a lake to which the
+sunlight restores the smile of a brightened heaven.
+
+She was more the girl now than she had ever been since the day on which
+she sat reading Tasso on the craggy shore of Sorrento.
+
+Singing still as she passed from her chamber, and entering the sitting-
+room, which fronted the east, and seemed bathed in the sunbeams of
+deepening May, she took her bird from its cage, and stopped her song to
+cover it with kisses, which perhaps yearned for vent somewhere.
+
+Later in the day she went out to visit Valerie.  Recalling the altered
+manner of her young friend, her sweet nature became troubled.  She
+divined that Valerie had conceived some jealous pain which she longed to
+heal; she could not bear the thought of leaving any one that day unhappy.
+Ignorant before of the girl's feelings towards Alain, she now partly
+guessed them--one woman who loves in secret is clairvoyante as to such
+secrets in another.
+
+Valerie received her visitor with a coldness she did not attempt to
+disguise.  Not seeming to notice this, Isaura commenced the conversation
+with frank mention of Rochebriant.  "I have to thank you so much, dear
+Valerie, for a pleasure you could not anticipate--that of talking about
+an absent friend, and hearing the praise he deserved from one so capable
+of appreciating excellence as M. de Rochebriant appears to be."
+
+"You were talking to M. de Rochebriant of an absent friend--ah! you
+seemed indeed very much interested in the conversation--"
+
+"Do not wonder at that, Valerie; and do not grudge me the happiest
+moments I have known for months."
+
+"In talking with M. de Rochebriant!  No doubt, Mademoiselle Cicogna, you
+found him very charming."
+
+To her surprise and indignation, Valerie here felt the arm of Isaura
+tenderly entwining her waist, and her face drawn towards Isaura's
+sisterly kiss.
+
+"Listen to me, naughty child-listen and believe.  M. de Rochebriant can
+never be charming to me--never touch a chord in my heart or my fancy
+except as friend to another, or--kiss me in your turn, Valerie--as suitor
+to yourself."
+
+Valerie here drew back her pretty childlike head, gazed keenly a moment
+into Isaura's eyes, felt convinced by the limpid candour of their
+unmistakable honesty, and flinging herself on her friend's bosom, kissed
+her passionately, and burst into tears.
+
+The complete reconciliation between the two girls was thus peacefully
+effected; and then Isaura had to listen, at no small length, to the
+confidences poured into her ears by Valerie, who was fortunately too
+engrossed by her own hopes and doubts to exact confidences in return.
+Valerie's was one of those impulsive eager natures that longs for a
+confidante.  Not so Isaura's.  Only when Valerie had unburthened her
+heart, and been soothed and caressed into happy trust in the future, did
+she recall Isaura's explanatory words, and said, archly:  "And your
+absent friend?  Tell me about him.  Is he as handsome as Alain?"
+
+"Nay," said Isaura, rising to take up the mantle and hat she had laid
+aside on entering, "they say that the colour of a flower is in our
+vision, not in the leaves."  Then with a grave melancholy in the look she
+fixed upon Valerie, she added: "Rather than distrust of me should
+occasion you pain, I have pained myself, in making clear to you the
+reason why I felt interest in M. de Rochebriant's conversation.  In turn,
+I ask of you a favour--do not on this point question me farther.  There
+are some things in our past which influence the present, but to which we
+dare not assign a future--on which we cannot talk to another.  What
+soothsayer can tell us if the dream of a yesterday will be renewed on the
+night of a morrow?  All is said--we trust one another, dearest."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+That evening the Morleys looked in at Isaura's on their way to a crowded
+assembly at the house of one of those rich Americans, who were then
+outvying the English residents at Paris in the good graces of Parisian
+society.  I think the Americans get on better with the French than the
+English do--I mean the higher class of Americans.  They spend more money;
+their men speak French better; the women are better dressed, and, as a
+general rule, have read more largely, and converse more frankly.  Mrs.
+Morley's affection for Isaura had increased during the last few months.
+As so notable an advocate of the ascendancy of her sex, she felt a sort
+of grateful pride in the accomplishments and growing renown of so
+youthful a member of the oppressed sisterhood.  But, apart from that
+sentiment, she had conceived a tender mother-like interest for the girl
+who stood in the world so utterly devoid of family ties, so destitute of
+that household guardianship and protection which, with all her assertion
+of the strength and dignity of woman, and all her opinions as to woman's
+right of absolute emancipation from the conventions fabricated by the
+selfishness of man, Mrs. Morley was too sensible not to value for the
+individual, though she deemed it not needed for the mass.  Her great
+desire was that Isaura should marry well, and soon.  American women
+usually marry so young that it seemed to Mrs. Morley an anomaly in social
+life, that one so gifted in mind and person as Isaura should already have
+passed the age in which the belles of the great Republic are enthroned as
+wives and consecrated as mothers.  We have seen that in the past year she
+had selected from our unworthy but necessary sex, Graham Vane as a
+suitable spouse to her young friend.  She had divined the state of his
+heart--she had more than suspicions of the state of Isaura's.  She was
+exceedingly perplexed and exceedingly chafed at the Englishman's strange
+disregard to his happiness and her own projects.  She had counted, all
+this past winter, on his return to Paris; and she became convinced that
+some misunderstanding, possibly some lover's quarrel, was the cause of
+his protracted absence, and a cause that, if ascertained, could be
+removed.  A good opportunity now presented itself--Colonel Morley was
+going to London the next day.  He had business there which would detain
+him at least a week.  He would see Graham; and as she considered her
+husband the shrewdest and wisest person in the world--I mean of the male
+sex--she had no doubt of his being able to turn Graham's mind thoroughly
+inside out, and ascertain his exact feelings and intentions.  If the
+Englishman, thus assayed, were found of base metal, then, at least, Mrs.
+Morley would be free to cast him altogether aside, and coin for the uses
+of the matrimonial market some nobler effigy in purer gold.
+
+"My dear child," said Mrs. Morley, in a low voice, nestling herself close
+to Isaura, while the Colonel, duly instructed, drew off the Venosta,
+"have you heard anything lately of our pleasant friend Mr. Vane?"
+
+You can guess with what artful design Mrs. Morley put that question
+point-blank, fixing keen eyes on Isaura while she put it.  She saw the
+heightened colour, the quivering lip of the girl thus abruptly appealed
+to, and she said inly: "I was right--she loves him!"
+
+"I heard of Mr. Vane last night--accidentally."
+
+"Is he coming to Paris soon?"
+
+"Not that I know of.  How charmingly that wreath becomes you!  it suits
+the earrings so well, too."
+
+"Frank chose it; he has good taste for a man.  I trust him with my
+commissions to Hunt and Roskell's but I limit him as to price, he is so
+extravagant--men are, when they make presents.  They seem to think we
+value things according to their cost.  They would gorge us with jewels,
+and let us starve for want of a smile.  Not that Frank is so bad as the
+rest of them.  But a propos of Mr. Vane--Frank will be sure to see him,
+and scold him well for deserting us all.  I should not be surprised if he
+brought the deserter back with him, for I send a little note by Frank,
+inviting him to pay us a visit.  We have spare rooms in our apartments."
+
+Isaura's heart heaved beneath her robe, but she replied in a tone of
+astonishing indifference: "I believe this is the height of the London
+season, and Mr. Vane would probably be too engaged to profit even by an
+invitation so tempting."
+
+"_Nous verrons_.  How pleased he will be to hear of your triumphs!  He
+admired you so much before you were famous: what will be his admiration
+now! men are so vain--they care for us so much more when people praise
+us.  But till we have put the creatures in their proper place, we must
+take them for what they are."
+
+Here the Venosta, with whom the poor Colonel had exhausted all the arts
+at his command for chaining her attention, could be no longer withheld
+from approaching Mrs. Morley, and venting her admiration of that lady's
+wreath, earrings, robes, flounces.  This dazzling apparition had on her
+the effect which a candle has on a moth--she fluttered round it, and
+longed to absorb herself in its blaze.  But the wreath especially
+fascinated her--a wreath which no prudent lady with colourings less pure,
+and features less exquisitely delicate than the pretty champion of the
+rights of women, could have fancied on her own brows without a shudder.
+But the Venosta in such matters was not prudent.  "It can't be dear," she
+cried piteously, extending her arms towards Isaura.  "I must have one
+exactly like.  Who made it?  Cara signora, give me the address."
+
+"Ask the Colonel, dear Madame; he chose and bought it," and Mrs. Morley
+glanced significantly at her well-tutored Frank.
+
+"Madame," said the Colonel, speaking in English, which he usually did
+with the Venosta--who valued herself on knowing that language and was
+flattered to be addressed in it--while he amused himself by introducing
+into its forms the dainty Americanisms with which he puzzled the
+Britisher--he might well puzzle the Florentine,--"Madame, I am too
+anxious for the appearance of my wife to submit to the test of a rival
+schemer like yourself in the same apparel.  With all the homage due to a
+sex of which I am enthused dreadful, I decline to designate the florist
+from whom I purchased Mrs. Morley's head-fixings."
+
+"Wicked man!" cried the Venosta, shaking her finger at him coquettishly.
+"You are jealous!  Fie! a man should never be jealous of a woman's
+rivalry with women;" and then, with a cynicism that might have become a
+greybeard, she added, "but of his own sex every man should be jealous--
+though of his dearest friend.  Isn't it so, _Colonello_?"
+
+The Colonel looked puzzled, bowed, and made no reply.  "That only shows,"
+said Mrs. Morley, rising, "what villains the Colonel has the misfortune
+to call friends and fellow-men."
+
+"I fear it is time to go," said Frank, glancing at the clock.
+
+In theory the most rebellious, in practice the most obedient, of wives,
+Mrs. Morley here kissed Isaura, resettled her crinoline, and shaking
+hands with the Venosta, retreated to the door.
+
+"I shall have the wreath yet," cried the Venosta, impishly.  "_La
+speranza e fenamina_" (Hope is female).
+
+"Alas!" said Isaura, half mournfully, half smiling, "alas! do you not
+remember what the poet replied when asked what disease was most mortal?--
+'the hectic fever caught from the chill of hope.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Graham Vane was musing very gloomily in his solitary apartment one
+morning, when his servant announced Colonel Morley.
+
+He received his visitor with more than the cordiality with which every
+English politician receives an American citizen.  Graham liked the
+Colonel too well for what he was in himself to need any national title to
+his esteem.  After some preliminary questions and answers as to the
+health of Mrs. Morley, the length of the Colonel's stay in London, what
+day he could dine with Graham at Richmond or Gravesend, the Colonel took
+up the ball.  "We have been reckoning to see you at Paris, sir, for the
+last six months."
+
+"I am very much flattered to hear that you have thought of me at all; but
+I am not aware of having warranted the expectation you so kindly
+express."
+
+"I guess you must have said something to my wife which led her to do more
+than expect--to reckon on your return.  And, by the way, sir, I am
+charged to deliver to you this note from her, and to back the request it
+contains that you will avail yourself of the offer.  Without summarising
+the points I do so."
+
+Graham glanced over the note addressed to him
+
+     "DEAR MR. VANE,--Do you forget how beautiful the environs of Paris
+     are in May and June?  how charming it was last year at the lake of
+     Enghien? how gay were our little dinners out of doors in the garden
+     arbours, with the Savarins and the fair Italian, and her
+     incomparably amusing chaperon?  Frank has my orders to bring you
+     back to renew these happy days, while the birds are in their first
+     song, and the leaves are in their youngest green.  I have prepared
+     your rooms _chez nous_--a chamber that looks out on the Champs
+     Elysees, and a quiet _cabinet de travail_ at the back, in which you
+     can read, write, or sulk undisturbed.  Come, and we will again visit
+     Enghien and Montmorency.  Don't talk of engagements.  If man
+     proposes, woman disposes.  Hesitate not--obey.  Your sincere little
+     friend,  Lizzy."
+
+"My dear Morley," said Graham, with emotion, "I cannot find words to
+thank your wife sufficiently for an invitation so graciously conveyed.
+Alas! I cannot accept it."
+
+"Why?" asked the Colonel, drily.
+
+"I have too much to do in London."
+
+"Is that the true reason, or am I to suspicion that there is anything,
+sir, which makes you dislike a visit to Paris?"
+
+The Americans enjoy the reputation of being the frankest putters of
+questions whom liberty of speech has yet educated into _la recherche de
+la verite_, and certainly Colonel Morley in this instance did not impair
+the national reputation.
+
+Graham Vane's brow slightly contracted, and he bit his lip as if stung by
+a sudden pang; but after a moment's pause, he answered with a good-
+humoured smile:
+
+"No man who has taste enough to admire the most beautiful city, and
+appreciate the charms of the most brilliant society in the world, can
+dislike Paris."
+
+"My dear sir, I did not ask you if you disliked Paris, but if there were
+anything that made you dislike coming back to it on a visit."
+
+"What a notion! and what a cross-examiner you would have made if you had
+been called to the bar!  Surely, my dear friend, you can understand that
+when a man has in one place business which he cannot neglect, he may
+decline going to another place, whatever pleasure it would give him to do
+so.  By the way, there is a great ball at one of the Ministers' to-night;
+you should go there, and I will point out to you all those English
+notabilities in whom Americans naturally take interest.  I will call for
+you at eleven o'clock.  Lord ------, who is a connection of mine, would
+be charmed to know you."
+
+Morley hesitated; but when Graham said, "How your wife will scold you if
+you lose such an opportunity of telling her whether the Duchess of  ----
+is as beautiful as report says, and whether Gladstone or Disraeli seems
+to your phrenological science to have the finer head!" the Colonel gave
+in, and it was settled that Graham should call for him at the Langham
+Hotel.
+
+That matter arranged, Graham probably hoped that his inquisitive visitor
+would take leave for the present, but the Colonel evinced no such
+intention.  On the contrary, settling himself more at ease in his arm-
+chair, he said, "if I remember aright, you do not object to the odour of
+tobacco?"
+
+Graham rose and presented to his visitor a cigar-box which he took from
+the mantelpiece.
+
+The Colonel shook his head, and withdrew from his breast pocket a leather
+case, from which he extracted a gigantic regalia; this he lighted from a
+gold match-box in the shape of a locket attached to his watch-chain, and
+took two or three preliminary puffs, with his head thrown back and his
+eyes meditatively intent upon the ceiling.
+
+We know already that strange whim of the Colonel's (than whom, if he so
+pleased, no man could speak purer English as spoken by the Britisher) to
+assert the dignity of the American citizen by copious use of expressions
+and phrases familiar to the lips of the governing class of the great
+Republic--delicacies of speech which he would have carefully shunned in
+the polite circles of the Fifth Avenue in New York.  Now the Colonel was
+much too experienced a man of the world not to be aware that the
+commission with which his Lizzy had charged him was an exceedingly
+delicate one; and it occurred to his mother wit that the best way to
+acquit himself of it, so as to avoid the risk of giving or of receiving
+serious affront, would be to push that whim of his into more than wonted
+exaggeration.  Thus he could more decidedly and briefly come to the
+point; and should he, in doing so, appear too meddlesome, rather provoke
+a laugh than a frown-retiring from the ground with the honours due to a
+humorist.  Accordingly, in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing
+his eyes from the ceiling, he began:
+
+"You have not asked, sir, after the signorina, or as we popularly call
+her, Mademoiselle Cicogna?"
+
+"Have I not?  I hope she is quite well, and her lively companion, Signora
+Venosta."
+
+"They are not sick, sir; or at least they were not so last night when my
+wife and I had the pleasure to see them.  Of course you have read
+Mademoiselle Cicogna's book--a bright performance, sir, age considered."
+
+"Certainly, I have read the book; it is full of unquestionable genius.
+Is Mademoiselle writing another?  But of course she is."
+
+"I am not aware of the fact, sir.  It may be predicated; such a mind
+cannot remain inactive; and I know from M. Savarin and that rising young
+man Gustave Rameau, that the publishers bid high for her brains
+considerable.  Two translations have already appeared in our country.
+Her fame, sir, will be world-wide.  She may be another George Sand, or at
+least another Eulalie Grantmesnil."
+
+Graham's cheek became as white as the paper I write on.  He inclined his
+head as in assent, but without a word.  The Colonel continued:
+
+We ought to be very proud of her acquaintance, sir.  I think you detected
+her gifts while they were yet unconjectured.  My wife says so.  You must
+be gratified to remember that, sir--clear grit, sir, and no mistake."
+
+"I certainly more than once have said to Mrs. Morley, that I esteemed
+Mademoiselle's powers so highly that I hoped she would never become a
+stage-singer and actress.  But this M. Rameau?  You say he is a rising
+man.  It struck me when at Paris that he was one of those charlatans with
+a great deal of conceit and very little information, who are always found
+in scores on the ultra-Liberal side of politics;-possibly I was
+mistaken."
+
+"He is the responsible editor of Le Sens Commun, in which talented
+periodical Mademoiselle Cicogna's book was first raised."
+
+"Of course, I know that; a journal which, so far as I have looked into
+its political or social articles, certainly written by a cleverer and an
+older man than M. Rameau, is for unsettling all things and settling
+nothing.  We have writers of that kind among ourselves--I have no
+sympathy with them.  To me it seems that when a man says, 'Off with your
+head,' he ought to let us know what other head he would put on our
+shoulders, and by what process the change of heads shall be effected.
+Honestly speaking, if you and your charming wife are intimate friends and
+admirers of Mademoiselle Cicogna, I think you could not do her a greater
+service than that of detaching her from all connection with men like M.
+Rameau, and journals like La Sens Commun."
+
+The Colonel here withdrew his cigar from his lips, lowered his head to a
+level with Graham's, and relaxing into an arch significant smile, said:
+"Start to Paris, and dissuade her yourself.  Start--go ahead--don't be
+shy--don't seesaw on the beam of speculation.  You will have more
+influence with that young female than we can boast."  Never was England
+in greater danger of quarrel with America than at that moment; but Graham
+curbed his first wrathful impulse, and replied coldly:
+
+"It seems to me, Colonel, that you, though very unconsciously, derogate
+from the respect due to Mademoiselle Cicogna.  That the counsel of a
+married couple like yourself and Mrs. Morley should be freely given to
+and duly heeded by a girl deprived of her natural advisers in parents,
+is a reasonable and honourable supposition; but to imply that the most
+influential adviser of a young lady so situated is a young single man, in
+no way related to her, appears to me a dereliction of that regard to the
+dignity of her sex which is the chivalrous characteristic of your
+countrymen--and to Mademoiselle Cicogna herself, a surmise which she
+would be justified in resenting as an impertinence."
+
+"I deny both allegations," replied the Colonel serenely.  "I maintain
+that a single man whips all connubial creation when it comes to
+gallantising a single young woman; and that no young lady would be
+justified in resenting as impertinence my friendly suggestion to the
+single man so deserving of her consideration as I estimate you to be,
+to solicit the right to advise her for life.  And that's a caution."
+
+Here the Colonel resumed his regalia, and again gazed intent on the
+ceiling.
+
+"Advise her for life!  You mean, I presume, as a candidate for her hand."
+
+"You don't Turkey now.  Well, I guess, you are not wide of the mark
+there, sir."
+
+"You do me infinite honour, but I do not presume so far."
+
+"So, so--not as yet.  Before a man who is not without gumption runs
+himself for Congress, he likes to calculate how the votes will run.
+Well, sir, suppose we are in caucus, and let us discuss the chances of
+the election with closed doors."
+
+Graham could not help smiling at the persistent officiousness of his
+visitor, but his smile was a very sad one.
+
+"Pray change the subject, my dear Colonel Morley--it is not a pleasant
+one to me; and as regards Mademoiselle Cicogna, can you think it would
+not shock her to suppose that her name was dragged into the discussions
+you would provoke, even with closed doors?"
+
+"Sir," replied the Colonel, imperturbably, "since the doors are closed,
+there is no one, unless it be a spirit-listener under the table, who can
+wire to Mademoiselle Cicogna the substance of debate.  And, for my part,
+I do not believe in spiritual manifestations.  Fact is, that I have the
+most amicable sentiments towards both parties, and if there is a
+misunderstanding which is opposed to the union of the States, I wish to
+remove it while yet in time.  Now, let us suppose that you decline to be
+a candidate; there are plenty of others who will run; and as an elector
+must choose one representative or other, so a gal must choose one husband
+or other.  And then you only repent when it is too late.  It is a great
+thing to be first in the field.  Let us approximate to the point; the
+chances seem good-will you run?  Yes or no?"
+
+"I repeat, Colonel Morley, that I entertain no such presumption."
+
+The Colonel here, rising, extended his hand, which Graham shook with
+constrained cordiality, and then leisurely walked to the door; there he
+paused, as if struck by a new thought, and said gravely, in his natural
+tone of voice, "You have nothing to say, sir, against the young lady's
+character and honour?"
+
+"I!--heavens, no!  Colonel Morley, such a question insults me."
+
+The Colonel resumed his deepest nasal bass: "It is only, then, because
+you don't fancy her now so much as you did last year--fact, you are
+soured on her and fly off the handle.  Such things do happen.  The same
+thing has happened to myself, sir.  In my days of celibacy, there was a
+gal at Saratoga whom I gallantised, and whom, while I was at Saratoga, I
+thought Heaven had made to be Mrs. Morley: I was on the very point of
+telling her so, when I was suddenly called off to Philadelphia; and at
+Philadelphia, sir, I found that Heaven had made another Mrs. Morley.  I
+state this fact, sir, though I seldom talk of my own affairs, even when
+willing to tender my advice in the affairs of another, in order to prove
+that I do not intend to censure you if Heaven has served you in the same
+manner.  Sir, a man may go blind for one gal when he is not yet dry
+behind the ears, and then, when his eyes are skinned, go in for one
+better. All things mortal meet with a change, as my sisters little boy
+said when, at the age of eight, he quitted the Methodys and turned
+Shaker.  Threep and argue as we may, you and I are both mortals--more's
+the pity.  Good morning, sir (glancing at the clock, which proclaimed the
+hour of 3 P.M.),--I err--good evening."
+
+By the post that day the Colonel transmitted a condensed and laconic
+report of his conversation with Graham Vane.  I can state its substance
+in yet fewer words.  He wrote word that Graham positively declined the
+invitation to Paris; that he had then, agreeably to Lizzy's instruction,
+ventilated the Englishman, in the most delicate terms, as to his
+intentions with regard to Isaura, and that no intentions at all existed.
+The sooner all thoughts of him were relinquished, as a new suitor on the
+ground, the better it would be for the young lady's happiness in the only
+state in which happiness should be, if not found, at least sought,
+whether by maid or man.
+
+Mrs. Morley was extremely put out by this untoward result of the
+diplomacy she had intrusted to the Colonel; and when, the next day, came
+a very courteous letter from Graham, thanking her gratefully for the
+kindness of her invitation, and expressing his regret briefly, though
+cordially, at his inability to profit by it, without the most distant
+allusion to the subject which the Colonel had brought on the _tapis_, or
+even requesting his compliments to the Signoras Venosta and Cicogna, she
+was more than put out, more than resentful,--she was deeply grieved.
+Being, however, one of those gallant heroes of womankind who do not give
+in at the first defeat, she began to doubt whether Frank had not rather
+overstrained the delicacy which he said he had put into his "soundings."
+He ought to have been more explicit.  Meanwhile she resolved to call on
+Isaura, and, without mentioning Graham's refusal of her invitation,
+endeavour to ascertain whether the attachment which she felt persuaded
+the girl secretly cherished for this recalcitrant Englishman were
+something more than the first romantic fancy--whether it were
+sufficiently deep to justify farther effort on Mrs. Morley's part to
+bring it to a prosperous issue.
+
+She found Isaura at home and alone; and, to do her justice, she exhibited
+wonderful tact in the fulfilment of the task she had set herself.
+Forming her judgment by manner and look--not words--she returned home,
+convinced that she ought to seize the opportunity afforded to her by
+Graham's letter.  It was one to which she might very naturally reply, and
+in that reply she might convey the object at her heart more felicitously
+than the Colonel had done.  "The cleverest man is," she said to herself,
+"stupid compared to an ordinary woman in the real business of life, which
+does not consist of fighting and moneymaking."
+
+Now there was one point she had ascertained by words in her visit to
+Isaura--a point on which all might depend.  She had asked Isaura when
+and where she had seen Graham last; and when Isaura had given her that
+information, and she learned it was on the eventful day on which Isaura
+gave her consent to the publication of her MS. if approved by Savarin, in
+the journal to be set up by the handsome-faced young author, she leapt to
+the conclusion that Graham had been seized with no unnatural jealousy,
+and was still under the illusive glamoury of that green-eyed fiend.  She
+was confirmed in this notion, not altogether an unsound one, when asking
+with apparent carelessness, "And in that last interview, did you see any
+change in Mr. Vane's manner, especially when he took leave?"
+
+Isaura turned away pale, and involuntarily clasping her hands-as women do
+when they would suppress pain-replied, in a low murmur, "His manner was
+changed."
+
+Accordingly, Mrs. Morley sat down and wrote the following letter:
+
+"DEAR MR. VANE,--I am very angry indeed with you for refusing my
+invitation--I had so counted on you, and I don't believe a word of your
+excuse.  Engagements!  To balls and dinners, I suppose, as if you were
+not much too clever to care about such silly attempts to enjoy solitude
+in crowds.  And as to what you men call business, you have no right to
+have any business at all.  You are not in commerce; you are not in
+Parliament; you told me yourself that you had no great landed estates to
+give you trouble; you are rich, without any necessity to take pains to
+remain rich, or to become richer; you have no business in the world
+except to please yourself: and when you will not come to Paris to see one
+of your truest friends--which I certainly am--it simply means, that no
+matter how such a visit would please me, it does not please yourself.  I
+call that abominably rude and ungrateful.
+
+"But I am not writing merely to scold you.  I have something else on my
+mind, and it must come out.  Certainly, when you were at Paris last year
+you did admire, above all other young ladies, Isaura Cicogna.  And I
+honoured you for doing so.  I know no other young lady to be called her
+equal.  Well, if you admired her then, what would you do now if you met
+her?  Then she was but a girl--very brilliant, very charming, it is true
+--but undeveloped, untested.  Now she is a woman, a princess among women,
+but retaining all that is most lovable in a girl; so courted, yet so
+simple--so gifted, yet so innocent.  Her head is not a bit turned by all
+the flattery that surrounds her.  Come and judge for yourself.  I still
+hold the door of the rooms destined to you open for repentance.
+
+"My dear Mr. Vane, do not think me a silly match-making little woman,
+when I write to you thus, _a coeur ouvert_.
+
+"I like you so much that I would fain secure to you the rarest prize which
+life is ever likely to offer to your ambition.  Where can you hope to
+find another Isaura?  Among the stateliest daughters of your English
+dukes, where is there one whom a proud man would be more proud to show to
+the world, saying, 'She is mine!' where one more distinguished--I will
+not say by mere beauty, there she might be eclipsed--but by sweetness and
+dignity combined--in aspect, manner, every movement, every smile?
+
+"And you, who are yourself so clever, so well read--you who would be so
+lonely with a wife who was not your companion, with whom you could not
+converse on equal terms of intellect,--my dear friend, where could you
+find a companion in whom you would not miss the poet-soul of Isaura?
+Of course I should not dare to obtrude all these questionings on your
+innermost reflection, if I had not some idea, right or wrong, that since
+the days when at Enghien and Montmorency, seeing you and Isaura side by
+side, I whispered to Frank, 'So should those two be through life,' some
+cloud has passed between your eyes and the future on which they gazed.
+Cannot that cloud be dispelled?  Were you so unjust to yourself as to be
+jealous of a rival, perhaps of a Gustave Rameau?  I write to you frankly
+--answer me frankly; and if you answer, 'Mrs. Morley, I don't know, what
+you mean; I admired Mademoiselle Cicogna as I might admire any other
+pretty, accomplished girl, but it is really nothing to me whether she
+marries Gustave Rameau or any one else,'--why, then, burn this letter--
+forget that it has been written; and may you never know the pang of
+remorseful sigh, if, in the days to come, you see her--whose name in that
+case I should profane did I repeat it--the comrade of another man's mind,
+the half of another man's heart, the pride and delight of another man's
+blissful home."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+There is somewhere in Lord Lytton's writings--writings so numerous that I
+may be pardoned if I cannot remember where-a critical definition of the
+difference between dramatic and narrative art of story, instanced by that
+marvellous passage in the loftiest of Sir Walter Scott's works, in which
+all the anguish of Ravenswood on the night before he has to meet Lucy's
+brother in mortal combat is conveyed without the spoken words required in
+tragedy.  It is only to be conjectured by the tramp of his heavy boots to
+and fro all the night long in his solitary chamber, heard below by the
+faithful Caleb.  The drama could not have allowed that treatment; the
+drama must have put into words, as "soliloquy," agonies which the non-
+dramatic narrator knows that no soliloquy can describe.  Humbly do I
+imitate, then, the great master of narrative in declining to put into
+words the conflict between love and reason that tortured the heart of
+Graham Vane when, dropping noiselessly the letter I have just
+transcribed, he covered his face with his hands and remained--I know not
+how long--in the same position, his head bowed, not a sound escaping from
+his lips.
+
+He did not stir from his rooms that day; and had there been a Caleb's
+faithful ear to listen, his tread, too, might have been heard all that
+sleepless night passing to and fro, but pausing oft, along his solitary
+floors.
+
+Possibly love would have borne down all opposing seasonings, doubts, and
+prejudices, but for incidents that occurred the following evening.  On
+that evening Graham dined _en famille_ with his cousins the Altons.
+After dinner, the Duke produced the design for a cenotaph inscribed to
+the memory of his aunt, Lady Janet King, which he proposed to place in
+the family chapel at Alton.
+
+"I know," said the Duke, kindly, "you would wish the old house from which
+she sprang to preserve some such record of her who loved you as her son;
+and even putting you out of the question, it gratifies me to attest the
+claim of our family to a daughter who continues to be famous for her
+goodness, and made the goodness so lovable that envy forgave it for being
+famous.  It was a pang to me when poor Richard King decided on placing
+her tomb among strangers; but in conceding his rights as to her resting-
+place, I retain mine to her name,--Nostris liberis virtutis exemplar."
+
+Graham wrung his cousin's hand-he could not speak, choked by suppressed
+tears.
+
+The Duchess, who loved and honoured Lady Janet almost as much as did her
+husband, fairly sobbed aloud.  She had, indeed, reason for grateful
+memories of the deceased: there had been some obstacles to her marriage
+with the man who had won her heart, arising from political differences
+and family feuds between their parents, which the gentle meditation of
+Lady Janet had smoothed away.  And never did union founded on mutual and
+ardent love more belie the assertions of the great Bichat (esteemed by
+Dr. Buckle the finest intellect which practical philosophy has exhibited
+since Aristotle), that "Love is a sort of fever which does not last
+beyond two years," than that between those eccentric specimens of a class
+denounced as frivolous and artless by philosophers, English and French,
+who have certainly never heard of Bichat.
+
+When the emotion the Duke had exhibited was calmed down, his wife pushed
+towards Graham a sheet of paper, inscribed with the epitaph composed by
+his hand.  "Is it not beautiful," she said, falteringly--"not a word too
+much or too little?"
+
+Graham read the inscription slowly, and with very dimmed eyes.  It
+deserved the praise bestowed on it; for the Duke, though a shy and
+awkward speaker, was an incisive and graceful writer.
+
+Yet, in his innermost self, Graham shivered when he read that epitaph, it
+expressed so emphatically the reverential nature of the love which Lady
+Janet had inspired--the genial influences which the holiness of a
+character so active in doing good had diffused around it.  It brought
+vividly before Graham that image of perfect spotless womanhood.  And a
+voice within him asked, "Would that cenotaph be placed amid the monuments
+of an illustrious lineage if the secret known to thee could transpire?
+What though the lost one were really as unsullied by sin as the world
+deems, would the name now treasured as an heirloom not be a memory of
+gall and a sound of shame?"
+
+He remained so silent after putting down the inscription, that the Duke
+said modestly: "My dear Graham, I see that you do not like what I have
+written.  Your pen is much more practised than mine.  If I did not ask
+you to compose the epitaph, it was because I thought it would please you
+more in coming, as a spontaneous tribute due to her, from the
+representative of her family.  But will you correct my sketch, or give me
+another according to your own ideas?"
+
+"I see not a word to alter," said Graham; "forgive me if my silence
+wronged my emotion; the truest eloquence is that which holds us too mute
+for applause."
+
+"I knew you would like it.  Leopold is always so disposed to underrate
+himself," said the duchess, whose hand was resting fondly on her
+husband's shoulder.  "Epitaphs are so difficult to write-especially
+epitaphs on women of whom in life the least said the better.  Janet was
+the only woman I ever knew whom one could praise in safety."
+
+"Well expressed," said the Duke, smiling: "and I wish you would make that
+safety clear to some lady friends of yours, to whom it might serve as a
+lesson.  Proof against every breath of scandal herself, Janet King never
+uttered and never encouraged one ill-natured word against another.  But I
+am afraid, my dear fellow, that I must leave you to a _tete-a-tete_ with
+Eleanor.  You know that I must be at the House this evening--I only
+paired till half-past nine."
+
+"I will walk down to the House with you, if you are going on foot."
+
+"No," said the Duchess; "you must resign yourself to me for at least half
+an hour.  I was looking over your aunt's letters to-day, and I found one
+which I wish to show you; it is all about yourself, and written within
+the last few months of her life."  Here she put her arm into Graham's,
+and led him into her own private drawing-room, which, though others might
+call it a boudoir, she dignified by the name of her study.  The Duke
+remained for some minutes thoughtfully leaning his arm on the
+mantelpiece.  It was no unimportant debate in the Lords that night, and
+on a subject in which he took great interest, and the details of which he
+had thoroughly mastered.  He had been requested to speak, if only a few
+words, for his high character and his reputation for good sense gave
+weight to the mere utterance of his opinion.  But though no one had more
+moral courage in action, the Duke had a terror at the very thought of
+addressing an audience, which made him despise himself.
+
+"Ah!" he muttered, "if Graham Vane were but in Parliament, I could trust
+him to say exactly what I would rather be swallowed up by an earthquake
+than stand up and say for myself.  But now he has got money he seems to
+think of nothing but saving it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The letter from Lady Janet, which the Duchess took from the desk and
+placed in Graham's hand, was in strange coincidence with the subject that
+for the last twenty-four hours had absorbed his thoughts and tortured his
+heart.  Speaking of him in terms of affectionate eulogy, the writer
+proceeded to confide her earnest wish that be should not longer delay
+that change in life which, concentrating so much that is vague in the
+desires and aspirations of man, leaves his heart and his mind, made
+serene by the contentment of home, free for the steadfast consolidation
+of their warmth and their light upon the ennobling duties that unite the
+individual to his race.
+
+"There is no one," wrote Lady Janet, "whose character and career a
+felicitous choice in marriage can have greater influence over than this
+dear adopted son of mine.  I do not fear that in any case he will be
+liable to the errors of his brilliant father.  His early reverse of
+fortune here seems to me one of those blessings which Heaven conceals in
+the form of affliction.  For in youth, the genial freshness of his gay
+animal spirits, a native generosity mingled with desire of display and
+thirst for applause, made me somewhat alarmed for his future.  But,
+though he still retains these attributes of character, they are no longer
+predominant; they are modified and chastened.  He has learned prudence.
+But what I now fear most for him is that which he does not show in the
+world, which neither Leopold nor you seem to detect,--it is an exceeding
+sensitiveness of pride.  I know not how else to describe it.  It is so
+interwoven with the highest qualities, that I sometimes dread injury to
+them could it be torn away from the faultier ones which it supports.
+
+"It is interwoven with that lofty independence of spirit which has made
+him refuse openings the most alluring to his ambition; it communicates a
+touching grandeur to his self-denying thrift; it makes him so tenacious
+of his word once given, so cautious before he gives it.  Public life to
+him is essential; without it he would be incomplete; and yet I sigh to
+think that whatever success he may achieve in it will be attended with
+proportionate pain.  Calumny goes side by side with fame, and courting
+fame as a man, he is as thin-skinned to calumny as a woman.
+
+"The wife for Graham should have qualities, not taken individually,
+uncommon in English wives, but in combination somewhat rare.
+
+"She must have mind enough to appreciate his--not to clash with it.
+She must be fitted with sympathies to be his dearest companion, his
+confidante in the hopes and fears which the slightest want of sympathy
+would make him keep ever afterwards pent within his breast.  In herself
+worthy of distinction, she must merge all distinction in his.  You have
+met in the world men who, marrying professed beauties, or professed
+literary geniuses, are spoken of as the husband of the beautiful Mrs.
+A------, or of the clever Mrs. B-------: can you fancy Graham Vane in the
+reflected light of one of those husbands?  I trembled last year when I
+thought he was attracted by a face which the artists raved about, and
+again by a tongue which dropped _bons mots_ that went the round of the
+club.  I was relieved, when, sounding him, he said, laughingly, 'No, dear
+aunt, I should be one sore from head to foot if I married a wife that was
+talked about for anything but goodness.'
+
+"No,--Graham Vane will have pains sharp enough if he live to be talked
+about himself.  But that tenderest half of himself, the bearer of the
+name he would make, and for the dignity of which he alone would be
+responsible,--if that were the town talk, he would curse the hour he gave
+any one the right to take on herself his man's burden of calumny and
+fame.  I know not which I should pity the most, Graham Vane or his wife.
+
+"Do you understand me, dearest Eleanor?  No doubt you do so far, that you
+comprehend that the women whom men most admire are not the women we, as
+women ourselves, would wish our sons or brothers to marry.  But perhaps
+you do not comprehend my cause of fear, which is this--for in such
+matters men do not see as we women do--Graham abhors, in the girls of our
+time, frivolity and insipidity.  Very rightly, you will say.  True, but
+then he is too likely to be allured by contrasts.  I have seen him
+attracted by the very girls we recoil from more than we do from those
+we allow to be frivolous and insipid.  I accused him of admiration for a
+certain young lady whom you call 'odious,' and whom the slang that has
+come into vogue calls 'fast;' and I was not satisfied with his answer,
+'Certainly I admire her; she is not a doll--she has ideas.'  I would
+rather of the two see Graham married to what men call a doll, than to a
+girl with ideas which are distasteful to women."
+
+Lady Janet then went on to question the Duchess about a Miss Asterisk,
+with whom this tale will have nothing to do, but who, from the little
+which Lady Janet had seen of her, might possess all the requisites that
+fastidious correspondent would exact for the wife of her adopted son.
+
+This Miss Asterisk had been introduced into the London world by the
+Duchess.  The Duchess had replied to Lady Janet, that if earth could be
+ransacked, a more suitable wife for Graham Vane than Miss Asterisk could
+not be found; she was well born--an heiress; the estates she inherited
+were in the county of--(viz., the county in which the ancestors of
+D'Altons and Vanes had for centuries established their whereabout).  Miss
+Asterisk was pretty enough to please any man's eye, but not with the
+beauty of which artists rave; well informed enough to be companion to a
+well-informed man, but certainly not witty enough to supply _bons mots_
+to the clubs.  Miss Asterisk was one of those women of whom a husband
+might be proud, yet with whom a husband would feel safe from being talked
+about.
+
+And in submitting the letter we have read to Graham's eye, the Duchess
+had the cause of Miss Asterisk pointedly in view.  Miss Asterisk had
+confided to her friend, that, of all men she had seen, Mr. Graham Vane
+was the one she would feel the least inclined to refuse.
+
+So when Graham Vane returned the letter to the Duchess, simply saying,
+"How well my dear aunt divined what is weakest in me!" the Duchess
+replied quickly, "Miss Asterisk dines here to-morrow; pray come; you
+would like her if you knew more of her."
+
+"To-morrow I am engaged--an American friend of mine dines with me; but
+'tis no matter, for I shall never feel more for Miss Asterisk than I feel
+for Mont Blanc."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+On leaving his cousin's house Graham walked on, he scarce knew or cared
+whither, the image of the beloved dead so forcibly recalled the solemnity
+of the mission with which he had been intrusted, and which hitherto he
+had failed to fulfil.  What if the only mode by which he could, without
+causing questions and suspicions that might result in dragging to day the
+terrible nature of the trust he held, enrich the daughter of Richard
+King, repair all wrong hitherto done to her, and guard the sanctity of
+Lady Janet's home,--should be in that union which Richard King had
+commended to him while his heart was yet free?  In such a case, would not
+gratitude to the dead, duty to the living, make that union imperative at
+whatever sacrifice of happiness to himself?  The two years to which
+Richard King had limited the suspense of research were not yet expired.
+Then, too, that letter of Lady Janet's,--so tenderly anxious for his
+future, so clear-sighted as to the elements of his own character in its
+strength or its infirmities--combined with graver causes to withhold his
+heart from its yearning impulse, and--no, not steel it against Isaura,
+but forbid it to realise, in the fair creature and creator of romance,
+his ideal of the woman to whom an earnest, sagacious, aspiring man
+commits all the destinies involved in the serene dignity of his hearth.
+He could not but own that this gifted author--this eager seeker after
+fame--this brilliant and bold competitor with men on their own stormy
+battle-ground-was the very person from whom Lady Janet would have warned
+away his choice.  She (Isaura) merge her own distinctions in a
+husband's;--she leave exclusively to him the burden of fame and calumny!
+--she shun "to be talked about!" she who could feel her life to be a
+success or a failure, according to the extent and the loudness of the
+talk which it courted!
+
+While these thoughts racked his mind, a kindly hand was laid on his arm,
+and a cheery voice accosted him.  "Well met, my dear Vane!  I see we are
+bound to the same place; there will be a good gathering to-night."
+
+"What do you mean, Bevil?  I am going nowhere, except to my own quiet
+rooms."
+
+"Pooh!  Come in here at least for a few minutes,"--and Bevil drew him up
+to the door-step of a house close by, where, on certain evenings, a well-
+known club drew together men who seldom meet so familiarly elsewhere--men
+of all callings; a club especially favoured by wits, authors, and the
+_flaneurs_ of polite society.
+
+Graham shook his head, about to refuse, when Bevil added, "I have just
+come from Paris, and can give you the last news, literary, political, and
+social.  By the way, I saw Savarin the other night at the Cicogna's--he
+introduced me there."  Graham winced; he was spelled by the music of a
+name, and followed his acquaintance into the crowded room, and, after
+returning many greetings and nods, withdrew into a remote corner, and
+motioned Bevil to a seat beside him.
+
+"So you met Savarin?  Where, did you say?"
+
+"At the house of the new lady-author--I hate the word authoress--
+Mademoiselle Cicogna!  Of course you have read her book?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Full of fine things, is it not?--though somewhat highflown and
+sentimental: however, nothing succeeds like success.  No book has been
+more talked about at Paris: the only thing more talked about is the lady-
+author herself."
+
+"Indeed, and how?"
+
+"She doesn't look twenty, a mere girl--of that kind of beauty which so
+arrests the eye that you pass by other faces to gaze on it, and the
+dullest stranger would ask, 'Who, and what is she?'  A girl, I say, like
+that--who lives as independently as if she were a middle-aged widow,
+receives every week (she has her Thursdays), with no other chaperon than
+an old _ci-devant_ Italian singing woman, dressed like a guy--must set
+Parisian tongues into play even if she had not written the crack book of
+the season."
+
+"Mademoiselle Cicogna receives on Thursdays,--no harm in that; and if she
+have no other chaperon than the Italian lady you mention, it is because
+Mademoiselle Cicogna is an orphan, and having a fortune, such as it is,
+of her own, I do not see why she should not live as independently as many
+an unmarried woman in London placed under similar circumstances.  I
+suppose she receives chiefly persons in the literary or artistic world,
+and if they are all as respectable as the Savarins, I do not think ill-
+nature itself could find fault with her social circle."
+
+"Ah!  you know the Cicogna, I presume.  I am sure I did not wish to say
+anything that could offend her best friends, only I do think it is a pity
+she is not married, poor girl!"
+
+"Mademoiselle Cicogna, accomplished, beautiful, of good birth (the
+Cicogna's rank among the oldest of Lombard families), is not likely to
+want offers."
+
+"Offers of marriage,--h'm--well, I dare say, from authors and artists.
+You know Paris better even than I do, but I don't suppose authors and
+artists there make the most desirable husbands; and I scarcely know a
+marriage in France between a man-author and lady-author which does not
+end in the deadliest of all animosities--that of wounded _amour propre_.
+Perhaps the man admires his own genius too much to do proper homage to
+his wife's."
+
+"But the choice of Mademoiselle Cicogna need not be restricted to the
+pale of authorship--doubtless she has many admirers beyond that
+quarrelsome borderland."
+
+"Certainly-countless adorers.  Enguerrand de Vandemar--you know that
+diamond of dandies?"
+
+"Perfectly--is he an admirer?"
+
+"_Cela va sans dire_--he told me that though she was not the handsomest
+woman in Paris, all other women looked less handsome since he had seen
+her.  But, of course, French lady-killers like Enguerrand, when it comes
+to marriage, leave it to their parents to choose their wives and arrange
+the terms of the contract.  Talking of lady-killers, I beheld amid the
+throng at Mademoiselle Cicogna's the _ci-devant_ Lovelace whom I remember
+some twenty-three years ago as the darling of wives and the terror of
+husbands-Victor de Mauleon."
+
+"Victor de Mauleon at Mademoiselle Cicogna's!--what, is that man restored
+to society?"
+
+"Ah! you are thinking of the ugly old story about the jewels--oh, yes, he
+has got over that; all his grand relations, the Vandemars, Beauvilliers,
+Rochebriant, and others, took him by the hand when he reappeared at Paris
+last year; and though I believe he is still avoided by many, he is
+courted by still more--and avoided, I fancy, rather from political than
+social causes.  The Imperialist set, of course, execrate and prescribe
+him.  You know he is the writer of those biting articles signed Pierre
+Firmin in the Sens Commun; and I am told he is the proprietor of that
+very clever journal, which has become a power."
+
+"So, so--that is the journal in which Mademoiselle Cicogna's roman first
+appeared.  So, so--Victor de Mauleon one of her associates, her
+counsellor and friend--ah!"
+
+"No, I didn't say that; on the contrary, he was presented to her the
+first time the evening I was at the house.  I saw that young silk-haired
+coxcomb, Gustave Rameau, introduce him to her.  You don't perhaps know
+Rameau, editor of the Sens Commun--writes poems and criticisms.  They say
+he is a Red Republican, but De Mauleon keeps truculent French politics
+subdued if not suppressed in his cynical journal.  Somebody told me that
+the Cicogna is very much in love with Rameau; certainly he has a handsome
+face of his own, and that is the reason why she was so rude to the
+Russian Prince X-----."
+
+"How rude! Did the Prince propose to her?"
+
+"Propose! you forget--he is married.  Don't you know the Princess?  Still
+there are other kinds of proposals than those of marriage which a rich
+Russian prince may venture to make to a pretty novelist brought up for
+the stage."
+
+"Bevil!" cried Graham, grasping the man's arm fiercely, "how dare you?"
+
+"My dear boy," said Bevil, very much astonished, "I really did not know
+that your interest in the young lady was so great.  If I have wounded you
+in relating a mere _on dit_ picked up at the Jockey Club, I beg you a
+thousand pardons.  I dare say there was not a word of truth in it."
+
+"Not a word of truth, you may be sure, if the _on dit_ was injurious to
+Mademoiselle Cicogna.  It is true, I have a strong interest in her; any
+man--any gentleman--would have such interest in a girl so brilliant and
+seemingly so friendless.  It shames one of human nature to think that the
+reward which the world makes to those who elevate its platitudes,
+brighten its dulness, delight its leisure, is Slander!  I have had the
+honour to make the acquaintance of this lady before she became a
+'celebrity,' and I have never met in my paths through life a purer heart
+or a nobler nature.  What is the wretched _on dit_ you condescend to
+circulate?  Permit me to add:
+
+"'He who repeats a slander shares the crime.'"
+
+"Upon my honour, my dear Vane," said Bevil seriously (he did not want for
+spirit), "I hardly know you this evening.  It is not because duelling is
+out of fashion that a man should allow himself to speak in a tone that
+gives offence to another who intended none; and if duelling is out of
+fashion in England, it is still possible in France.--_Entre nous_, I
+would rather cross the Channel with you than submit to language that
+conveys unmerited insult."
+
+Graham's cheek, before ashen pale, flushed into dark red.  "I understand
+you," he said quietly, "and will be at Boulogne to-morrow."
+
+"Graham Vane," replied Bevil, with much dignity, "you and I have known
+each other a great many years, and neither of us has cause to question
+the courage of the other; but I am much older than yourself--permit me to
+take the melancholy advantage of seniority.  A duel between us in
+consequence of careless words said about a lady in no way connected with
+either, would be a cruel injury to her; a duel on grounds so slight would
+little injure me--a man about town, who would not sit an hour in the
+House of Commons if you paid him a thousand pounds a minute.  But you,
+Graham Vane--you whose destiny it is to canvass electors and make laws--
+would it not be an injury to you to be questioned at the hustings why you
+broke the law, and why you sought another man's life?  Come, come! shake
+hands and consider all that seconds, if we chose them, would exact, is
+said, every affront on either side retracted, every apology on either
+side made."
+
+"Bevil, you disarm and conquer me.  I spoke like a hotheaded fool; forget
+it--forgive.  But--but--I can listen calmly now--what is that _on dit_?"
+
+"One that thoroughly bears out your own very manly upholding of the poor
+young orphan, whose name I shall never again mention without such respect
+as would satisfy her most sensitive champion.  It was said that the
+Prince X------ boasted that before a week was out Mademoiselle Cicogna
+should appear in his carriage at the Bois de Boulogne, and wear at the
+opera diamonds he had sent to her; that this boast was enforced by a
+wager, and the terms of the wager compelled the Prince to confess the
+means he had taken to succeed, and produce the evidence that he had lost
+or won.  According to this _on dit_, the Prince had written to
+Mademoiselle Cicogna, and the letter had been accompanied by a _parure_
+that cost him half a million of francs; that the diamonds had been sent
+back with a few words of such scorn as a queen might address to an
+upstart lackey.  But, my dear Vane, it is a mournful position for the
+girl to receive such offers; and you must agree with me in wishing she
+were safely married, even to Monsieur Rameau, coxcomb though he be.  Let
+us hope that they will be an exception to French authors, male and
+female, in general, and live like turtle-doves."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A few days after the date of the last chapter, Colonel Morley returned to
+Paris.  He had dined with Graham at Greenwich, had met him afterwards in
+society, and paid him a farewell visit on the day before the Colonel's
+departure; but the name of Isaura Cicogna had not again been uttered by
+either.  Morley was surprised that his wife did not question him minutely
+as to the mode in which he had executed her delicate commission, and the
+manner as well as words with which Graham had replied to his
+"ventilations."  But his Lizzy cut him short when he began his recital:
+
+"I don't want to hear anything more about the man.  He has thrown away a
+prize richer than his ambition will ever gain, even if it gained him a
+throne."
+
+"That it can't gain him in the old country.  The people are loyal to the
+present dynasty, whatever you may be told to the contrary."
+
+"Don't be so horribly literal, Frank; that subject is done with.  How was
+the Duchess of  ------ dressed?"
+
+But when the Colonel had retired to what the French call the _cabinet de
+traivail_--and which he more accurately termed his "smoke den"--and there
+indulged in the cigar which, despite his American citizenship, was
+forbidden in the drawing-room of the tyrant who ruled his life, Mrs.
+Morley took from her desk a letter received three days before, and
+brooded over it intently, studying every word.  When she had thus
+reperused it, her tears fell upon the page.  "Poor Isaura!" she muttered
+--"poor Isaura!  I know she loves him--and how deeply a nature like hers
+can love!  But I must break it to her.  If I did not, she would remain
+nursing a vain dream, and refuse every chance of real happiness for the
+sake of nursing it."  Then she mechanically folded up the letter--I need
+not say it was from Graham Vane--restored it to the desk, and remained
+musing till the Colonel looked in at the door and said peremptorily,
+"Very late--come to bed."
+
+The next day Madame Savarin called on Isaura.
+
+"_Chere enfant_," said she, "I have bad news for you.  Poor Gustave is
+very ill--an attack of the lungs and fever; you know how delicate he is."
+
+"I am sincerely grieved," said Isaura, in earnest tender tones; "it must
+be a very sudden attack: he was here last Thursday."
+
+"The malady only declared itself yesterday morning, but surely you must
+have observed how ill he has been looking for several days past?  It
+pained me to see him."
+
+"I did not notice any change in him," said Isaura, somewhat conscience-
+stricken.  Wrapt in her own happy thoughts, she would not have noticed
+change in faces yet more familiar to her than that of her young admirer.
+
+"Isaura," said Madame Savarin, "I suspect there are moral causes for our
+friend's failing health.  Why should I disguise my meaning?  You know
+well how madly he is in love with you, and have you denied him hope?"
+
+"I like M. Rameau as a friend; I admire him--at times I pity him."
+
+"Pity is akin to love."
+
+"I doubt the truth of that saying, at all events as you apply it now.
+I could not love M. Rameau; I never gave him cause to think I could."
+
+"I wish for both your sakes that you could make me a different answer;
+for his sake, because, knowing his faults and failings, I am persuaded
+that they would vanish in a companionship so pure, so elevating as yours:
+you could make him not only so much happier but so much better a man.
+Hush! let me go on, let me come to yourself,--I say for your sake I wish
+it.  Your pursuits, your ambition, are akin to his; you should not marry
+one who could not sympathise with you in these.  If you did, he might
+either restrict the exercise of your genius or be chafed at its display.
+The only authoress I ever knew whose married lot was serenely happy to
+the last, was the greatest of English poetesses married to a great
+English poet.  You cannot, you ought not, to devote yourself to the
+splendid career to which your genius irresistibly impels you, without
+that counsel, that support, that protection, which a husband alone can
+give.  My dear child, as the wife myself of a man of letters, and
+familiarised to all the gossip, all the scandal, to which they who give
+their names to the public are exposed, I declare that if I had a daughter
+who inherited Savarin's talents, and was ambitious of attaining to his
+renown, I would rather shut her up in a convent than let her publish a
+book that was in every one's hands until she had sheltered her name under
+that of a husband; and if I say this of my child, with a father so wise
+in the world's ways, and so popularly respected as my _bon homme_, what
+must I feel to be essential to your safety, poor stranger in our land!
+poor solitary orphan! with no other advice or guardian than the singing
+mistress whom you touchingly call '_Madre_!'  I see how I distress and
+pain you--I cannot help it.  Listen!  The other evening Savarin came back
+from his favourite cafe in a state of excitement that made me think he
+came to announce a revolution.  It was about you; he stormed, he wept--
+actually wept--my philosophical laughing Savarin.  He had just heard of
+that atrocious wager made by a Russian barbarian.  Every one praised you
+for the contempt with which you had treated the savage's insolence.  But
+that you should have been submitted to such an insult without one male
+friend who had the right to resent and chastise it,--you cannot think how
+Savarin was chafed and galled.  You know how he admires, but you cannot
+guess how he reveres you; and since then he says to me every day: 'That
+girl must not remain single.  Better marry any man who has a heart to
+defend a wife's honour and the nerve to fire a pistol: every Frenchman
+has those qualifications!'"
+
+Here Isaura could no longer restrain her emotions; she burst into sobs so
+vehement, so convulsive, that Madame Savarin became alarmed; but when she
+attempted to embrace and soothe her, Isaura recoiled with a visible
+shudder, and gasping out,  "Cruel, cruel!" turned to the door, and rushed
+to her own room.
+
+A few minutes afterwards a maid entered the salon with a message to
+Madame Savarin that Mademoiselle was so unwell that she must beg Madame
+to excuse her return to the salon.
+
+Later in the day Mrs. Morley called, but Isaura would not see her.
+
+Meanwhile poor Rameau was stretched on his sick-bed, and in sharp
+struggle between life and death.  It is difficult to disentangle, one by
+one, all the threads in a nature so complex as Rameau's; but if we may
+hazard a conjecture, the grief of disappointed love was not the immediate
+cause of his illness, and yet it had much to do with it.  The goad of
+Isaura's refusal had driven him into seeking distraction in excesses
+which a stronger frame could not have courted with impunity.  The man was
+thoroughly Parisian in many things, but especially in impatience of any
+trouble.  Did love trouble him--love could be drowned in absinthe; and
+too much absinthe may be a more immediate cause of congested lungs than
+the love which the absinthe had lulled to sleep.
+
+His bedside was not watched by hirelings.  When first taken thus ill--too
+ill to attend to his editorial duties--information was conveyed to the
+publisher of the Sens Commun, and in consequence of that information,
+Victor de Mauleon came to see the sick man.  By his bed he found Savarin,
+who had called, as it were by chance, and seen the doctor, who had
+said, "It is grave.  He must be well nursed."  Savarin whispered to De
+Mauleon, "Shall we call in a professional nurse, or a _soeur de
+charite_?"
+
+De Mauleon replied, also in a whisper, "Somebody told me that the man had
+a mother."
+
+It was true--Savarin had forgotten it.  Rameau never mentioned his
+parents--he was not proud of them.
+
+They belonged to a lower class of the bourgeoisie, retired shopkeepers,
+and a Red Republican is sworn to hate of the bourgeoisie, high or low;
+while a beautiful young author pushing his way into the Chaussee d'Antin
+does not proclaim to the world that his parents had sold hosiery in the
+Rue St. Denis.
+
+Nevertheless Savarin knew that Rameau had such parents still living, and
+took the hint.  Two hours afterwards Rameau was leaning his burning
+forehead on his mother's breast.
+
+The next morning the doctor said to the mother, "You are worth ten of me.
+If you can stay here we shall pull him through."
+
+"Stay here!--my own boy!" cried indignantly the poor mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The day which had inflicted on Isaura so keen an anguish was marked by a
+great trial in the life of Alain de Rochebriant.
+
+In the morning he received the notice "of _un commandement tendant a
+saisie immobiliere,_" on the part of his creditor, M. Louvier; in plain
+English, an announcement that his property at Rochebriant would be put up
+to public sale on a certain day, in case all debts due to the mortgagee
+were not paid before.  An hour afterwards came a note from Duplessis
+stating that "he had returned from Bretagne on the previous evening, and
+would be very happy to see the Marquis de Rochebriant before two o'clock,
+if not inconvenient to call."
+
+Alain put the "commandement" into his pocket, and repaired to the Hotel
+Duplessis.
+
+The financier received him with very cordial civility.  Then he began:
+"I am happy to say I left your excellent aunt in very good health.  She
+honoured the letter of introduction to her which I owe to your politeness
+with the most amiable hospitalities; she insisted on my removing from the
+_auberge_ at which I first put up and becoming a guest under your
+venerable roof-tree--a most agreeable lady, and a most interesting
+_chateau_."
+
+"I fear your accommodation was in striking contrast to your comforts at
+Paris; my _chateau_ is only interesting to an antiquarian enamoured of
+ruins."
+
+"Pardon me, 'ruins' is an exaggerated expression.  I do not say that the
+_chateau_ does not want some repairs, but they would not be costly; the
+outer walls are strong enough to defy time for centuries to come, and a
+few internal decorations and some modern additions of furniture would
+make the old manoir a home fit for a prince.  I have been over the whole
+estate, too, with the worthy M. Hebert,--a superb property."
+
+"Which M. Louvier appears to appreciate," said Alain, with a somewhat
+melancholy smile, extending to Duplessis the menacing notice.
+
+Duplessis glanced at it, and said drily: "M. Louvier knows what he is
+about.  But I think we had better put an immediate stop to formalities
+which must be painful to a creditor so benevolent.  I do not presume to
+offer to pay the interest due on the security you can give for the
+repayment.  If you refused that offer from so old a friend as Lemercier,
+of course you could not accept it from me.  I make another proposal, to
+which you can scarcely object.  I do not like to give my scheming rival
+on the Bourse the triumph of so profoundly planned a speculation.  Aid me
+to defeat him.  Let me take the mortgage on myself, and become sole
+mortgagee--hush!--on this condition,--that there should be an entire
+union of interests between us two; that I should be at liberty to make
+the improvements I desire, and when the improvements be made, there
+should be a fair arrangement as to the proportion of profits due to me as
+mortgagee and improver, to you as original owner.  Attend, my dear
+Marquis,--I am speaking as a mere man of business.  I see my way to
+adding more than a third, I might even say a half--to the present
+revenues of Rochbriant.  The woods have been sadly neglected, drainage
+alone would add greatly to their produce.  Your orchards might be
+rendered magnificent supplies to Paris with better cultivation.  Lastly,
+I would devote to building purposes or to market gardens all the lands
+round the two towns of ------ and ---------.  I think I can lay my hands
+on suitable speculators for these last experiments.  In a word, though
+the market value of Rochebriant, as it now stands, would not be
+equivalent to the debt on it, in five or six years it could be made
+worth--well, I will not say how much--but we shall be both well satisfied
+with the result.  Meanwhile, if you allow me to find purchasers for your
+timber, and if you will not suffer the Chevalier de Finisterre to
+regulate your expenses, you need have no fear that the interest due to me
+will not be regularly paid, even though I shall be compelled, for the
+first year or two at least, to ask a higher rate of interest than Louvier
+exacted--say a quarter per cent. more; and in suggesting that, you will
+comprehend that this is now a matter of business between us, and not of
+friendship."
+
+Alain turned his head aside to conceal his emotion, and then, with the
+quick affectionate impulse of the genuine French nature, threw himself on
+the financier's breast and kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+"You save me! you save the home and the tombs of my ancestors!  Thank you
+I cannot; but I believe in God--I pray--I will pray for you as for a
+father; and if ever," he hurried on in broken words, "I am mean enough to
+squander on idle luxuries one franc that I should save for the debt due
+to you, chide me as a father would chide a graceless son."
+
+Moved as Alain was, Duplessis was moved yet more deeply.  "What father
+would not be proud of such a son?  Ah, if I had such a one!" he said
+softly.  Then, quickly recovering his wonted composure, he added, with
+the sardonic smile which often chilled his friends and alarmed his foes,
+"Monsieur Louvier is about to pass that which I ventured to promise him,
+_a 'mauvais quart-d'heure.'  Lend me that _commandement tendant a
+saisie_.  I must be off to my _avoue_ with instructions.  If you have no
+better engagement, pray dine with me to-day and accompany Valerie and
+myself to the opera."
+
+I need not say that Alain accepted the invitation.  How happy Valerie was
+that evening!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The next day Duplessis was surprised by a visit from M. Louvier--that
+magnate of millionaires had never before set foot in the house of his
+younger and less famous rival.
+
+The burly man entered the room with a face much flushed, and with more
+than his usual mixture of jovial brusquerie and opulent swagger.
+
+"Startled to see me, I dare say," began Louvier, as soon as the door was
+closed.  "I have this morning received a communication from your agent
+containing a cheque for the interest due to me from M. Rochebriant, and a
+formal notice of your intention to pay off the principal on behalf of
+that popinjay prodigal.  Though we two have not hitherto been the best
+friends in the world, I thought it fair to a man in your station to come
+to you direct and say, 'Cher confrere, what swindler has bubbled you?
+You don't know the real condition of this Breton property, or you would
+never so throw away your millions.  The property is not worth the
+mortgage I have on it by 30,000 louis."
+
+"Then, M. Louvier, you will be 30,000 louis the richer if I take the
+mortgage off your hands."
+
+"I can afford the loss--no offence--better than you can; and I may have
+fancies which I don't mind paying for, but which cannot influence
+another.  See, I have brought with me the exact schedule of all details
+respecting this property.  You need not question their accuracy; they
+have been arranged by the Marquis's own agents, M. Gandrin and M. Hebert.
+They contain, you will perceive, every possible item of revenue, down to
+an apple-tree.  Now, look at that, and tell me if you are justified in
+lending such a sum on such a property."
+
+"Thank you very much for an interest in my affairs that I scarcely
+ventured to expect M. Louvier to entertain; but I see that I have a
+duplicate of this paper, furnished to me very honestly by M. Hebert
+himself.  Besides, I, too, have fancies which I don't mind paying for,
+and among them may be a fancy for the lands of Rochebriant."
+
+"Look you, Duplessis, when a man like me asks a favour, you may be sure
+that he has the power to repay it.  Let me have my whim here, and ask
+anything you like from me in return!"
+
+"_Desole_ not to oblige you, but this has become not only a whim of mine,
+but a matter of honour; and honour you know, my dear M. Louvier, is the
+first principle of sound finance.  I have myself, after careful
+inspection of the Rochebriant property, volunteered to its owner to
+advance the money to pay off your hypotheque; and what would be said on
+the Bourse if Lucien Duplessis failed in an obligation?"
+
+"I think I can guess what will one day be said of Lucien Duplessis if he
+make an irrevocable enemy of Paul Louvier.  _Corbleu_! mon cher, a man of
+thrice your capital, who watched every speculation of yours with a
+hostile eye, might some _beau jour_ make even you a bankrupt!"
+
+"Forewarned, forearmed!" replied Duplessis, imperturbably, "Fas est ab
+hoste doceri,--I mean, 'It is right to be taught by an enemy;' and I
+never remember the day when you were otherwise, and yet I am not a
+bankrupt, though I receive you in a house which, thanks to you, is so
+modest in point of size!"
+
+"Bah! that was a mistake of mine,--and, ha!  ha!  you had your revenge
+there--that forest!"
+
+"Well, as a peace offering, I will give you up the forest, and content my
+ambition as a landed proprietor with this bad speculation of
+Rochebriant!"
+
+"Confound the forest, I don't care for it now!  I can sell my place for
+more than it has cost me to one of your imperial favourites.  Build a
+palace in your forest.  Let me have Rochebriant, and name your terms."
+
+"A thousand pardons! but I have already had the honour to inform you,
+that I have contracted an obligation which does not allow me to listen to
+terms."
+
+As a serpent, that, after all crawlings and windings, rears itself on
+end, Louvier rose, crest erect:
+
+"So then it is finished.  I came here disposed to offer peace--you
+refuse, and declare war."
+
+"Not at all, I do not declare war; I accept it if forced on me."
+
+"Is that your last word, M. Duplessis?"
+
+"Monsieur Louvier, it is."
+
+"Bon jour!"
+
+And Louvier strode to the door; here he paused:  "Take a day to
+consider."
+
+"Not a moment."
+
+"Your servant, Monsieur,--your very humble servant."  Louvier vanished.
+
+Duplessis leaned his large thoughtful forehead on his thin nervous hand.
+"This loan will pinch me," he muttered.  "I must be very wary now with
+such a foe.  Well, why should I care to be rich?  Valerie's dot,
+Valerie's happiness, are secured."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Madame Savarin wrote a very kind and very apologetic letter to Isaura,
+but no answer was returned to it.  Madame Savarin did not venture to
+communicate to her husband the substance of a conversation which had
+ended so painfully.  He had, in theory, a delicacy of tact, which, if he
+did not always exhibit it in practice, made him a very severe critic of
+its deficiency in others.  Therefore, unconscious of the offence given,
+he made a point of calling at Isaura's apartments, and leaving word with
+her servant that "he was sure she would be pleased to hear M. Rameau was
+somewhat better, though still in danger."
+
+It was not till the third day after her interview with Madame Savarin
+that Isaura left her own room,--she did so to receive Mrs. Morley.
+
+The fair American was shocked to see the change in Isaura's countenance.
+She was very pale, and with that indescribable appearance of exhaustion
+which betrays continued want of sleep; her soft eyes were dim, the play
+of her lips was gone, her light step weary and languid.
+
+"My poor darling!" cried Mrs. Morley, embracing her, "you have indeed
+been ill!  What is the matter?--who attends you?"
+
+"I need no physician, it was but a passing cold--the air of Paris is very
+trying.  Never mind me, dear--what is the last news?"
+
+Therewith Mrs. Morley ran glibly through the principal topics of the
+hour: the breach threatened between M. Ollivier and his former liberal
+partisans; the tone unexpectedly taken by M. de Girardin; the
+speculations as to the result of the trial of the alleged conspirators
+against the Emperor's life, which was fixed to take place towards the end
+of that month of June,--all matters of no slight importance to the
+interests of an empire.  Sunk deep into the recesses of her fauteuil,
+Isaura seemed to listen quietly, till, when a pause came, she said in
+cold clear tones:
+
+"And Mr. Graham Vane--he has refused your invitation?"
+
+"I am sorry to say he has--he is so engaged in London."
+
+"I knew he had refused," said Isaura, with a low bitter laugh.
+
+"How?  who told you?"
+
+"My own good sense told me.  One may have good sense, though one is a
+poor scribbler."
+
+"Don't talk in that way; it is beneath you to angle for compliments."
+
+"Compliments, ah!  And so Mr. Vane has refused to come to Paris; never
+mind, he will come next year.  I shall not be in Paris then.  Did Colonel
+Morley see Mr. Vane?"
+
+"Oh, yes; two or three times."
+
+"He is well?"
+
+"Quite well, I believe--at least Frank did not say to the contrary; but,
+from what I hear, he is not the person I took him for.  Many people told
+Frank that he is much changed since he came into his fortune--is grown
+very stingy, quite miserly indeed; declines even a seat in Parliament
+because of the expense.  It is astonishing how money does spoil a man."
+
+"He had come into  his fortune when he was here.  Money had not spoiled
+him then."
+
+Isaura paused, pressing her hands tightly together; then she suddenly
+rose to her feet, the colour on her cheek mantling and receding rapidly,
+and fixing on her startled visitor eyes no longer dim, but with something
+half fierce, half imploring in the passion of their gaze, said: "Your
+husband spoke of me to Mr. Vane: I know he did.  What did Mr. Vane
+answer?  Do not evade my question.  The truth! the truth!  I only ask the
+truth!"
+
+"Give me your hand; sit here beside me, dearest child."
+
+"Child!--no, I am a woman!--weak as a woman, but strong as a woman too!--
+The truth!"
+
+Mrs. Morley had come prepared to carry out the resolution she had formed
+and "break" to Isaura "the truth," that which the girl now demanded.  But
+then she had meant to break the truth in her own gentle, gradual way.
+Thus suddenly called upon, her courage failed her.  She burst into tears.
+Isaura gazed at her dry-eyed.
+
+"Your tears answer me.  Mr. Vane has heard that I have been insulted.  A
+man like him does not stoop to love for a woman who has known an insult.
+I do not blame him; I honour him the more--he is right."
+
+"No-no-no!--you insulted!  Who dared to insult you?  (Mrs. Morley had
+never heard the story about the Russian Prince.)  Mr. Vane spoke to
+Frank, and writes of you to me as of one whom it is impossible not to
+admire, to respect; but--I cannot say it--you will have the truth,--
+there, read and judge for yourself."  And Mrs. Morley drew forth and
+thrust into Isaura's hands the letter she had concealed from her husband.
+The letter was not very long; it began with expressions of warm gratitude
+to Mrs. Morley, not for her invitation only, but for the interest she had
+conceived in his happiness.  It went on thus "I join with my whole heart
+in all that you say, with such eloquent justice, of the mental and
+personal gifts so bounteously lavished by nature on the young lady whom
+you name.
+
+"No one can feel more sensible than I of the charm of so exquisite a
+loveliness; no one can more sincerely join in the belief that the praise
+which greets the commencement of her career is but the whisper of the
+praise that will cheer its progress with louder and louder plaudits.
+
+"He only would be worthy of her hand, who, if not equal to herself in
+genius, would feel raised into partnership with it by sympathy with its
+objects and joy in its triumphs.  For myself, the same pain with which I
+should have learned she had adopted the profession which she originally
+contemplated, saddened and stung me when, choosing a career that confers
+a renown yet more lasting than the stage, she no less left behind her the
+peaceful immunities of private life.  Were I even free to consult only my
+own heart in the choice of the one sole partner of my destinies (which I
+cannot at present honestly say that I am, though I had expected to be so
+ere this, when I last saw you at Paris); could I even hope--which I have
+no right to do--that I could chain to myself any private portion of
+thoughts which now flow into the large channels by which poets enrich the
+blood of the world,--still (I say it in self-reproach, it may be the
+fault of my English rearing, it may rather be the fault of an egotism
+peculiar to myself)--still I doubt if I could render happy any woman
+whose world could not be narrowed to the Home that she adorned and
+blessed.
+
+"And yet not even the jealous tyranny of man's love could dare to say to
+natures like hers of whom we speak, 'Limit to the household glory of one
+the light which genius has placed in its firmament for the use and
+enjoyment of all.'"
+
+"I thank you so much," said Isaura, calmly; "suspense makes a woman so
+weak--certainty so strong."  Mechanically she smoothed and refolded the
+letter--mechanically, with slow, lingering hands--then she extended it to
+her friend, smiling.
+
+"Nay, will you not keep it yourself?" said Mrs. Morley.  "The more you
+examine the narrow-minded prejudices, the English arrogant man's jealous
+dread of superiority--nay, of equality--in the woman he 'can only value
+as he does his house or his horse, because she is his exclusive property,
+the more you will be rejoiced to find yourself free for a more worthy
+choice.  Keep the letter; read it till you feel for the writer
+forgiveness and disdain."
+
+Isaura took back the letter, and leaned her cheek on her hand, looking
+dreamily into space.  It was some moments before she replied, and her
+words then had no reference to Mrs. Morley's consolatory exhortation.
+
+"He was so pleased when he learned that I renounced the career on which I
+had set my ambition.  I thought he would have been so pleased when I
+sought in another career to raise myself nearer to his level--I see now
+how sadly I was mistaken.  All that perplexed me before in him is
+explained.  I did not guess how foolishly I had deceived myself till
+three days ago,--then I did guess it; and it was that guess which
+tortured me so terribly that I could not keep my heart to myself when I
+saw you to-day; in spite of all womanly pride it would force its way--to
+the truth.
+
+"Hush!  I must tell you what was said to me by another friend of mine--
+a good friend, a wise and kind one.  Yet I was so angry when she said it
+that I thought I could never see her more."
+
+"My sweet darling!  who was this friend, and what did she say to you?"
+
+"The friend was Madame Savarin."
+
+"No woman loves you more except myself--and she said?"
+
+"That she would have suffered no daughter of hers to commit her name to
+the talk of the world as I have done--be exposed to the risk of insult as
+I have been--until she had the shelter and protection denied to me.  And
+I have thus overleaped the bound that a prudent mother would prescribe to
+her child, have become one whose hand men do not seek, unless they
+themselves take the same roads to notoriety.  Do you not think she was
+right?"
+
+"Not as you so morbidly put it, silly girl,--certainly not right.  But I
+do wish that you had the shelter and protection which Madame Savarin
+meant to express; I do wish that you were happily married to one very
+different from Mr. Vane--one who would be more proud of your genius than
+of your beauty--one who would say, 'My name, safer far in its enduring
+nobility than those that depend on titles and lands--which are held on
+the tenure of the popular breath--must be honoured by posterity, for She
+has deigned to make it hers.  No democratic revolution can disennoble
+me."
+
+"Ay, ay, you believe that men will be found to think with complacency
+that they owe to a wife a name they could not achieve for themselves.
+Possibly there are such men.  Where?--among those that are already united
+by sympathies in the same callings, the same labours, the same hopes and
+fears with the women who have left behind them the privacies of home.
+Madame de Grantmesnil was wrong.  Artists should wed with artists.
+True--true!"
+
+Here she passed her hand over her forehead--it was a pretty way of hers
+when seeking to concentrate thought--and was silent a moment or so.
+
+"Did you ever feel," she then asked dreamily, "that there are moments in
+life when a dark curtain seems to fall over one's past that a day before
+was so clear, so blended with the present?  One cannot any longer look
+behind; the gaze is attracted onward, and a track of fire flashes upon
+the future,--the future which yesterday was invisible.  There is a line
+by some English poet--Mr. Vane once quoted it, not to me, but to M.
+Savarin, and in illustration of his argument, that the most complicated
+recesses of thought are best reached by the simplest forms of expression.
+I said to myself, 'I will study that truth if ever I take to literature
+as I have taken to song;' and--yes--it was that evening that the ambition
+fatal to woman fixed on me its relentless fangs--at Enghien--we were on
+the lake--the sun was setting."
+
+"But you do not tell me the line that so impressed you," said Mrs.
+Morley, with a woman's kindly tact.
+
+"The line--which line?  Oh, I remember; the line was this:
+
+"'I see as from a tower the end of all."
+
+"And now--kiss me, dearest--never a word again to me about this
+conversation: never a word about Mr. Vane--the dark curtain has fallen on
+the past."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Men and women are much more like each other in certain large elements of
+character than is generally supposed, but it is that very resemblance
+which makes their differences the more incomprehensible to each other;
+just as in politics, theology, or that most disputatious of all things
+disputable, metaphysics, the nearer the reasoners approach each other in
+points that to an uncritical bystander seem the most important, the more
+sure they are to start off in opposite directions upon reaching the speck
+of a pin-prick.
+
+Now there are certain grand meeting-places between man and woman--the
+grandest of all is on the ground of love, and yet here also is the great
+field of quarrel.  And here the teller of a tale such as mine ought, if
+he is sufficiently wise to be humble, to know that it is almost
+profanation if, as man, he presumes to enter the penetralia of a woman's
+innermost heart, and repeat, as a man would repeat, all the vibrations of
+sound which the heart of a woman sends forth undistinguishable even to
+her own ear.
+
+I know Isaura as intimately as if I had rocked her in her cradle, played
+with her in her childhood, educated and trained her in her youth; and yet
+I can no more tell you faithfully what passed in her mind during the
+forty-eight hours that intervened between her conversation with that
+American lady and her reappearance in some commonplace drawing-room, than
+I can tell you what the Man in the Moon might feel if the sun that his
+world reflected were blotted out of creation.
+
+I can only say that when she reappeared in that commonplace drawing-room
+world, there was a change in her face not very perceptible to the
+ordinary observer.  If anything, to his eye she was handsomer--the eye
+was brighter--the complexion (always lustrous, though somewhat pale, the
+limpid paleness that suits so well with dark hair) was yet more
+lustrous,--it was flushed into delicate rose hues--hues that still better
+suit with dark hair.  What, then, was the change, and change not for the
+better?  The lips, once so pensively sweet, had grown hard; on the brow
+that had seemed to laugh when the lips did, there was no longer sympathy
+between brow and lip; there was scarcely seen a fine threadlike line that
+in a few years would be a furrow on the space between the eyes; the voice
+was not so tenderly soft; the step was haughtier.  What all such change
+denoted it is for a woman to decide-I can only guess.  In the mean while,
+Mademoiselle Cicogna had sent her servant daily to inquire after M.
+Rameau.  That, I think, she would have done under any circumstances.
+Meanwhile, too, she had called on Madame Savarin--made it up with her
+--sealed the reconciliation by a cold kiss.  That, too, under any
+circumstances, I think she would have done--under some circumstances
+the kiss might have been less cold.
+
+There was one thing unwonted in her habits.  I mention it, though it is
+only a woman who can say if it means anything worth noticing.
+
+For six days she had left a letter from Madame de Grantmesnil unanswered.
+With Madame de Grantmesnil was connected the whole of her innermost life
+--from the day when the lonely desolate child had seen, beyond the dusty
+thoroughfares of life, gleams of the faery land in poetry and art-onward
+through her restless, dreamy, aspiring youth-onward--onward--till now,
+through all that constitutes the glorious reality that we call romance.
+
+Never before had she left for two days unanswered letters which were to
+her as Sibylline leaves to some unquiet neophyte yearning for solutions
+to enigmas suggested whether by the world without or by the soul within.
+For six days Madame de Grantmesnil's letter remained unanswered, unread,
+neglected, thrust out of sight; just as when some imperious necessity
+compels us to grapple with a world that is, we cast aside the romance
+which, in our holiday hours, had beguiled us to a world with which we
+have interests and sympathies no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Gustave recovered, but slowly.  The physician pronounced him out of all
+immediate danger, but said frankly to him, and somewhat more guardedly to
+his parents, "There is ample cause to beware."  "Look you, my young
+friend," he added to Rameau, "mere brain-work seldom kills a man once
+accustomed to it like you; but heart-work, and stomach-work, and nerve-
+work, added to brain-work, may soon consign to the coffin a frame ten
+times more robust than yours.  Write as much as you will--that is your
+vocation; but it is not your vocation to drink absinthe--to preside at
+orgies in the _Maison Doree_.  Regulate yourself, and not after the
+fashion of the fabulous Don Juan.  Marry--live soberly and quietly--and
+you may survive the grandchildren of _viveurs_.  Go on as you have done,
+and before the year is out you are in _Pere la Chaise_."
+
+Rameau listened languidly, but with a profound conviction that the
+physician thoroughly understood his case.
+
+Lying helpless on his bed, he had no desire for orgies at the _Maison
+Doree_; with parched lips thirsty for innocent tisane of lime-blossoms,
+the thought of absinthe was as odious to him as the liquid fire of
+Phlegethon.  If ever sinner became suddenly convinced that there was a
+good deal to be said in favour of a moral life, that sinner at the moment
+I speak of was Gustave Rameau: Certainly a moral life--'Domus et placens
+uxor',--was essential to the poet who, aspiring to immortal glory, was
+condemned to the ailments of a very perishable frame.
+
+"Ah," he murmured plaintively to himself, "that girl Isaura can have no
+true sympathy with genius!  It is no ordinary man that she will kill in
+me!"
+
+And so murmuring he fell asleep.  When he woke and found his head
+pillowed on his mother's breast, it was much as a sensitive, delicate man
+may wake after having drunk too much the night before.  Repentant,
+mournful, maudlin, he began to weep, and in the course of his weeping he
+confided to his mother the secret of his heart.
+
+Isaura had refused him--that refusal had made him desperate.
+
+"Ah! with Isaura how changed would be his habits! how pure! how
+healthful!" His mother listened fondly, and did her best to comfort him
+and cheer his drooping spirits.
+
+She told him of Isaura's messages of inquiry duly twice a day.  Rameau,
+who knew more about women in general, and Isaura in particular, than his
+mother conjectured, shook his head mournfully.  "She could not do less,"
+he said.  "Has no one offered to do more?"--he thought of Julie when he
+asked that--Madame Rameau hesitated.
+
+The poor Parisians! it is the mode to preach against them; and before my
+book closes, I shall have to preach--no, not to preach, but to imply--
+plenty of faults to consider and amend.  Meanwhile I try my best to take
+them, as the philosophy of life tells us to take other people, for what
+they are.
+
+I do not think the domestic relations of the Parisian _bourgeoisie_ are
+as bad as they are said to be in French novels.  Madame Rameau is not an
+uncommon type of her class.  She had been when she first married
+singularly handsome.  It was from her that Gustave inherited his beauty;
+and her husband was a very ordinary type of the French shopkeeper--very
+plain, by no means intellectual, but gay, good-humoured, devotedly
+attached to his wife, and with implicit trust in her conjugal virtue.
+Never was trust better placed.  There was not a happier nor a more
+faithful couple in the quartier in which they resided.  Madame Rameau
+hesitated when her boy, thinking of Julie, asked if no one had done more
+than send to inquire after him as Isaura had done.
+
+After that hesitating pause she said, "Yes--a young lady calling herself
+Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin wished to instal herself here as your nurse.
+When I said, 'But I am his mother--he needs no other nurses,' she would
+have retreated, and looked ashamed--poor thing!  I don't blame her if she
+loved my son.  But, my son, I say this,--if you love her, don't talk to
+me about that Mademoiselle Cicogna; and if you love Mademoiselle Cicogna,
+why, then your father will take care that the poor girl who loved you not
+knowing that you loved another is not left to the temptation of penury."
+
+Rameau's pale lips withered into a phantom-like sneer!  Julie! the
+resplendent Julie!--true, only a ballet-dancer, but whose equipage in the
+Bois had once been the envy of duchesses--Julie! who had sacrificed
+fortune for his sake--who, freed from him, could have millionaires again
+at her feet!--Julie! to be saved from penury, as a shopkeeper would save
+an erring nursemaid--Julie! the irrepressible Julie! who had written to
+him, the day before his illness, in a pen dipped, not in ink, but in
+blood from a vein she had opened in her arm:
+
+     "Traitor!--I have not seen thee for three days.  Dost thou dare to
+     love another?  If so, I care not how thou attempt to conceal it--woe
+     to her! _Ingrat_! woe to thee!  Love is not love, unless, when
+     betrayed by Love, it appeals to death.  Answer me quick--quick.
+     JULIE."
+
+Poor Gustave thought of that letter and groaned.  Certainly his mother
+was right--he ought to get rid of Julie; but he did not clearly see how
+Julie was to be got rid of.  He replied to Madame Rameau peevishly,
+"Don't trouble your head about Mademoiselle Caumartin; she is in no want
+of money.  Of course, if I could hope for Isaura--but, alas!  I dare not
+hope.  Give me my _tisane_."
+
+When the doctor called next day, he looked grave, and, drawing Madame
+Rameau into the next room, he said, "We are not getting on so well as I
+had hoped; the fever is gone, but there is much to apprehend from the
+debility left behind.  His spirits are sadly depressed."  Then added the
+doctor, pleasantly, and with that wonderful insight into our complex
+humanity in which physicians excel poets, and in which Parisian
+physicians are not excelled by any physicians in the world: "Can't you
+think of any bit of good news--that 'M. Thiers raves about your son's
+last poem! that 'it is a question among the Academicians between him and
+Jules Janin'--or that 'the beautiful Duchesse de ------- has been placed
+in a lunatic asylum because she has gone mad for love of a certain young
+Red Republican whose name begins with R.'--can't you think of any bit of
+similar good news?  If you can, it will be a tonic to the relaxed state
+of your dear boy's _amour propre_, compared to which all the drugs in the
+Pharmacopoeia are moonshine and water; and meanwhile be sure to remove
+him to your own house, and out of the reach of his giddy young friends,
+as soon as you possibly can."
+
+When that great authority thus left his patient's case in the hands of
+the mother, she said, "The boy shall be saved."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Isaura was seated beside the Venosta,--to whom, of late, she seemed to
+cling with greater fondness than ever,--working at some piece of
+embroidery--a labour from which she had been estranged for years; but now
+she had taken writing, reading, music, into passionate disgust.  Isaura
+was thus seated, silently intent upon her work, and the Venosta in full
+talk, when the servant announced Madame Rameau.
+
+The name startled both; the Venosta had never heard that the poet had a
+mother living, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that Madame
+Rameau must be a wife he had hitherto kept unrevealed.  And when a woman,
+still very handsome, with a countenance grave and sad, entered the salon,
+the Venosta murmured, "The husband's perfidy reveals itself on a wife's
+face," and took out her handkerchief in preparation for sympathising
+tears.
+
+"Mademoiselle," said the visitor, halting, with eyes fixed on Isaura.
+"Pardon my intrusion-my son has the honour to be known to you.  Every one
+who knows him must share in my sorrow--so young--so promising, and in
+such danger--my poor boy!"  Madame Rameau stopped abruptly.  Her tears
+forced their way--she turned aside to conceal them.
+
+In her twofold condition of being--womanhood and genius--Isaura was too
+largely endowed with that quickness of sympathy which distinguishes woman
+from man, and genius from talent, not to be wondrously susceptible to
+pity.
+
+Already she had wound her arm round the grieving mother--already drawn
+her to the seat from which she herself had risen--and bending over her
+had said some words--true, conventional enough in themselves,--but cooed
+forth in a voice the softest I ever expect to hear, save in dreams, on
+this side of the grave.
+
+Madame Rameau swept her hand over her eyes, glanced round the room, and
+noticing the Venosta in dressing-robe and slippers, staring with those
+Italian eyes, in seeming so quietly innocent, in reality so searchingly
+shrewd, she whispered pleadingly, "May I speak to you a few minutes
+alone?" This was not a request that Isaura could refuse, though she was
+embarrassed and troubled by the surmise of Madame Rameau's object in
+asking it; accordingly she led her visitor into the adjoining room, and
+making an apologetic sign to the Venosta, closed the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+When they were alone, Madame Rameau took Isaura's hand in both her own,
+and, gazing wistfully into her face, said, "No wonder you are so loved--
+yours is the beauty that sinks into the hearts and rests there.  I prize
+my boy more, now that I have seen you.  But, oh, Mademoiselle! pardon me
+--do not withdraw your hand--pardon the mother who comes from the sick-
+bed of her only son and asks if you will assist to save him!  A word from
+you is life or death to him!"
+
+"Nay, nay, do not speak thus, Madame; your son knows how much I value,
+how sincerely I return, his friendship; but--but," she paused a moment,
+and continued sadly and with tearful eyes--"I have no heart to give to
+him-to any one."
+
+"I do not--I would not if I dared--ask what it would be violence to
+yourself to promise.  I do not ask you to bid me return to my son and
+say, 'Hope and recover,' but let me take some healing message from your
+lips.  If I understand your words rightly, I at least may say that you do
+not give to another the hopes you, deny to him?"
+
+"So far you understand me rightly, Madame.  It has been said, that
+romance-writers give away so much of their hearts to heroes or heroines
+of their own creation, that they leave nothing worth the giving to human
+beings like themselves.  Perhaps it is so; yet, Madame," added Isaura,
+with a smile of exquisite sweetness in its melancholy, "I have heart
+enough left to feel for you."
+
+Madame Rameau was touched.  "Ah, Mademoiselle, I do not believe in the
+saying you have quoted.  But I must not abuse your goodness by pressing
+further upon you subjects from which you shrink.  Only one word more: you
+know that my husband and I are but quiet tradesfolks, not in the society,
+nor aspiring to it, to which my son's talents have raised himself; yet
+dare I ask that you will not close here the acquaintance that I have
+obtruded on you?--dare I ask, that I may, now and then, call on you--that
+now and then I may see you at my own home?  Believe that I would not here
+ask anything which your own mother would disapprove if she overlooked
+disparities of station.  Humble as our home is, slander never passed its
+threshold."
+
+"Ah, Madame, I and the Signora Venosta, whom in our Italian tongue I call
+mother, can but feel honoured and grateful whenever it pleases you to
+receive visits from us."
+
+"It would be a base return for such gracious compliance with my request
+if I concealed from you the reason why I pray Heaven to bless you for
+that answer.  The physician says that it may be long before my son is
+sufficiently convalescent to dispense with a mother's care, and resume
+his former life and occupation in the great world.  It is everything for
+us if we can coax him into coming under our own roof-tree.  This is
+difficult to do.  It is natural for a young man launched into the world
+to like his own _chez lui_.  Then what will happen to Gustave?  He,
+lonely and heart-stricken, will ask friends, young as himself, but far
+stronger, to come and cheer him; or he will seek to distract his thoughts
+by the overwork of his brain; in either case he is doomed.  But I have
+stronger motives yet to fix him a while at our hearth.  This is just the
+moment, once lost never to be regained, when soothing companionship,
+gentle reproachless advice, can fix him lastingly in the habits and modes
+of life which will banish all fears of his future from the hearts of his
+parents.  You at least honour him with friendship, with kindly interest
+--you at least would desire to wean him from all that a friend may
+disapprove or lament--a creature whom Providence meant to be good, and
+perhaps great.  If I say to him, 'It will be long before you can go out
+and see your friends, but at my house your friends shall come and see
+you--among them Signora Venosta and Mademoiselle Cicogna will now and
+then drop in'--my victory is gained, and my son is saved."
+
+"Madame," said Isaura, half sobbing, "what a blessing to have a mother
+like you!  Love so noble ennobles those who hear its voice.  Tell your
+son how ardently I wish him to be well, and to fulfil more than the
+promise of his genius; tell him also this--how I envy him his mother."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+It needs no length of words to inform thee, my intelligent reader, be
+thou man or woman--but more especially woman--of the consequences
+following each other, as wave follows wave in a tide, that resulted from
+the interview with which my last chapter closed.  Gustave is removed to
+his parents' house; he remains for weeks confined within doors, or, on
+sunny days, takes an hour or so in his own carriage, drawn by the horse
+bought from Rochebriant, into by-roads remote from the fashionable world;
+Isaura visits his mother, liking, respecting, influenced by her more and
+more; in those visits she sits beside the sofa on which Rameau reclines.
+Gradually, gently--more and more by his mother's lips--is impressed on
+her the belief that it is in her power to save a human life, and to
+animate its career towards those goals which are never based wholly upon
+earth in the earnest eyes of genius, or perhaps in the yet more upward
+vision of pure-souled believing woman.
+
+And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stages of
+convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her every step in his
+progress--seems so gently softened in character--seems so refined from
+the old affectations, so ennobled above the old cynicism--and, above all,
+so needing her presence, so sunless without it, that--well, need I finish
+the sentence?--the reader will complete what I leave unsaid.
+
+Enough, that one day Isaura returned home from a visit at Madame Rameau's
+with the knowledge that her hand was pledged--her future life disposed
+of; and that, escaping from the Venosta, whom she so fondly, and in her
+hunger for a mother's love, called Madre, the girl shut herself up in her
+own room with locked doors.
+
+Ah, poor child!  ah, sweet-voiced Isaura! whose delicate image I feel
+myself too rude and too hard to transfer to this page in the purity of
+its outlines, and the blended softnesses of its hues--thou who, when
+saying things serious in the words men use, saidst them with a
+seriousness so charming, and with looks so feminine--thou, of whom no man
+I ever knew was quite worthy--ah, poor, simple, miserable girl, as I see
+thee now in the solitude of that white-curtained virginal room; hast
+thou, then, merged at last thy peculiar star into the cluster of all
+these commonplace girls whose lips have said "Ay," when their hearts said
+"No"?--thou, O brilliant Isaura! thou, O motherless child!
+
+She had sunk into her chair--her own favourite chair, the covering of it
+had been embroidered by Madame de Grantmesnil, and bestowed on her as a
+birthday present last year--the year in which she had first learned what
+it is to love--the year in which she had first learned what it is to
+strive for fame.  And somehow uniting, as many young people do, love and
+fame in dreams of the future, that silken seat had been to her as the
+Tripod of Delphi was to the Pythian: she had taken to it, as it were
+intuitively, in all those hours, whether of joy or sorrow, when youth
+seeks to prophesy, and does but dream.
+
+There she sat now, in a sort of stupor--a sort of dreary bewilderment--
+the illusion of the Pythian gone--desire of dream and of prophecy alike
+extinct--pressing her hands together, and muttering to herself, "What has
+happened?--what have I done?"
+
+Three hours later you would not have recognised the same face that you
+see now.  For then the bravery, the honour, the loyalty of the girl's
+nature had asserted their command.  Her promise had been given to one
+man--it could not be recalled.  Thought itself of any other man must be
+banished.  On her hearth lay ashes and tinder--the last remains of every
+treasured note from Graham Vane; of the hoarded newspaper extracts that
+contained his name; of the dry treatise he had published, and which had
+made the lovely romance-writer first desire "to know something about
+politics."  Ay, if the treatise had been upon fox-hunting, she would have
+desired "to know something about" that!  Above all, yet distinguishable
+from the rest--as the sparks still upon stem and leaf here and there
+faintly glowed and twinkled--the withered flowers which recorded that
+happy hour in the arbour, and the walks of the forsaken garden--the hour
+in which she had so blissfully pledged herself to renounce that career in
+art wherein fame would have been secured, but which would not have united
+Fame with Love--in dreams evermore over now.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 BOOK X.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Graham Vane had heard nothing for months from M. Renard, when one morning
+he received the letter I translate:
+
+"MONSIEUR,--I am happy to inform you that I have at last obtained one
+piece of information which may lead to a more important discovery.  When
+we parted after our fruitless research in Vienna, we had both concurred
+in the persuasion that, for some reason known only to the two ladies
+themselves, Madame Marigny and Madame Duval had exchanged names--that it
+was Madame Marigny who had deceased in the name of Madame Duval, and
+Madame Duval who had survived in that of Marigny.
+
+"It was clear to me that the _beau Monsieur_ who had visited the false
+Duval must have been cognisant of this exchange of name, and that, if his
+name and whereabouts could be ascertained, he, in all probability, would
+know what had become of the lady who is the object of our research; and
+after the lapse of so many years he would probably have very slight
+motive to preserve the concealment of facts which might, no doubt, have
+been convenient at the time.  The lover of the _soi-disant_ Mademoiselle
+Duval was by such accounts as we could gain a man of some rank--very
+possibly a married man; and the liaison, in short, was one of those
+which, while they last, necessitate precautions and secrecy.
+
+"Therefore, dismissing all attempts at further trace of the missing lady,
+I resolved to return to Vienna as soon as the business that recalled me
+to Paris was concluded, and devote myself exclusively to the search after
+the amorous and mysterious Monsieur.
+
+"I did not state this determination to you, because, possibly, I might be
+in error--or, if not in error, at least too sanguine in my expectations--
+and it is best to avoid disappointing an honourable client.
+
+"One thing was clear, that, at the time of the _soi-disant_ Duval's
+decease, the _beau Monsieur_ was at Vienna.
+
+"It appeared also tolerably clear that when the lady friend of the
+deceased quitted Munich so privately, it was to Vienna she repaired, and
+from Vienna comes the letter demanding the certificates of Madame Duval's
+death.  Pardon me, if I remind you of all these circumstances no doubt
+fresh in your recollection.  I repeat them in order to justify the
+conclusions to which they led me.
+
+"I could not, however, get permission to absent myself from Paris for the
+time I might require till the end of last April.  I had meanwhile sought
+all private means of ascertaining what Frenchmen of rank and station were
+in that capital in the autumn of 1849.  Among the list of the very few
+such Messieurs I fixed upon one as the most likely to be the mysterious
+Achille--Achille was, indeed, his _nom de bapteme_.
+
+"A man of intrigue--a _bonnes fortunes_--of lavish expenditure withal;
+very tenacious of his dignity, and avoiding any petty scandals by which
+it might be lowered; just the man who, in some passing affair of
+gallantry with a lady of doubtful repute, would never have signed his
+titular designation to a letter, and would have kept himself as much
+incognito as he could.  But this man was dead--had been dead some years.
+He had not died at Vienna--never visited that capital for some years
+before his death.  He was then, and had long been, the _ami de la maison_
+of one of those grandes dames of whose intimacy _grands seigneurs_ are
+not ashamed.  They parade there the _bonnes fortunes_ they conceal
+elsewhere.  Monsieur and the grande dame were at Baden when the former
+died.  Now, Monsieur, a Don Juan of that stamp is pretty sure always to
+have a confidential Leporello.  If I could find Leporello alive I might
+learn the secrets not to be extracted from a Don Juan defunct.  I
+ascertained, in truth, both at Vienna, to which I first repaired in order
+to verify the renseignements I had obtained at Paris, and at Baden, to
+which I then bent my way, that this brilliant noble had a favourite valet
+who had lived with him from his youth--an Italian, who had contrived in
+the course of his service to lay by savings enough to set up a hotel
+somewhere in Italy, supposed to be Pisa.  To Pisa I repaired, but the man
+had left some years; his hotel had not prospered--he had left in debt.
+No one could say what had become of him.  At last, after a long and
+tedious research, I found him installed as manager of a small hotel at
+Genoa--a pleasant fellow enough; and after friendly intercourse with him
+(of course I lodged at his hotel), I easily led him to talk of his
+earlier life and adventures, and especially of his former master, of
+whose splendid career in the army of '_La Belle Deesse_' he was not a
+little proud.  It was not very easy to get him to the particular subject
+in question.  In fact, the affair with the poor false Duval had been so
+brief and undistinguished an episode in his master's life, that it was
+not without a strain of memory that he reached it.
+
+"By little and little, however, in the course of two or three evenings,
+and by the aid of many flasks of Orviette or bottles of Lacrima (wines,
+Monsieur, that I do not commend to any one who desires to keep his
+stomach sound and his secrets safe), I gathered these particulars.
+
+"Our Don Juan, since the loss of a wife in the first year of marriage,
+had rarely visited Paris where he had a domicile--his ancestral hotel
+there he had sold.
+
+"But happening to visit that capital of Europe a few months before we
+come to our dates at Aix-la-Chapelle, he made acquaintance with Madame
+Marigny, a natural daughter of high-placed parents, by whom, of course,
+she had never been acknowledged, but who had contrived that she should
+receive a good education at a convent; and on leaving it also contrived
+that an old soldier of fortune--which means an officer without fortune--
+who had served in Algiers with some distinction, should offer her his
+hand, and add the modest dot they assigned her to his yet more modest
+income.  They contrived also that she should understand the offer must be
+accepted.  Thus Mademoiselle 'Quelque Chose' became Madame Marigny, and
+she, on her part, contrived that a year or so later she should be left a
+widow.  After a marriage, of course the parents washed their hands of
+her--they had done their duty.  At the time Don Juan made this lady's
+acquaintance nothing could be said against her character; but the
+milliners and butchers had begun to imply that they would rather have
+her money than trust to her character.  Don Juan fell in love with her,
+satisfied the immediate claims of milliner and butcher, and when they
+quitted Paris it was agreed that they should meet later at Aix-la-
+Chapelle.  But when he resorted to that sultry and, to my mind,
+unalluring spa, he was surprised by a line from her saying that she had
+changed her name of Marigny for that of Duval.
+
+"'I recollect,' said Leporello, 'that two days afterwards my master said
+to me, 'Caution and secrecy.  Don't mention my name at the house to which
+I may send you with any note for Madame Duval.  I don't announce my name
+when I call. _La petite_ Marigny has exchanged her name for that of
+Louise Duval; and I find that there is a Louise Duval here, her friend,
+who is niece to a relation of my own, and a terrible relation to quarrel
+with--a dead shot and unrivalled swordsman--Victor de Mauleon.  My
+master was brave enough, but he enjoyed life, and he did not think _la
+petite_ Marigny worth being killed for.'
+
+"Leporello remembered very little of what followed.  All he did remember
+is that Don Juan, when at Vienna, said to him one morning, looking less
+gay than usual, 'It is finished with _ca petite_ Marigny_-she is no
+more.'  Then he ordered his bath, wrote a note, and said with tears in
+his eyes, 'Take this to Mademoiselle Celeste; not to be compared to _la
+petite_ Marigny; but _la petite_ Celeste is still alive.'  Ah, Monsieur!
+if only any man in France could be as proud of his ruler as that Italian
+was of my countrymen!  Alas! we Frenchmen are all made to command--or at
+least we think ourselves so--and we are insulted by one who says to us,
+'Serve and obey.'  Nowadays, in France, we find all Don Juans and no
+Leporellos.
+
+"After strenuous exertions upon my part to recall to Leporello's mind the
+important question whether he had ever seen the true Duval, passing under
+the name of Marigny--whether she had not presented herself to his master
+at Vienna or elsewhere--he rubbed his forehead, and drew from it these
+reminiscences.
+
+"'On the day that his Excellency,'--Leporello generally so styled his
+master--'Excellency,' as you are aware, is the title an Italian would
+give to Satan if taking his wages,'told me that _la petite_ Marigny was
+no more, he had received previously a lady veiled and mantled, whom I did
+not recognise as any one I had seen before, but I noticed her way of
+carrying herself--haughtily--her head thrown back; and I thought to
+myself, that lady is one of his grandes dames.  She did call again two or
+three times, never announcing her name; then she did not reappear.  She
+might be Madame Duval--I can't say.'
+
+"'But did you never hear his Excellency speak of the real Duval after
+that time?'
+
+"'No--_non mi ricordo_--I don't remember.'
+
+"'Nor of some living Madame Marigny, though the real one was dead?'
+
+"'Stop, I do recollect; not that he ever named such a person to me, but
+that I have posted letters for him to a Madame Marigny--oh, yes! even
+years after the said _petite_ Marigny was dead; and once I did venture to
+say, 'Pardon me, Eccellenza, but may I ask if that poor lady is really
+dead, since I have to prepay this letter to her?'"
+
+"'Oh,' said he, 'Madame Marigny!  Of course the one you know is dead,
+but there are others of the same name; this lady is of my family.
+Indeed, her house, though noble in itself, recognises the representative
+of mine as its head, and I am too _bon prince_ not to acknowledge and
+serve any one who branches out of my own tree.'"
+
+"A day after this last conversation on the subject, Leporello said to me:
+'My friend, you certainly have some interest in ascertaining what became
+of the lady who took the name of Marigny (I state this frankly, Monsieur,
+to show how difficult even for one so prudent as I am to beat about a
+bush long but what you let people know the sort of bird you are in search
+of).
+
+"'Well,' said I, 'she does interest me.  I knew something of that Victor
+de Mauleon, whom his Excellency did not wish to quarrel with; and it
+would be a kindly act to her relation if one could learn what became of
+Louise Duval.'
+
+"'I can put you on the way of learning all that his Excellency was likely
+to have known of her through correspondence.  I have often heard him
+quote, with praise, a saying so clever that it might have been Italian,
+"Never write, never burn;" that is, never commit yourself by a letter--
+keep all letters that could put others in your power.  All the letters he
+received were carefully kept and labelled.  I sent them to his son in
+four large trunks.  His son, no doubt, has them still.'
+
+"Now, however, I have exhausted my budget.  I arrived at Paris last
+night.  I strongly advise you to come hither at once, if you still desire
+to prosecute your search.
+
+"You, Monsieur, can do what I could not venture to do; you can ask the
+son of Don Juan if, amid the correspondence of his father, which he may
+have preserved, there be any signed Marigny or Duval--any, in short,
+which can throw light on this very obscure complication of circumstances.
+A grand seigneur would naturally be more complaisant to a man of your
+station than he would be to an agent of police.  Don Juan's son,
+inheriting his father's title, is Monsieur le Marquis de Rochebriant; and
+permit me to add, that at this moment, as the journals doubtless inform
+you, all Paris resounds with the rumour of the coming war; and Monsieur
+de Rochebriant--who is, as I have ascertained, now in Paris--it may be
+difficult to find anywhere on earth a month or two hence.--I have the
+honour, with profound consideration, &c., &c.,  RENARD."
+
+The day after the receipt of this letter Graham Vane was in Paris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Among things indescribable is that which is called "Agitation" in Paris--
+"Agitation" without riot or violence--showing itself by no disorderly act,
+no turbulent outburst.  Perhaps the cafes are more crowded; passengers in
+the streets stop each other more often, and converse in small knots and
+groups; yet, on the whole, there is little externally to show how loudly
+the heart of Paris is beating.  A traveller may be passing through quiet
+landscapes, unconscious that a great battle is going on some miles off,
+but if he will stop and put his ear to the ground he will recognise by a
+certain indescribable vibration, the voice of the cannon.
+
+But at Paris an acute observer need not stop and put his ear to the
+ground; he feels within himself a vibration--a mysterious inward sympathy
+which communicates to the individual a conscious thrill--when the
+passions of the multitude are stirred, no matter how silently.
+
+Tortoni's cafe was thronged when Duplessis and Frederic Lemercier entered
+it: it was in vain to order breakfast; no table was vacant either within
+the rooms or under the awnings without.
+
+But they could not retreat so quickly as they had entered.  On catching
+sight of the financier several men rose and gathered round him, eagerly
+questioning:
+
+"What do you think, Duplessis?  Will any insult to France put a drop of
+warm blood into the frigid veins of that miserable Ollivier?"
+
+"It is not yet clear that France has been insulted, Messieurs," replied
+Duplessis, phlegmatically.
+
+"Bah!  Not insulted!  The very nomination of a Hohenzollern to the crown
+of Spain was an insult--what would you have more?"
+
+"I tell you what it is, Duplessis," said the Vicomte de Breze, whose
+habitual light good temper seemed exchanged for insolent swagger--"I tell
+you what it is, your friend the Emperor has no more courage than a
+chicken.  He is grown old, and infirm, and lazy; he knows that he can't
+even mount on horseback.  But if, before this day week, he has not
+declared war on the Prussians, he will be lucky if he can get off as
+quietly as poor Louis Philippe did under shelter of his umbrella, and
+ticketed 'Schmidt.'  Or could you not, M. Duplessis, send him back to
+London in a bill of exchange?"
+
+"For a man of your literary repute, M. le Vicomte," said Duplessis, "you
+indulge in a strange confusion of metaphors.  But, pardon me, I came here
+to breakfast, and I cannot remain to quarrel.  Come, Lemercier, let us
+take our chance of a cutlet at the Trois Freres."
+
+"Fox, Fox," cried Lemercier, whistling to a poodle that had followed him
+into the cafe, and, frightened by the sudden movement and loud voices of
+the habitues, had taken refuge under the table.
+
+"Your dog is poltron," said De Breze; "call him Nap."  At this stroke of
+humour there was a general laugh, in the midst of which Duplessis
+escaped, and Frederic, having discovered and caught his dog, followed
+with that animal tenderly clasped in his arms.
+
+"I would not lose Fox for a great deal," said Lemercier with effusion;
+"a pledge of love and fidelity from an English lady the most
+distinguished: the lady left me--the dog remains."
+
+Duplessis smiled grimly: "What a thoroughbred Parisian you are, my dear
+Frederic!  I believe if the tramp of the last angel were sounding, the
+Parisians would be divided into two sets: one would be singing the
+Marseillaise, and parading the red flag; the other would be shrugging
+their shoulders and saying, 'Bah! as if le Bon Dieu would have the bad
+taste to injure Paris--the Seat of the Graces, the School of the Arts,
+the Fountain of Reason, the Eye of the World;' and so be found by the
+destroying angel caressing poodles and making _bons mots_ about les
+femmes."
+
+"And quite right, too," said Lemercier, complacently; "what other people
+in the world could retain lightness of heart under circumstances so
+unpleasant?  But why do you take things so solemnly?  Of course there
+will be war idle now to talk of explanations and excuses.  When a
+Frenchman says, 'I am insulted,' he is not going to be told that he is
+not insulted.  He means fighting, and not apologising.  But what if there
+be war?  Our brave soldiers beat the Prussians--take the Rhine--return to
+Paris covered with laurels; a new Boulevard de Berlin eclipses the
+Boulevard Sebastopol.  By the way, Duplessis, a Boulevard de Berlin will
+be a good speculation--better than the Rue de Louvier.  Ah! is not that
+my English friend, Grarm Varn?" here, quitting the arm of Duplessis,
+Lemercier stopped a gentleman who was about to pass him unnoticing.
+"_Bon jour, mon ami_! how long have you been at Paris?"
+
+"I only arrived last evening," answered Graham, "and my stay will be so
+short that it is a piece of good luck, my dear Lemercier, to meet with
+you, and exchange a cordial shake of the hand."
+
+"We are just going to breakfast at the Trois Freres--Duplessis and I--
+pray join us."
+
+"With great pleasure--ah, M. Duplessis, I shall be glad to hear from you
+that the Emperor will be firm enough to check the advances of that
+martial fever which, to judge by the persons I meet, seems to threaten
+delirium."
+
+Duplessis looked very keenly at Graham's face, as he replied slowly:
+"The English, at least, ought to know that when the Emperor by his last
+reforms resigned his personal authority for constitutional monarchy, it
+ceased to be a question whether he could or could not be firm in matters
+that belonged to the Cabinet and the Chambers.  I presume that if
+Monsieur Gladstone advised Queen Victoria to declare war upon the Emperor
+of Russia, backed by a vast majority in Parliament, you would think me
+very ignorant of constitutional monarchy and Parliamentary government if
+I said, 'I hope Queen Victoria will resist that martial fever.'"
+
+"You rebuke me very fairly, M. Duplessis, if you can show me that the two
+cases are analogous; but we do not understand in England that, despite
+his last reforms, the Emperor has so abnegated his individual ascendency,
+that his will, clearly and resolutely expressed, would not prevail in his
+Council and silence opposition in the Chambers.  Is it so?  I ask for
+information."
+
+The three men were walking on towards the Palais Royal side by side while
+this conversation proceeded.
+
+"That all depends," replied Duplessis, "upon what may be the increase of
+popular excitement at Paris.  If it slackens, the Emperor, no doubt,
+could turn to wise account that favourable pause in the fever.  But if it
+continues to swell, and Paris cries, 'War,' in a voice as loud as it
+cried to Louis Philippe 'Revolution,' do you think that the Emperor could
+impose on his ministers the wisdom of peace?  His ministers would be too
+terrified by the clamour to undertake the responsibility of opposing it--
+they would resign.  Where is the Emperor to find another Cabinet? a peace
+Cabinet?  What and who are the orators for peace?--whom a handful!--who?
+Gambetta, Jules Favre, avowed Republicans,--would they even accept the
+post of ministers to Louis Napoleon?  If they did, would not their first
+step be the abolition of the Empire?  Napoleon is therefore so far a
+constitutional monarch in the same sense as Queen Victoria, that the
+popular will in the country (and in France in such matters Paris is the
+country) controls the Chambers, controls the Cabinet; and against the
+Cabinet the Emperor could not contend.  I say nothing of the army--
+a power in France unknown to you in England, which would certainly
+fraternise with no peace party.  If war is proclaimed,--let England blame
+it if she will--she can't lament it more than I should: but let England
+blame the nation; let her blame, if she please, the form of the
+government, which rests upon popular suffrage; but do not let her blame
+our sovereign more than the French would blame her own, if compelled by
+the conditions on which she holds her crown to sign a declaration of war,
+which vast majorities in a Parliament just elected, and a Council of
+Ministers whom she could not practically replace, enforced upon her
+will."
+
+"Your observations, M. Duplessis, impress me strongly, and add to the
+deep anxieties with which, in common with all my countrymen, I regard the
+menacing aspect of the present hour.  Let us hope the best.  Our
+Government, I know, is exerting itself to the utmost verge of its power,
+to remove every just ground of offence that the unfortunate nomination of
+a German Prince to the Spanish throne could not fail to have given to
+French statesmen."
+
+"I am glad you concede that such a nomination was a just ground of
+offence," said Lemercier, rather bitterly; "for I have met Englishmen who
+asserted that France had no right to resent any choice of a sovereign
+that Spain might make."
+
+"Englishmen in general are not very reflective politicians in foreign
+affairs," said Graham; "but those who are must see that France could not,
+without alarm the most justifiable, contemplate a cordon of hostile
+states being drawn around her on all sides,--Germany, is, itself so
+formidable since the field of Sadowa, on the east; a German prince in the
+southwest; the not improbable alliance between Prussia and the Italian
+kingdom, already so alienated from the France to which it owed so much.
+If England would be uneasy were a great maritime power possessed of
+Antwerp, how much more uneasy might France justly be if Prussia could add
+the armies of Spain to those of Germany, and launch them both upon
+France.  But that cause of alarm is over--the Hohenzollern is withdrawn.
+Let us hope for the best."
+
+The three men had now seated themselves at a table in the Trois Freres,
+and Lemercier volunteered the task of inspecting the menu and ordering
+the repast, still keeping guard on Fox.
+
+"Observe that man," said Duplessis, pointing towards a gentleman who had
+just entered; "the other day he was the popular hero--now, in the
+excitement of threatened war, he is permitted to order his _bifteck_
+uncongratulated, uncaressed; such is fame at Paris! here to-day and gone
+to-morrow."
+
+"How did the man become famous?"
+
+"He is a painter, and refused a decoration--the only French painter who
+ever did."
+
+"And why refuse?"
+
+"Because he is more stared at as the man who refused than he would have
+been as the man who accepted.  If ever the Red Republicans have their
+day, those among them most certain of human condemnation will be the
+coxcombs who have gone mad for the desire of human applause."
+
+"You are a profound philosopher, M. Duplessis."
+
+"I hope not--I have an especial contempt for philosophers.  Pardon me a
+moment--I see a man to whom I would say a word or two."
+
+Duplessis crossed over to another table to speak to a middle-aged man of
+somewhat remarkable countenance, with the red ribbon in his buttonhole,
+in whom Graham recognised an ex-minister of the Emperor, differing from
+most of those at that day in his Cabinet, in the reputation of being
+loyal to his master and courageous against a mob.  Left thus alone with
+Lemercier, Graham said:
+
+"Pray tell me where I can find your friend the Marquis de Rochebriant.
+I called at his apartment this morning, and I was told that he had gone
+on some visit into the country, taking his valet, and the concierge could
+not give me his address.  I thought myself so lucky on meeting with you,
+who are sure to know."
+
+"No, I do not; it is some days since I saw Alain.  But Duplessis will be
+sure to know."  Here the financier rejoined them.
+
+"Mon cher, Grarm Varn wants to know for what Sabine shades Rochebriant
+has deserted the '_fumum opes strepitumque_' of the capital."
+
+"Ah! the Marquis is a friend of yours, Monsieur?"
+
+"I can scarcely boast that honour, but he is an acquaintance whom I
+should be very glad to see again."
+
+"At this moment he is at the Duchesse de Tarascon's country-house near
+Fontainebleau; I had a hurried line from him two days ago stating that he
+was going there on her urgent invitation.  But he may return to-morrow;
+at all events he dines with me on the 8th, and I shall be charmed if you
+will do me the honour to meet him at my house."
+
+"It is an invitation too agreeable to refuse, and I thank you very much
+for it."
+
+Nothing worth recording passed further in conversation between Graham and
+the two Frenchmen.  He left them smoking their cigars in the garden, and
+walked homeward by the Rue de Rivoli.  As he was passing beside the
+Magasin du Louvre he stopped, and made way for a lady crossing quickly
+out of the shop towards her carriage at the door.  Glancing at him with a
+slight inclination of her head in acknowledgment of his courtesy, the
+lady recognised his features,--
+
+"Ah, Mr. Vane!" she cried, almost joyfully--"you are then at Paris,
+though you have not come to see me."
+
+"I only arrived last night, dear Mrs. Morley," said Graham, rather
+embarrassed, "and only on some matters of business which unexpectedly
+summoned me.  My stay will probably be very short."
+
+"In that case let me rob you of a few minutes--no, not rob you even of
+them; I can take you wherever you want to go, and as my carriage moves
+more quickly than you do on foot, I shall save you the minutes instead of
+robbing you of them."
+
+"You are most kind, but I was only going to my hotel, which is close by."
+
+"Then you have no excuse for not taking a short drive with me in the
+Champs Elysees--come."
+
+Thus bidden, Graham could not civilly disobey.  He handed the fair
+American into her carriage, and seated himself by her side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+"Mr. Vane, I feel as if I had many apologies to make for the interest in
+your life which my letter to you so indiscreetly betrayed."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Morley! you cannot guess how deeply that interest touched me."
+
+"I should not have presumed so far," continued Mrs. Morley, unheeding the
+interruption, "if I had not been altogether in error as to the nature of
+your sentiments in a certain quarter.  In this you must blame my American
+rearing.  With us there are many flirtations between boys and girls which
+come to nothing; but when in my country a man like you meets with a woman
+like Mademoiselle Cicogna, there cannot be flirtation.  His attentions,
+his looks, his manner, reveal to the eyes of those who care enough for
+him to watch, one of two things--either he coldly admires and esteems, or
+he loves with his whole heart and soul a woman worthy to inspire such a
+love.  Well, I did watch, and I was absurdly mistaken.  I imagined that I
+saw love, and rejoiced for the sake of both of you to think so.  I know
+that in all countries, our own as well as yours, love is so morbidly
+sensitive and jealous that it is always apt to invent imaginary foes to
+itself.  Esteem and admiration never do that.  I thought that some
+misunderstanding, easily removed by the intervention of a third person,
+might have impeded the impulse of two hearts towards each other--and so
+I wrote.  I had assumed that you loved--I am humbled to the last degree--
+you only admired and esteemed."
+
+"Your irony is very keen, Mrs. Morley, and to you it may seem very just."
+
+"Don't call me Mrs. Morley in that haughty tone of voice,--can't you talk
+to me as you would talk to a friend?  You only esteemed and admired--
+there is an end of it."
+
+"No, there is not an end of it," cried Graham, giving way to an
+impetuosity of passion, which rarely, indeed, before another, escaped his
+self-control; "the end of it to me is a life out of which is ever
+stricken such love as I could feel for woman.  To me true love can only
+come once.  It came with my first look on that fatal face--it has never
+left me in thought by day, in dreams by night.  The end of it to me is
+farewell to all such happiness as the one love of a life can promise--
+but--"
+
+"But what?" asked Mrs. Morley, softly, and very much moved by the
+passionate earnestness of Graham's voice and words.
+
+"But," he continued with a forced smile, "we Englishmen are trained to
+the resistance of absolute authority; we cannot submit all the elements
+that make up our being to the sway of a single despot.  Love is the
+painter of existence, it should not be its sculptor."
+
+"I do not understand the metaphor."
+
+"Love colours our life, it should not chisel its form."
+
+"My dear Mr. Vane, that is very cleverly said, but the human heart is too
+large and too restless to be quietly packed up in an aphorism.  Do you
+mean to tell me that if you found you had destroyed Isaura Cicogna's
+happiness as well as resigned your own, that thought would not somewhat
+deform the very shape you would give to your life?  Is it colour alone
+that your life would lose?"
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Morley, do not lower your friend into an ordinary girl in whom
+idleness exaggerates the strength of any fancy over which it dreamily
+broods.  Isaura Cicogna has her occupations--her genius--her fame--her
+career.  Honestly speaking, I think that in these she will find a
+happiness that no quiet hearth could bestow.  I will say no more.  I feel
+persuaded that were we two united I could not make her happy.  With the
+irresistible impulse that urges the genius of the writer towards its vent
+in public sympathy and applause, she would chafe if I said, 'Be contented
+to be wholly mine.'  And if I said it not, and felt I had no right to say
+it, and allowed the full scope to her natural ambition, what then?  She
+would chafe yet more to find that I had no fellowship in her aims and
+ends--that where I should feel pride, I felt humiliation.  It would be
+so; I cannot help it, 'tis my nature."
+
+"So be it then.  When, next year perhaps, you visit Paris, you will be
+safe from my officious interference!  Isaura will be the wife of
+another."
+
+Graham pressed his hand to his heart with the sudden movement of one who
+feels there an agonising spasm--his cheek, his very lips were bloodless.
+
+"I told you," he said bitterly, "that your fears of my influence over the
+happiness of one so gifted, and so strong in such gifts, were groundless;
+you allow that I should be very soon forgotten?"
+
+"I allow no such thing--I wish I could.  But do you know so little of a
+woman's heart (and in matters of heart, I never yet heard that genius had
+a talisman against emotion),--do you know so little of a woman's heart as
+not to know that the very moment in which she may accept a marriage the
+least fitted to render her happy, is that in which she has lost all hope
+of happiness in another?"
+
+"Is it indeed so?" murmured Graham--"Ay, I can conceive it."
+
+"And have you so little comprehension of the necessities which that fame,
+that career to which you allow she is impelled by the instincts of
+genius, impose on this girl, young, beautiful, fatherless, motherless?
+No matter how pure her life, can she guard it from the slander of envious
+tongues?  Will not all her truest friends--would not you, if you were her
+brother--press upon her by all the arguments that have most weight with
+the woman who asserts independence in her modes of life, and yet is wise
+enough to know that the world can only judge of virtue by its shadow--
+reputation, not to dispense with the protection which a husband can alone
+secure?  And that is why I warn you, if it be yet time, that in resigning
+your own happiness you may destroy Isaura's.  She will wed another, but
+she will not be happy.  What a chimera or dread your egotism as man
+conjures up!  Oh! forsooth, the qualities that charm and delight a world
+are to unfit a woman to be helpmate to a man.  Fie on you!--fie!"
+
+Whatever answer Graham might have made to these impassioned reproaches
+was here checked.
+
+Two men on horseback stopped the carriage.  One was Enguerrand de
+Vandemar, the other was the Algerine Colonel whom we met at the supper
+given at the Maison Doree by Frederic Lemercier.
+
+"Pardon, Madame Morley," said Enguerrand; "but there are symptoms of a
+mob-epidemic a little further up the fever began at Belleville, and is
+threatening the health of the Champs Elysees.  Don't be alarmed--it may
+be nothing, though it may be much.  In Paris, one can never calculate an
+hour beforehand the exact progress of a politico-epidemic fever.  At
+present I say, 'Bah!  a pack of ragged boys, gamins de Paris;' but my
+friend the Colonel, twisting his _moustache en souriant amerement_, says,
+'It is the indignation of Paris at the apathy of the Government under
+insult to the honour of France;' and Heaven only knows how rapidly French
+gamins grow into giants when Colonels talk about the indignation of Paris
+and the honour of France!"
+
+"But what has happened?" asked Mrs. Morley, turning to the Colonel.
+
+"Madame," replied the warrior, "it is rumoured that the King of Prussia
+has turned his back upon the ambassador of France; and that the _pekin_
+who is for peace at any price--M. Ollivier--will say tomorrow in the
+Chamber, that France submits to a slap in the face."
+
+"Please, Monsieur de Vandemar, to tell my coachman to drive home," said
+Mrs. Morley.
+
+The carriage turned and went homeward.  The Colonel lifted his hat, and
+rode back to see what the gamins were about.  Enguerrand, who had no
+interest in the gamins, and who looked on the Colonel as a bore, rode by
+the side of the carriage.
+
+"Is  there  anything  serious  in  this?" asked  Mrs. Morley.
+
+"At this moment, nothing.  What it may be this hour to-morrow I cannot
+say.  Ah! Monsieur Vane, _bon jour_ I did not recognise you at first.
+Once, in a visit at the chateau of one of your distinguished countrymen,
+I saw two game-cocks turned out facing each other: they needed no pretext
+for quarrelling--neither do France and Prussia--no matter which game-cock
+gave the last offence, the two game-cocks must have it out.  All that
+Ollivier can do, if he be wise, is to see that the French cock has his
+steel spurs as long as the Prussians.  But this I do say, that if
+Ollivier attempts to put the French cock back into its bag, the Empire is
+gone in forty-eight hours.  That to me is a trifle--I care nothing for
+the Empire; but that which is not a trifle is anarchy and chaos.  Better
+war and the Empire than peace and Jules Favre.  But let us seize the
+present hour, Mr. Vane; whatever happens to-morrow, shall we dine
+together to-day?  Name your restaurant."
+
+"I am so grieved," answered Graham, rousing himself, "I am here only on
+business, and engaged all the evening."
+
+"What a wonderful thing is this life of ours!" said Enguerrand.  "The
+destiny of France at this moment hangs on a thread--I, a Frenchman, say
+to an English friend, 'Let us dine--a cutlet to-day and a fig for to-
+morrow;' and my English friend, distinguished native of a country with
+which we have the closest alliance, tells me that in this crisis of
+France he has business to attend to!  My father is quite right; he
+accepts the Voltairean philosophy, and cries, _Vivent les indifferents_!"
+
+"My dear M. de Vandemar," said Graham, "in every country you will find
+the same thing.  All individuals massed together constitute public life.
+Each individual has a life of his own, the claims and the habits and the
+needs of which do not suppress his sympathies with public life, but
+imperiously overrule them.  Mrs. Morley, permit me to pull the check-
+string--I get out here."
+
+"I like that man," said Enguerrand, as he continued to ride by the fair
+American, "in language and esprit he is so French."
+
+"I use to like him better than you can," answered Mrs. Morley, "but in
+prejudice and stupidity he is so English.  As it seems you are
+disengaged, come and partake, _pot au feu_, with Frank and me."
+
+"Charmed to do so," answered the cleverest and best bred of all Parisian
+_beaux garcons_, "but forgive me if I quit you soon.  This poor France!
+_Entre nous_, I am very uneasy about the Parisian fever.  I must run away
+after dinner to clubs and cafes to learn the last bulletins."
+
+"We have nothing like that French Legitimist in the States," said the
+fair American to herself, "unless we should ever be so silly as to make
+Legitimists of the ruined gentlemen of the South."
+
+Meanwhile Graham Vane went slowly back to his apartment.  No false excuse
+had he made to Enguerrand; this evening was devoted to M. Renard, who
+told him little he had not known before; but his private life overruled
+his public, and all that night he, professed politician, thought
+sleeplessly, not over the crisis to France, which might alter the
+conditions of Europe, but the talk on his private life of that
+intermeddling American woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The next day, Wednesday, July 6th, commenced one of those eras in the
+world's history in which private life would vainly boast that it
+overrules Life Public.  How many private lives does such a terrible time
+influence, absorb, darken with sorrow, crush into graves?
+
+It was the day when the Duc de Gramont uttered the fatal speech which
+determined the die between peace and war.  No one not at Paris on that
+day can conceive the popular enthusiasm with which that speech was
+hailed--the greater because the warlike tone of it was not anticipated;
+because there had been a rumour amidst circles the best informed that a
+speech of pacific moderation was to be the result of the Imperial
+Council.  Rapturous indeed were the applauses with which the sentences
+that breathed haughty defiance were hailed by the Assembly.  The ladies
+in the tribune rose with one accord, waving their handkerchiefs.  Tall,
+stalwart, dark, with Roman features and lofty presence, the Minister of
+France seemed to say with Catiline in the fine tragedy: "Lo! where I
+stand, I am war!"
+
+Paris had been hungering for some hero of the hour--the Duc de Gramont
+became at once raised to that eminence.  All the journals, save the very
+few which were friendly to peace, because hostile to the Emperor,
+resounded with praise, not only of the speech, but of the speaker.  It is
+with a melancholy sense of amusement that one recalls now to mind those
+organs of public opinion--with what romantic fondness they dwelt on the
+personal graces of the man who had at last given voice to the chivalry of
+France: "The charming gravity of his countenance--the mysterious
+expression of his eye!"
+
+As the crowd poured from the Chambers, Victor de Mauleon and Savarin, who
+had been among the listeners, encountered.
+
+"No chance for my friends the Orleanists now," said Savarin.  "You who
+mock at all parties are, I suppose, at heart for the Republican--small
+chance, too, for that."
+
+"I do not agree with you.  Violent impulses have quick reactions."
+
+"But what reaction could shake the Emperor after he returns a conqueror,
+bringing in his pocket the left bank of the Rhine?"
+
+"None--when he does that.  Will he do it?  Does he himself think he will
+do it?  I doubt--"
+
+"Doubt the French army against the Prussian?"
+
+"Against the German people united--yes, very much."
+
+"But war will disunite the German people.  Bavaria will surely assist us
+--Hanover will rise against the spoliator--Austria at our first successes
+must shake off her present enforced neutrality?"
+
+"You have not been in Germany, and I have.  What yesterday was a Prussian
+army, to-morrow will be a German population; far exceeding our own in
+numbers, in hardihood of body, in cultivated intellect, in military
+discipline.  But talk of something else.  How is my ex-editor--poor
+Gustave Rameau?"
+
+"Still very weak, but on the mend.  You may have him back in his office
+soon."
+
+"Impossible! even in his sick-bed his vanity was more vigorous than ever.
+He issued a war-song, which has gone the round of the war journals signed
+by his own name.  He must have known very well that the name of such a
+Tyrtaeus cannot reappear as the editor of _Le Sens Commun_; that in
+launching his little firebrand he burned all vessels that could waft him
+back to the port he had quitted.  But I dare say he has done well for his
+own interests; I doubt if _Le Sens Commun_ can much longer hold its
+ground in the midst of the prevalent lunacy."
+
+"What! it has lost subscribers?--gone off in sale already, since it
+declared for peace?"
+
+"Of course it has; and after the article which, if I live over to-night,
+will appear to-morrow, I should wonder if it sell enough to cover the
+cost of the print and paper."
+
+"Martyr to principle!  I revere, but I do not envy thee."
+
+"Martyrdom is not my ambition.  If Louis Napoleon be defeated, what then?
+Perhaps he may be the martyr; and the Favres and Gambettas may roast
+their own eggs on the gridiron they heat for his majesty."
+
+Here an English gentleman, who was the very able correspondent to a very
+eminent journal, and in that capacity had made acquaintance with De
+Mauleon, joined the two Frenchmen; Savarin, however, after an exchange of
+salutations, went his way.
+
+"May I ask a frank answer to a somewhat rude question, M. le Vicomte?"
+said the Englishman.  "Suppose that the Imperial Government had to-day
+given in their adhesion to the peace party, how long would it have been
+before their orators in the Chamber and their organs in the press would
+have said that France was governed by poltrons?"
+
+"Probably for most of the twenty-four hours.  But there are a few who are
+honest in their convictions; of that few I am one."
+
+"And would have supported the Emperor and his Government?"
+
+"No, Monsieur--I do not say that."
+
+"Then the Emperor would have turned many friends into enemies, and no
+enemies into friends."
+
+"Monsieur--you in England know that a party in opposition is not
+propitiated when the party in power steals its measures.  Ha!--pardon me,
+who is that gentleman, evidently your countryman, whom I see yonder
+talking to the Secretary of your Embassy?"
+
+"He.--Mr. Vane-Graham Vane.  Do you not know him?  He has been much in
+Paris, attached to our Embassy formerly; a clever man--much is expected
+from him."
+
+"Ah! I think I have seen him before, but am not quite sure.  Did you say
+Vane?  I once knew a Monsieur Vane, a distinguished parliamentary
+orator."
+
+"That gentleman is his son--would you like to be introduced to him?"
+
+"Not to-day--I am in some hurry."  Here Victor lifted his hat in parting
+salutation, and as he walked away cast at Graham another glance keen and
+scrutinising.  "I have seen that man before," he muttered, "where?--
+when?--can it be only a family likeness to the father?  No, the features
+are different; the profile is--ha!--Mr. Lamb, Mr. Lamb--but why call
+himself by that name?--why disguised?--what can he have to do with poor
+Louise?  Bah--these are not questions I can think of now.  This war--this
+war--can it yet be prevented?  How it will prostrate all the plans my
+ambition so carefully schemed!  Oh!--at least if I were but in the
+Chamber.  Perhaps I yet may be before the war is ended--the Clavignys
+have great interest in their department."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Graham had left a note with Rochebriant's concierge requesting an
+interview on the Marquis's return to Paris, and on the evening after the
+day just commemorated he received a line, saying that Alain had come
+back, and would be at home at nine o'clock.  Graham found himself in the
+Breton's apartment punctually at the hour indicated.
+
+Alain was in high spirits: he burst at once into enthusiastic
+exclamations on the virtual announcement of war.
+
+"Congratulate me, mon cher!" he cried--"the news was a joyous surprise
+to me.  Only so recently as yesterday morning I was under the gloomy
+apprehension that the Imperial Cabinet would continue to back Ollivier's
+craven declaration 'that France had not been affronted!'  The Duchesse de
+Tarascon, at whose campagne I was a guest, is (as you doubtless know)
+very much in the confidence of the Tuileries.  On the first signs of war,
+I wrote to her, saying that whatever the objections of my pride to enter
+the army as a private in time of peace, such objections ceased on the
+moment when all distinctions of France must vanish in the eyes of sons
+eager to defend her banners.  The Duchesse in reply begged me to come to
+her _campagne_ and talk over the matter.  I went; she then said that if
+war should break out it was the intention to organise the _Mobiles_ and
+officer them with men of birth and education, irrespective of previous
+military service, and in that case I might count on my epaulets.  But
+only two nights ago she received a letter--I know not of course from
+whom--evidently from some high authority--that induced her to think the
+moderation of the Council would avert the war, and leave the swords of
+the Mobiles in their sheaths.  I suspect the decision of yesterday must
+have been a very sudden one. _Ce cher Gramont_!  See what it is to have a
+well-born man in a sovereign's councils."
+
+"If war must come, I at least wish all renown to yourself.  But--"
+
+"Oh! spare me your 'buts'; the English are always too full of them where
+her own interests do not appeal to her.  She had no 'buts' for war in
+India or a march into Abyssinia."
+
+Alain spoke petulantly; at that moment the French were very much
+irritated by the monitory tone of the English journals.  Graham prudently
+avoided the chance of rousing the wrath of a young hero yearning for his
+epaulets.
+
+"I am English enough," said he, with good-humoured courtesy, "to care for
+English interests; and England has no interest abroad dearer to her than
+the welfare and dignity of France.  And now let me tell you why I
+presumed on an acquaintance less intimate than I could desire, to solicit
+this interview on a matter which concerns myself, and in which you could
+perhaps render me a considerable service."
+
+"If I can, count it rendered; move to this sofa--join me in a cigar, and
+let us talk at ease _comme de vieux amis_, whose fathers or brothers
+might have fought side by side in the Crimea."  Graham removed to the
+sofa beside Rochebriant, and after one or two whiffs laid aside the cigar
+and began:
+
+"Among the correspondence which Monsieur your father has left, are there
+any letters of no distant date signed Marigny--Madame Marigny?  Pardon
+me, I should state my motive in putting this question.  I am intrusted
+with a charge, the fulfilment of which may prove to the benefit of this
+lady or her child; such fulfilment is a task imposed upon my honour.  But
+all the researches to discover this lady which I have instituted stop at
+a certain date, with this information,--viz., that she corresponded
+occasionally with the late Marquis de Rochebriant; that he habitually
+preserved the letters of his correspondents; and that these letters were
+severally transmitted to you at his decease."
+
+Alain's face had taken a very grave expression while Graham spoke, and he
+now replied with a mixture of haughtiness and embarrassment:
+
+"The boxes containing the letters my father received and preserved were
+sent to me as you say--the larger portion of them were from ladies--
+sorted and labelled, so that in glancing at any letter in each packet I
+could judge of the general tenor of these in the same packet without the
+necessity of reading them.  All packets of that kind, Monsieur Vane, I
+burned.  I do not remember any letters signed 'Marigny!"
+
+"I perfectly understand, my dear Marquis, that you would destroy all
+letters which your father himself would have destroyed if his last
+illness had been sufficiently prolonged.  But I do not think the letters
+I mean would have come under that classification; probably they were
+short, and on matters of business relating to some third person--some
+person, for instance, of the name of Louise, or of Duval!"
+
+"Stop!  let me think.  I have a vague remembrance of one or two letters
+which rather perplexed me, they were labelled, 'Louise D--.  Mem.: to
+make further inquiries as to the fate of her uncle.'"
+
+"Marquis, these are the letters I seek.  Thank heaven, you have not
+destroyed them?"
+
+"No; there was no reason why I should destroy, though I really cannot
+state precisely any reason why I kept them.  I have a very vague
+recollection of their existence."
+
+"I entreat you to allow me at least a glance at the handwriting, and
+compare it with that of a letter I have about me; and if the several
+handwritings correspond, I would ask you to let me have the address,
+which, according to your father's memorandum, will be found in the
+letters you have preserved."
+
+"To compliance with such a request I not only cannot demur, but perhaps
+it may free me from some responsibility which I might have thought the
+letters devolved upon my executorship.  I am sure they did not concern
+the honour of any woman of any family, for in that case I must have
+burned them."
+
+"Ah, Marquis, shake hands there!  In such concord between man and man,
+there is more entente cordiale between England and France than there was
+at Sebastopol.  Now let me compare the handwritings."
+
+"The box that contained the letters is not here--I left it at
+Rochebriant; I will telegraph to my aunt to send it; the day after
+to-morrow it will no doubt arrive.  Breakfast with me that day--say at
+one o'clock, and after breakfast the Box!"
+
+"How can I thank you?"
+
+"Thank me! but you said your honour was concerned in your request--
+requests affecting honour between men _comma il faut_ is a ceremony of
+course, like a bow between them.  One bows, the other returns the bow--no
+thanks on either side.  Now that we have done with that matter, let me
+say that I thought your wish for our interview originated in a very
+different cause."
+
+"What could that be?"
+
+"Nay, do you not recollect that last talk between us, when with such
+loyalty you spoke to me about Mademoiselle Cicogna, and supposing that
+there might be rivalship between us, retracted all that you might have
+before said to warn me against fostering the sentiment with which she had
+inspired me; even at the first slight glance of a face which cannot be
+lightly forgotten by those who have once seen it."
+
+"I recollect perfectly every word of that talk, Marquis," answered
+Graham, calmly, but with his hand concealed within his vest and pressed
+tightly to his heart.  The warning of Mrs. Morley flashed upon him.
+"Was this the man to seize the prize he had put aside--this man, younger
+than himself--handsomer than himself--higher in rank?"
+
+"I recollect that talk, Marquis!  Well, what then?"
+
+"In my self-conceit I supposed that you might have heard how much I
+admired Mademoiselle Cicogna--how, having not long since met her at the
+house of Duplessis (who by the way writes me word that I shall meet you
+_chez lui_ tomorrow), I have since sought her society wherever there was
+a chance to find it.  You may have heard, at our club, or elsewhere, how
+I adore her genius--how, I say, that nothing so _Breton_--that is, so
+pure and so lofty--has appeared and won readers since the days of
+Chateaubriand,--and--you, knowing that _les absents ont toujours tort_,
+come to me and ask Monsieur de Rochebriant, Are we rivals?  I expected
+a challenge--you relieve my mind--you abandon the field to me?"
+
+At the first I warned the reader how improved from his old _mauvaise
+honte_ a year or so of Paris life would make our beau Marquis.  How a
+year or two of London life with its horsey slang and its fast girls of
+the period would have vulgarised an English Rochebriant!  Graham gnawed
+his lips and replied quietly, "I do not challenge!  Am I to congratulate
+you?"
+
+"No, that brilliant victory is not for me.  I thought that was made clear
+in the conversation I have referred to.  But if you have done me the
+honour to be jealous I am exceedingly flattered.  Speaking, seriously, if
+I admired Mademoiselle Cicogna when you and I last met, the admiration is
+increased by the respect with which I regard a character so simply noble.
+How many women older than she would have been spoiled by the adulation
+that has followed her literary success!--how few women so young, placed
+in a position so critical, having the courage to lead a life so
+independent, would have maintained the dignity of their character free
+from a single indiscretion!  I speak not from my own knowledge, but from
+the report of all, who would be pleased enough to censure if they could
+find a cause.  Good society is the paradise of _mauvaises langues_."
+
+Graham caught Alain's hand and pressed it, but made no answer.
+
+The young Marquis continued:
+
+"You will pardon me for speaking thus freely in the way that I would wish
+any friend to speak of the demoiselle who might become my wife.  I owe
+you much, not only for the loyalty with which you address me in reference
+to this young lady, but for words affecting my own position in France,
+which sank deep into my mind--saved me from deeming myself a _proscrit_
+in my own land--filled me with a manly ambition, not stifled amidst the
+thick of many effeminate follies--and, in fact, led me to the career
+which is about to open before me, and in which my ancestors have left me
+no undistinguished examples.  Let us speak, then, _a coeur ouvert_, as
+one friend to another.  Has there been any misunderstanding between you
+and Mademoiselle Cicogna which has delayed your return to Paris?  If so,
+is it over now?"
+
+"There has been no such misunderstanding."
+
+"Do you doubt whether the sentiments you expressed in regard to her when
+we met last year, are returned?"
+
+"I have no right to conjecture her sentiments.  You mistake altogether."
+
+"I do not believe that I am dunce enough to mistake your feelings towards
+Mademoiselle--they may be read in your face at this moment.  Of course I
+do not presume to hazard a conjecture as to those of Mademoiselle towards
+yourself.  But when I met her not long since at the house of Duplessis,
+with whose daughter she is intimate, I chanced to speak to her of you;
+and if I may judge, by looks and manner, I chose no displeasing theme.
+You turn away--I offend you?"
+
+"Offend!--no, indeed; but on this subject I am not prepared to converse.
+I came to Paris on matters of business much complicated and which ought
+to absorb my attention.  I cannot longer trespass on your evening.  The
+day after to-morrow, then, I will be with you at one o'clock."
+
+"Yes, I hope then to have the letters you wish to consult; and,
+meanwhile, we meet to-morrow at the Hotel Duplessis."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Graham had scarcely quitted Alain, and the young Marquis was about to
+saunter forth to his club, when Duplessis was announced.
+
+These two men had naturally seen much of each other since Duplessis had
+returned from Bretagne and delivered Alain from the gripe of Louvier.
+Scarcely a day had passed but what Alain had been summoned to enter into
+the financier's plans for the aggrandisement of the Rochebriant estates,
+and delicately made to feel that he had become a partner in speculations,
+which, thanks to the capital and the abilities Duplessis brought to bear,
+seemed likely to result in the ultimate freedom of his property from all
+burdens, and the restoration of his inheritance to a splendour
+correspondent with the dignity of his rank.
+
+On the plea that his mornings were chiefly devoted to professional
+business, Duplessis arranged that these consultations should take place
+in the evenings.  From those consultations Valerie was not banished;
+Duplessis took her into the council as a matter of course.  "Valerie,"
+said the financier to Alain, "though so young, has a very clear head for
+business, and she is so interested in all that interests myself, that
+even where I do not take her opinion, I at least feel my own made
+livelier and brighter by her sympathy."
+
+So the girl was in the habit of taking her work or her book into the
+_cabinet de travail_, and never obtruding a suggestion unasked, still,
+when appealed to, speaking with a modest good sense which justified her
+father's confidence and praise; and _a propos_ of her book, she had taken
+Chateaubriand into peculiar favour.  Alain had respectfully presented to
+her beautifully bound copies of Atala and Ls Genie du Christianisme; it
+is astonishing, indeed, how he had already contrived to regulate her
+tastes in literature.  The charms of those quiet family evenings had
+stolen into the young Breton's heart.
+
+He yearned for none of the gayer reunions in which he had before sought
+for a pleasure that his nature had not found; for, amidst the amusements
+of Paris, Alain remained intensely Breton--viz., formed eminently for the
+simple joys of domestic life, associating the sacred hearthstone with the
+antique religion of his fathers; gathering round it all the images of
+pure and noble affections which the romance of a poetic temperament had
+evoked from the solitude which had surrounded a melancholy boyhood-an
+uncontaminated youth.
+
+Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much disturbed from
+its wonted saturnine composure.
+
+"Marquis, what is this I have just heard from the Duchesse de Tarascon?
+Can it be?  You ask military service in this ill-omened war?--you?"
+
+"My dear and best friend," said Alain, very much startled, "I should have
+thought that you, of all men in the world, would have most approved of my
+request--you, so devoted an Imperialist--you, indignant that the
+representative of one of these families, which the First Napoleon so
+eagerly and so vainly courted, should ask for the grade of sous-
+lieutenant in the armies of Napoleon the Third--you, who of all men know
+how ruined are the fortunes of a Rochebriant--you, feel surprised that he
+clings to the noblest heritage his ancestors have left to him--their
+sword!  I do not understand you."
+
+"Marquis," said Duplessis, seating himself, and regarding Alain with a
+look in which were blended the sort of admiration and the sort of
+contempt with which a practical man of the world, who, having himself
+gone through certain credulous follies, has learned to despise the
+follies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with the fools they
+bewitch, "Marquis, pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk common
+sense.  I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist scruples had
+allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil appointment not
+unsuited to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as a civilian, to whom
+France can look for rational liberty combined with established order.
+Such openings to a suitable career you have rejected; but who on earth
+could expect you, never trained to military service, to draw a sword
+hitherto sacred to the Bourbons, on behalf of a cause which the madness,
+I do not say of France but of Paris, has enforced on a sovereign against
+whom you would fight to-morrow if you had a chance of placing the
+descendant of Henry IV. on his throne."
+
+"I am not about to fight for any sovereign, but for my country against
+the foreigner."
+
+"An excellent answer if the foreigner had invaded your country; but it
+seems that your country is going to invade the foreigner--a very
+different thing.  _Chut_! all this discussion is most painful to me.  I
+feel for the Emperor a personal loyalty, and for the hazards he is about
+to encounter a prophetic dread, as an ancestor of yours might have felt
+for Francis I. could he have foreseen Pavia.  Let us talk of ourselves
+and the effect the war should have upon our individual action.  You are
+aware, of course, that, though M. Louvier has had notice of our intention
+to pay off his mortgage, that intention cannot be carried into effect for
+six months; if the money be not then forthcoming his hold on Rochebriant
+remains unshaken--the sum is large."
+
+"Alas! yes."
+
+"The war must greatly disturb the money-market, affect many speculative
+adventures and operations when at the very moment credit may be most
+needed.  It is absolutely necessary that I should be daily at my post on
+the Bourse, and hourly watch the ebb and flow of events.  Under these
+circumstances I had counted, permit me to count still, on your presence
+in Bretagne.  We have already begun negotiations on a somewhat extensive
+scale, whether as regards the improvement of forests and orchards, or the
+plans for building allotments, as soon as the lands are free for
+disposal--for all these the eye of a master is required.  I entreat you,
+then, to take up your residence at Rochebriant."
+
+"My dear friend, this is but a kindly and delicate mode of relieving me
+from the dangers of war.  I have, as you must be conscious, no practical
+knowledge of business.  Hebert can be implicitly trusted, and will carry
+out your views with a zeal equal to mine, and with infinitely more
+ability."
+
+"Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to Hebert; if you wish to get your
+own cart out of the ruts, put your own shoulder to the wheel."
+
+Alain coloured high, unaccustomed to be so bluntly addressed, but he
+replied with a kind of dignified meekness: "I shall ever remain grateful
+for what you have done, and wish to do for me.  But, assuming that you
+suppose rightly, the estates of Rochebriant would, in your hands, become
+a profitable investment, and more than redeem the mortgage, and the sum
+you have paid Louvier on my account, let it pass to you irrespectively of
+me.  I shall console myself in the knowledge that the old place will be
+restored, and those who honoured its old owners prosper in hands so
+strong, guided by a heart so generous."
+
+Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple words; they seized him on
+the tenderest side of his character--for his heart was generous, and no
+one, except his lost wife and his loving child, had ever before
+discovered it to be so.  Has it ever happened to you, reader, to be
+appreciated on the one point of the good or the great that is in you--on
+which secretly you value yourself most--but for which nobody, not
+admitted into your heart of hearts, has given you credit?  If that has
+happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt when the fittest
+representative of that divine chivalry which, if sometimes deficient in
+head, owes all that exalts it to riches of heart, spoke thus to the
+professional moneymaker, whose qualities of head were so acknowledged
+that a compliment to them would be a hollow impertinence, and whose
+qualities of heart had never yet received a compliment!
+
+Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, murmuring, "Listen to
+me, I love you--I never had a son--be mine--Rochebriant shall be my
+daughter's dot."
+
+Alain returned the embrace, and then recoiling, said: "Father, your first
+desire must be honour for your son.  You have guessed my secret--I have
+learned to love Valerie.  Seeing her out in the world, she seemed like
+other girls, fair and commonplace--seeing her--at your house, I have said
+to myself, 'There is the one girl fairer than all others in my eyes, and
+the one individual to whom all other girls are commonplace.'"
+
+"Is that true?--is it?"
+
+"True! does a _gentilhomme_ ever lie?  And out of that love for her has
+grown this immovable desire to be something worthy of her--something that
+may lift me from the vulgar platform of men who owe all to ancestors,
+nothing to themselves.  Do you suppose for one moment that I, saved from
+ruin and penury by Valerie's father, could be base enough to say to her,
+'In return be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant'?  Do you suppose that I,
+whom you would love and respect as son, could come to you and say: 'I am
+oppressed by your favours--I am crippled with debts--give me your
+millions and we are quits.'  No, Duplessis!  You, so well descended
+yourself--so superior as man amongst men that you would have won name and
+position had you been born the son of a shoeblack,--you would eternally
+despise the noble who, in days when all that we Bretons deem holy in
+noblesse are subjected to ridicule and contempt, should so vilely forget
+the only motto which the scutcheons of all _gentilhommes_ have in common,
+'Noblesse oblige.'  War, with all its perils and all its grandeur,--war
+lifts on high the banners of France,--war, in which every ancestor of
+mine whom I care to recall aggrandised the name that descends to me.  Let
+me then do as those before me have done; let me prove that I am worth
+something in myself, and then you and I are equals; and I can say with no
+humbled crest, 'Your benefits are accepted:' the man who has fought not
+ignobly for France may aspire to the hand of her daughter.  Give me
+Valerie; as to her dot,--be it so, Rochebriant,--it will pass to her
+children."
+
+"Alain!  Alain! my friend! my son!--but if you fall."
+
+"Valerie will give you a nobler son."
+
+Duplessis moved away, sighing heavily; but he said no more in deprecation
+of Alain's martial resolves.
+
+A Frenchman, however practical, however worldly, however philosophical he
+may be, who does not sympathise with the follies of honour--who does not
+concede indulgence to the hot blood of youth when he says, "My country is
+insulted and her banner is unfurled," may certainly be a man of excellent
+common sense; but if such men had been in the majority, Gaul would never
+have been France--Gaul would have been a province of Germany.
+
+And as Duplessis walked homeward--he the calmest and most far-seeing of
+all authorities on the Bourse--the man who, excepting only De Mauleon,
+most decidedly deemed the cause of the war a blunder, and most
+forebodingly anticipated its issues, caught the prevalent enthusiasm.
+Everywhere he was stopped by cordial hands, everywhere met by
+congratulating smiles.  "How right you have been, Duplessis, when you
+have laughed at those who have said, 'The Emperor is ill, decrepit, done
+up.'"
+
+"Vive l'Empereur! at least we shall be face to face with those insolent
+Prussians!"
+
+Before he arrived at his home, passing along the Boulevards, greeted by
+all the groups enjoying the cool night air before the cafes, Duplessis
+had caught the war epidemic.
+
+Entering his hotel, he went at once to Valerie's chamber.  "Sleep well
+to-night, child; Alain has told me that he adores thee, and if he will go
+to the war, it is that he may lay his laurels at thy feet.  Bless thee,
+my child, thou couldst not have made a nobler choice."
+
+Whether, after these words, Valerie slept well or not 'tis not for me to
+say; but if she did sleep, I venture to guess that her dreams were rose-
+coloured.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+All the earlier part of that next day, Graham Vane remained in-doors--a
+lovely day at Paris that 8th of July, and with that summer day all hearts
+at Paris were in unison.  Discontent was charmed into enthusiasm--
+Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism and Socialism
+and other "isms" not to be realised except in some undiscovered Atlantis!
+
+The Emperor was the idol of the day--the names of Jules Favre and
+Gambetta were by-words of scorn.  Even Armand Monnier, still out of work,
+beginning to feel the pinch of want, and fierce for any revolution that
+might turn topsy-turvy the conditions of labour,--even Armand Monnier was
+found among groups that were laying immortelles at the foot of the column
+in the Place Vendome, and heard to say to a fellow malcontent, with eyes
+uplifted to the statue of the First Napoleon, "Do you not feel at this
+moment that no Frenchman can be long angry with the Little Corporal?  He
+denied La Liberte, but he gave La Gloire."
+
+Heeding not the stir of the world without, Graham was compelling into one
+resolve the doubts and scruples which had so long warred against the
+heart which they ravaged, but could not wholly subdue.
+
+The conversations with Mrs. Morley and Rochebriant had placed in a light
+in which he had not before regarded it, the image of Isaura.
+
+He had reasoned from the starting-point of his love for her, and had
+sought to convince himself that against that love it was his duty to
+strive.
+
+But now a new question was addressed to his conscience as well as to his
+heart.  What though he had never formally declared to her his affection--
+never, in open words, wooed her as his own--never even hinted to her the
+hopes of a union which at one time he had fondly entertained,--still was
+it true that his love had been too transparent not to be detected by her,
+and not to have led her on to return it?
+
+Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he was not indifferent to her:
+at Enghien, a year ago, that he had gained her esteem, and perhaps
+interested her fancy.
+
+We know also how he had tried to persuade himself that the artistic
+temperament, especially when developed in women, is too elastic to suffer
+the things of real life to have lasting influence over happiness or
+sorrow,--that in the pursuits in which her thought and imagination found
+employ, in the excitement they sustained, and the fame to which they
+conduced, Isaura would be readily consoled for a momentary pang of
+disappointed affection.  And that a man so alien as himself, both by
+nature and by habit, from the artistic world, was the very last person
+who could maintain deep and permanent impression on her actual life or
+her ideal dreams.  But what if, as he gathered from the words of the fair
+American--what if, in all these assumptions, she was wholly mistaken?
+What if, in previously revealing his own heart, he had decoyed hers--what
+if, by a desertion she had no right to anticipate, he had blighted her
+future?  What if this brilliant child of genius could love as warmly, as
+deeply, as enduringly as any simple village girl to whom there is no
+poetry except love?  If this were so--what became the first claim on his
+honour, his conscience, his duty?
+
+The force which but a few days ago his reasonings had given to the
+arguments that forbade him to think of Isaura, became weaker and weaker,
+as now in an altered mood of reflection he resummoned and reweighed them.
+
+All those prejudices--which had seemed to him such rational common-sense
+truths, when translated from his own mind into the words of Lady Janet's
+letter,--was not Mrs. Morley right in denouncing them as the crotchets of
+an insolent egotism?  Was it not rather to the favour than to the
+disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in the man's narrow-minded view of
+woman's dignity, that this orphan girl could, with character so
+unscathed, pass through the trying ordeal of the public babble, the
+public gaze-command alike the esteem of a woman so pure as Mrs. Morley,
+the reverence of a man so chivalrously sensitive to honour as Alain de
+Rochebriant?
+
+Musing thus, Graham's countenance at last brightened--a glorious joy
+entered into and possessed him.  He felt as a man who had burst asunder
+the swathes and trammels which had kept him galled and miserable with the
+sense of captivity, and from which some wizard spell that took strength
+from his own superstition had forbidden to struggle.
+
+He was free!--and that freedom was rapture!--yes, his resolve was taken.
+
+The day was now far advanced.  He should have just time before the dinner
+with Duplessis to drive to A------, where he still supposed Isaura
+resided.  How, as his _fiacre_ rolled along the well-remembered road--
+how completely he lived in that world of romance of which he denied
+himself to be a denizen.
+
+Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied only by workmen--it was
+under repair.  No one could tell him to what residence the ladies who
+occupied it the last year had removed.
+
+"I shall learn from Mrs. Morley," thought Graham, and at her house he
+called in going back, but Mrs. Morley was not at home; he had only just
+time, after regaining his apartment, to change his dress for the dinner
+to which he was invited.  As it was, he arrived late, and while
+apologising to his host for his want of punctuality, his tongue faltered.
+At the farther end of the room he saw a face, paler and thinner than when
+he had seen it last--a face across which a something of grief had gone.
+
+The servant announced that dinner was served.
+
+"Mr. Vane," said Duplessis, "will you take into dinner Mademoiselle
+Cicogna?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 BOOK XI.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Amoung the frets and checks to the course that "never did run smooth,"
+there is one which is sufficiently frequent, for many a reader will
+remember the irritation it caused him.  You have counted on a meeting
+with the beloved one unwitnessed by others, an interchange of confessions
+and vows which others may not hear.  You have arranged almost the words
+in which your innermost heart is to be expressed; pictured to yourself
+the very looks by which those words will have their sweetest reply.  The
+scene you have thus imagined appears to you vivid and distinct, as if
+foreshown in a magic glass.  And suddenly, after long absence, the
+meeting takes place in the midst of a common companionship: nothing that
+you wished to say can be said.  The scene you pictured is painted out by
+the irony of Chance; and groups and backgrounds of which you had never
+dreamed start forth from the disappointing canvas.  Happy if that be all!
+But sometimes, by a strange, subtle intuition, you feel that the person
+herself is changed; and sympathetic with that change, a terrible chill
+comes over your own heart.
+
+Before Graham had taken his seat at the table beside Isaura, he felt that
+she was changed to him.  He felt it by her very touch as their hands met
+at the first greeting,--by the tone of her voice in the few words that
+passed between them,--by the absence of all glow in the smile which had
+once lit up her face, as a burst of sunshine lights up a day in spring,
+and gives a richer gladness of colour to all its blooms.  Once seated
+side by side they remained for some moments silent.  Indeed, it would
+have been rather difficult for anything less than the wonderful
+intelligence of lovers between whom no wall can prevent the stolen
+interchange of tokens, to have ventured private talk of their own amid
+the excited converse which seemed all eyes, all tongues, all ears,
+admitting no one present to abstract himself from the common emotion.
+Englishmen do not recognise the old classic law which limited the number
+of guests, where banquets are meant to be pleasant, to that of the Nine-
+Muses.  They invite guests so numerous, and so shy of launching talk
+across the table, that you may talk to the person next to you not less
+secure from listeners than you would be in talking with the stranger whom
+you met at a well in the Sahara.  It is not so, except on state
+occasions, at Paris.  Difficult there to retire into solitude with your
+next neighbour.  The guests collected by Duplessis completed with himself
+the number of the Sacred Nine--the host, Valerie, Rochebriant, Graham,
+Isaura, Signora Venosta, La Duchesse de Tarascon, the wealthy and high-
+born Imperialist, Prince --------, and last and least, one who shall be
+nameless.
+
+I have read somewhere, perhaps in one of the books which American
+superstition dedicates to the mysteries of Spiritualism, how a gifted
+seer, technically styled medium, sees at the opera a box which to other
+eyes appears untenanted and empty, but to him is full of ghosts, well
+dressed in _costume de-regle_, gazing on the boards and listening to the
+music.  Like such ghosts are certain beings whom I call Lookers-on.
+Though still living, they have no share in the life they survey, they
+come as from another world to hear and to see what is passing in ours.
+In ours they lived once, but that troubled sort of life they have
+survived.  Still we amuse them as stage-players and puppets amuse
+ourselves.  One of these Lookers-on completed the party at the house of
+Duplessis.
+
+How lively, how animated the talk was at the financier's pleasant table
+that day, the 8th of July!  The excitement of the coming war made itself
+loud in every Gallic voice, and kindled in every Gallic eye.  Appeals at
+every second minute were made, sometimes courteous, sometimes sarcastic,
+to the Englishman--promising son of an eminent statesman, and native of a
+country in which France is always coveting an ally, and always suspecting
+an enemy.  Certainly Graham could not have found a less propitious moment
+for asking Isaura if she really were changed.  And certainly the honour
+of Great Britain was never less ably represented (that is saying a great
+deal) than it was on this occasion by the young man reared to diplomacy
+and aspiring to Parliamentary distinction.  He answered all questions
+with a constrained voice and an insipid smile,--all questions pointedly
+addressed to him as to what demonstrations of admiring sympathy with the
+gallantry of France might be expected from the English Government and
+people; what his acquaintance with the German races led him to suppose
+would be the effect on the Southern States of the first defeat of the
+Prussians; whether the man called Moltke was not a mere strategist on
+paper, a crotchety pedant; whether, if Belgium became so enamoured of the
+glories of France as to solicit fusion with her people, England would
+have a right to offer any objection,&c., &c.  I do not think that during
+that festival Graham once thought one-millionth so much about the fates
+of Prussia and France as he did think, "Why is that girl so changed to
+me?  Merciful heaven! is she lost to my life?"
+
+By training, by habit, even by passion, the man was a genuine politician,
+cosmopolitan as well as patriotic, accustomed to consider what effect
+every vibration in that balance of European power, which no deep thinker
+can despise, must have on the destinies of civilised humanity, and on
+those of the nation to which he belongs.  But are there not moments in
+life when the human heart suddenly narrows the circumference to which its
+emotions are extended?  As the ebb of a tide, it retreats from the shores
+it had covered on its flow, drawing on with contracted waves the
+treasure-trove it has selected to hoard amid its deeps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+On quitting the dining-room, the Duchesse de Tarascon said to her host,
+on whose arm she was leaning, "Of course you and I must go with the
+stream.  But is not all the fine talk that has passed to-day at your
+table, and in which we too have joined, a sort of hypocrisy?  I may say
+this to you; I would say it to no other."
+
+"And I say to you, Madame la Duchesse, that which I would say to no
+other.  Thinking over it as I sit alone, I find myself making a 'terrible
+hazard;' but when I go abroad and become infected by the general
+enthusiasm, I pluck up gaiety of spirit, and whisper to myself, 'True,
+but it may be an enormous gain.'  To get the left bank of the Rhine is a
+trifle; but to check in our next neighbour a growth which a few years
+hence would overtop us,--that is no trifle.  And, be the gain worth the
+hazard or not, could the Emperor, could any Government likely to hold its
+own for a week, have declined to take the chance of the die?"
+
+The Duchesse mused a moment, and meanwhile the two seated themselves on a
+divan in the corner of the salon.  Then she said very slowly--
+
+"No Government that held its tenure on popular suffrage could have done
+so.  But if the Emperor had retained the personal authority which once
+allowed the intellect of one man to control and direct the passions of
+many, I think the war would have been averted.  I have reason to know
+that the Emperor gave his emphatic support to the least bellicose members
+of the Council, and that Gramont's speech did not contain the passage
+that precipitates hostilities when the Council in which it was framed
+broke up.  These fatal Ministers found the Chamber, and the reports of
+the popular excitement which could not be resisted without imminent
+danger of revolution.  It is Paris that has forced the war on the
+Emperor.  But enough of this subject.  What must be, must, and, as you
+say, the gain may be greater than the hazard.  I come to something else
+you whispered to me before we went in to dinner,--a sort of complaint
+which wounds me sensibly.  You say I had assisted to a choice of danger
+and possibly of death a very distant connection of mine, who might have
+been a very near connection of yours.  You mean Alain de Rochebriant?"
+
+"Yes; I accept him as a suitor for the hand of my only daughter."
+
+"I am so glad, not for your sake so much as for his.  No one can know him
+well without appreciating in him the finest qualities of the finest order
+of the French noble; but having known your pretty Valerie so long, my
+congratulations are for the man who can win her.  Meanwhile, hear my
+explanation: when I promised Alain any interest I can command for the
+grade of officer in a regiment of Mobiles, I knew not that he had formed,
+or was likely to form, ties or duties to keep him at home.  I withdraw my
+promise."
+
+"No, Duchesse, fulfil it.  I should be disloyal indeed if I robbed a
+sovereign under whose tranquil and prosperous reign I have acquired,
+with no dishonour, the fortune which Order proffers to Commerce, of one
+gallant defender in the hour of need.  And, speaking frankly, if Alain
+were really my son, I think I am Frenchman enough to remember that France
+is my mother."
+
+"Say no more, my friend--say no more," cried the Duchesse, with the warm
+blood of the heart rushing through all the delicate coatings of pearl-
+powder.  "If every Frenchman felt as you do; if in this Paris of ours all
+hostilities of class may merge in the one thought of the common country;
+if in French hearts there yet thrills the same sentiment as that which,
+in the terrible days when all other ties were rent asunder, revered
+France as mother, and rallied her sons to her aid against the confederacy
+of Europe,--why, then, we need not grow pale with dismay at the sight of
+a Prussian needle-gun.  Hist! look yonder: is not that a tableau of Youth
+in Arcady?  Worlds rage around, and Love, unconcerned, whispers to Love!"
+The Duchesse here pointed to a corner of the adjoining room in which
+Alain and Valerie sat apart, he whispering into her ear; her cheek
+downcast, and, even seen at that distance, brightened by the delicate
+tenderness of its blushes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+But in that small assembly there were two who did not attract the notice
+of Duplessis or of the lady of the Imperial Court.  While the Prince ----
+and the placid Looker-on were engaged at a contest of ecarte, with the
+lively Venosta, for the gallery, interposing criticisms and admonitions,
+Isaura was listlessly turning over a collection of photographs, strewed
+on a table that stood near to an open window in the remoter angle of the
+room, communicating with a long and wide balcony filled partially with
+flowers and overlooking the Champs Elysees, softly lit up by the
+innumerable summer stars.  Suddenly a whisper, the command of which she
+could not resist, thrilled through her ear, and sent the blood rushing
+back to her heart.
+
+"Do you remember that evening at Enghien?  how I said that our
+imagination could not carry us beyond the question whether we two should
+be gazing together that night twelve months on that star which each of us
+had singled out from the hosts of heaven?  That was the 8th of July.  It
+is the 8th of July once more.  Come and seek for our chosen star--come.
+I have something to say, which say I must.  Come."
+
+Mechanically, as it were,--mechanically, as they tell us the Somnambulist
+obeys the Mesmeriser,--Isaura obeyed that summons.  In a kind of dreamy
+submission she followed his steps, and found herself on the balcony,
+flowers around her and stars above, by the side of the man who had been
+to her that being ever surrounded by flowers and lighted by stars,--the
+ideal of Romance to the heart of virgin Woman.
+
+"Isaura," said the Englishman, softly.  At the sound of her own name for
+the first time heard from those lips, every nerve in her frame quivered.
+"Isaura, I have tried to live without you.  I cannot.  You are all in all
+to me: without you it seems to me as if earth had no flowers, and even
+heaven had withdrawn its stars.  Are there differences between us,
+differences of taste, of sentiments, of habits, of thought?  Only let me
+hope that you can love me a tenth part so much as I love you, and such
+differences cease to be discord.  Love harmonises all sounds, blends all
+colours into its own divine oneness of heart and soul.  Look up! is not
+the star which this time last year invited our gaze above, is it not
+still there?  Does it not still invite our gaze?  Isaura, speak!"
+
+"Hush, hush, hush,"--the girl could say no more, but she recoiled from
+his side.
+
+The recoil did not wound him: there was no hate in it.  He advanced, he
+caught her hand, and continued, in one of those voices which become so
+musical in summer nights under starry skies:
+
+"Isaura, there is one name which I can never utter without a reverence
+due to the religion which binds earth to heaven--a name which to man
+should be the symbol of life cheered and beautified, exalted, hallowed.
+That name is 'wife.'  Will you take that name from me?"
+
+And still Isaura made no reply.  She stood mute, and cold, and rigid as a
+statue of marble.  At length, as if consciousness had been arrested and
+was struggling back, she sighed heavily, and passed her hands slowly over
+her forehead.
+
+"Mockery, mockery," she said then, with a smile half bitter, half
+plaintive, on her colourless lips.  "Did you wait to ask me that question
+till you knew what my answer must be?  I have pledged the name of wife to
+another."
+
+"No, no; you say that to rebuke, to punish me!  Unsay it! unsay it!"
+
+Isaura beheld the anguish of his face with bewildered eyes.  "How can my
+words pain you?" she said, drearily.  "Did you not write that I had
+unfitted myself to be wife to you?"
+
+"I?"
+
+"That I had left behind me the peaceful immunities of private life?  I
+felt you were so right!  Yes!  I am affianced to one who thinks that in
+spite of that misfortune--"
+
+"Stop, I command you--stop!  You saw my letter to Mrs. Morley.  I have
+not had one moment free from torture and remorse since I wrote it.  But
+whatever in that letter you might justly resent--"
+
+"I did not resent--"
+
+Graham heard not the interruption, but hurried on.  "You would forgive
+could you read my heart.  No matter.  Every sentiment in that letter,
+except those which conveyed admiration, I retract.  Be mine, and instead
+of presuming to check in you the irresistible impulse of genius to the
+first place in the head or the heart of the world, I teach myself to
+encourage, to share, to exult in it.  Do you know what a difference there
+is between the absent one and the present one--between the distant image
+against whom our doubts, our fears, our suspicions, raise up hosts of
+imaginary giants, barriers of visionary walls, and the beloved face
+before the sight of which the hosts are fled, the walls are vanished?
+Isaura, we meet again.  You know now from my own lips that I love you.  I
+think your lips will not deny that you love me.  You say that you are
+affianced to another.  Tell the man frankly, honestly, that you mistook
+your heart.  It is not yours to give.  Save yourself, save him, from a
+union in which there can be no happiness."
+
+"It is too late," said Isaura, with hollow tones, but with no trace of
+vacillating weakness on her brow and lips.  "Did I say now to that other
+one, 'I break the faith that I pledged to you,' I should kill him, body
+and soul.  Slight thing though I be, to him I am all in all; to you, Mr.
+Vane, to you a memory--the memory of one whom a year, perhaps a month,
+hence, you will rejoice to think you have escaped."
+
+She passed from him--passed away from the flowers and the starlight; and
+when Graham,--recovering from the stun of her crushing words, and with
+the haughty mien and stop of the man who goes forth from the ruin of his
+hopes, leaning for support upon his pride,--when Graham re-entered the
+room, all the guests had departed save only Alain, who was still
+exchanging whispered words with Valerie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The next day, at the hour appointed, Graham entered Alain's apartment.
+"I am glad to tell you," said the Marquis, gaily, "that the box has
+arrived, and we will very soon examine its contents.  Breakfast claims
+precedence."  During the meal Alain was in gay spirits, and did not at
+first notice the gloomy countenance and abstracted mood of his guest.  At
+length, surprised at the dull response to his lively sallies on the part
+of a man generally so pleasant in the frankness of his speech, and the
+cordial ring of his sympathetic laugh, it occurred to him that the change
+in Graham must be ascribed to something that had gone wrong in the
+meeting with Isaura the evening before; and remembering the curtness with
+which Graham had implied disinclination to converse about the fair
+Italian, he felt perplexed how to reconcile the impulse of his good
+nature with the discretion imposed on his good-breeding.  At all events,
+a compliment to the lady whom Graham had so admired could do no harm.
+
+"How well Mademoiselle Cicogna looked last night!"
+
+"Did she?  It seemed to me that, in health at least, she did not look
+very well.  Have you heard what day M. Thiers will speak on the war?"
+
+"Thiers?  No.  Who cares about Thiers?  Thank heaven his day is past!
+I don't know any unmarried woman in Paris, not even Valerie--I mean
+Mademoiselle Duplessis--who has so exquisite a taste in dress as
+Mademoiselle Cicogna.  Generally speaking, the taste of a female author
+is atrocious."
+
+"Really--I did not observe her dress.  I am no critic on subjects so
+dainty as the dress of ladies, or the tastes of female authors."
+
+"Pardon me," said the beau Marquis, gravely.  "As to dress, I think that
+so essential a thing in the mind of woman, that no man who cares about
+women ought to disdain critical study of it.  In woman, refinement of
+character is never found in vulgarity of dress.  I have only observed
+that truth since I came up from Bretagne."
+
+"I presume, my dear Marquis, that you may have read in Bretagne books
+which very few not being professed scholars have ever read at Paris;
+and possibly you may remember that Horace ascribes the most exquisite
+refinement in dress, denoted by the untranslatable words, 'simplex
+munditiis,' to a lady who was not less distinguished by the ease and
+rapidity with which she could change her affection.  Of course that
+allusion does not apply to Mademoiselle Cicogna, but there are many other
+exquisitely dressed ladies at Paris of whom an ill-fated admirer
+
+                                 'fidem
+                    Mutatosque deos flebit.'
+
+"Now, with your permission, we will adjourn to the box of letters."
+
+The box being produced and unlocked, Alain looked with conscientious care
+at its contents before he passed over to Graham's inspection a few
+epistles, in which the Englishman immediately detected the same
+handwriting as that of the letter from Louise which Richard King had
+bequeathed to him.
+
+They were arranged and numbered chronologically.
+
+
+     LETTER I.
+
+     DEAR M. LE MARQUIS,--How can I thank you sufficiently for obtaining
+     and remitting to me those certificates?  You are too aware of the
+     unhappy episode in my life not to know how inestimable is the
+     service you render me.  I am saved all further molestation from the
+     man who had indeed no right over my freedom, but whose persecution
+     might compel me to the scandal and disgrace of an appeal to the law
+     for protection, and the avowal of the illegal marriage into which I
+     was duped.  I would rather be torn limb from limb by wild horses,
+     like the Queen in the history books, than dishonour myself and the
+     ancestry which I may at least claim on the mother's side, by
+     proclaiming that I had lived with that low Englishman as his wife,
+     when I was only--O heavens, I cannot conclude the sentence!
+
+     "No, Mons. le Marquis, I am in no want of the pecuniary aid you so
+     generously wish to press on me.  Though I know not where to address
+     my poor dear uncle,--though I doubt, even if I did, whether I could
+     venture to confide to him the secret known only to yourself as to
+     the name I now bear--and if he hear of me at all he must believe me
+     dead,--yet I have enough left of the money he last remitted to me
+     for present support; and when that fails, I think, what with my
+     knowledge of English and such other slender accomplishments as I
+     possess, I could maintain myself as a teacher or governess in some
+     German family.  At all events, I will write to you again soon, and I
+     entreat you to let me know all you can learn about my uncle.  I feel
+     so grateful to you for your just disbelief of the horrible calumny
+     which must be so intolerably galling to a man so proud, and,
+     whatever his errors, so incapable of a baseness.
+
+     "Direct to me Poste restante, Augsburg.
+
+     "Yours with all consideration,
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+(Seven months after the date of Letter 1.)
+
+     "AUGSBURG.
+
+     "DEAR M. LE MARQUIS,--I thank you for your kind little note
+     informing me of the pains you have taken, as yet with no result, to
+     ascertain what has become of my unfortunate uncle.  My life since I
+     last wrote has been a very quiet one.  I have been teaching among a
+     few families here; and among my pupils are two little girls of very
+     high birth.  They have taken so great a fancy to me that their
+     mother has just asked me to come and reside at their house as
+     governess.  What wonderfully kind hearts those Germans have,--so
+     simple, so truthful!  They raise no troublesome questions,--accept
+     my own story implicitly."  Here follow a few commonplace sentences
+     about the German character, and a postscript.  "I go into my new
+     home next week.  When you hear more of my uncle, direct to me at the
+     Countess von Rudesheim, Schloss  --  ------, near Berlin."
+
+
+"Rudesheim!"  Could this be the relation, possibly the wife, of the Count
+von Rudesheim with whom Graham had formed acquaintance last year?
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+(Between three and four years after the date of the last.)
+
+     "You startle me indeed, dear M. le Marquis.  My uncle said to have
+     been recognised in Algeria under another name, a soldier in the
+     Algerian army?  My dear, proud, luxurious uncle!  Ah, I cannot
+     believe it, any more than you do: but I long eagerly for such
+     further news as you can learn of him.  For myself, I shall perhaps
+     surprise you when I say I am about to be married.  Nothing can
+     exceed the amiable kindness I have received from the Rudesheims
+     since I have been in their house.  For the last year especially I
+     have been treated on equal terms as one of the family.  Among the
+     habitual visitors at the house is a gentleman of noble birth, but
+     not of rank too high, nor of fortune too great, to make a marriage
+     with the French widowed governess a misalliance.  I am sure that he
+     loves me sincerely; and he is the only man I ever met whose love I
+     have cared to win.  We are to be married in the course of the year.
+     Of course he is ignorant of my painful history, and will never learn
+     it.  And after all, Louise D---- is dead.  In the home to which I am
+     about to remove, there is no probability that the wretched
+     Englishman can ever cross my path.  My secret is as safe with you as
+     in the grave that holds her whom in the name of Louise D---- you
+     once loved.  Henceforth I shall trouble you no more with my letters;
+     but if you hear anything decisively authentic of my uncle's fate,
+     write me a line at any time, directed as before to Madame  ----,
+     enclosed to the Countess von Rudesheim.
+
+     "And accept, for all the kindness you have ever shown me, as to one
+     whom you did not disdain to call a kinswoman, the assurance of my
+     undying gratitude.  In the alliance she now makes, your kinswoman
+     does not discredit the name through which she is connected with the
+     yet loftier line of Rochebriant."
+
+
+To this letter the late Marquis had appended in pencil.  "Of course
+Rochebriant never denies the claim of a kinswoman, even though a drawing-
+master's daughter.  Beautiful creature, Louise, but a termagant.  I could
+not love Venus if she were a termagant.  L.'s head turned by the unlucky
+discovery that her mother was noble.  In one form or other, every woman
+has the same disease--vanity.  Name of her intended not mentioned--easily
+found out."
+
+The next letter was dated May 7, 1859, on black-edged paper, and
+contained but these lines: "I was much comforted by your kind visit
+yesterday, dear Marquis.  My affliction has been heavy: but for the last
+two years my poor husband's conduct has rendered my life unhappy, and I
+am recovering the shock of his sudden death.  It is true that I and the
+children are left very ill provided for; but I cannot accept your
+generous offer of aid.  Have no fear as to my future fate.  Adieu, my
+dear Marquis!  This will reach you just before you start for Naples. _Bon
+voyage_."  There was no address on this note-no postmark on the envelope-
+evidently sent by hand.
+
+The last note, dated 1861, March 20, was briefer than its predecessor.
+"I have taken your advice, dear Marquis; and, overcoming all scruples, I
+have accepted his kind offer, on the condition that I am never to be
+taken to England.  I had no option in this marriage.  I can now own to
+you that my poverty had become urgent.--Yours, with inalienable
+gratitude.  This last note, too, was without postmark, and was evidently
+sent by hand.
+
+"There are no other letters, then, from this writer?" asked Graham; "and
+no further clue as to her existence?"
+
+"None that I have discovered; and I see now why I preserved these
+letters.  There is nothing in their contents not creditable to my poor
+father.  They show how capable he was of good-natured disinterested
+kindness towards even a distant relation of whom he could certainly not
+have been proud, judging not only by his own pencilled note, or by the
+writer's condition as a governess, but by her loose sentiments as to the
+marriage tie.  I have not the slightest idea who she could be.  I never
+at least heard of one connected, however distantly, with my family, whom
+I could identify with the writer of these letters."
+
+"I may hold them a short time in my possession?"
+
+"Pardon me a preliminary question.  If I may venture to form a
+conjecture, the object of your search must be connected with your
+countryman, whom the lady politely calls the 'wretched Englishman;' but I
+own I should not like to lend, through these letters, a pretence to any
+steps that may lead to a scandal in which my father's name or that of any
+member of my family could be mixed up."
+
+"Marquis, it is to prevent the possibility of all scandal that I ask you
+to trust these letters to my discretion."
+
+"_Foi de gentilhomme_?"
+
+"_Foi de gentilhomme_!"
+
+"Take them.  When and where shall we meet again?"
+
+"Soon, I trust; but I must leave Paris this evening.  I am bound to
+Berlin in quest of this Countess von Rudesheim: and I fear that in a very
+few days intercourse between France and the German frontier will be
+closed upon travellers."
+
+After a few more words not worth recording, the two young men shook hands
+and parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+It was with an interest languid and listless indeed, compared with that
+which he would have felt a day before, that Graham mused over the
+remarkable advances towards the discovery of Louise Duval which were made
+in the letters he had perused.  She had married, then, first a foreigner,
+whom she spoke of as noble, and whose name and residence could be easily
+found through the Countess von Rudesheim.  The marriage did not seem to
+have been a happy one.  Left a widow in reduced circumstances, she
+had married again, evidently without affection.  She was living so late
+as 1861, and she had children living is 1859: was the child referred to
+by Richard King one of them?
+
+The tone and style of the letters served to throw some light on the
+character of the writer: they evinced pride, stubborn self-will, and
+unamiable hardness of nature; but her rejection of all pecuniary aid from
+a man like the late Marquis de Rochebriant betokened a certain dignity of
+sentiment.  She was evidently, whatever her strange ideas about her first
+marriage with Richard King, no vulgar woman of gallantry; and there must
+have been some sort of charm about her to have excited a friendly
+interest in a kinsman so remote, and a man of pleasure so selfish, as her
+high-born correspondent.
+
+But what now, so far as concerned his own happiness, was the hope, the
+probable certainty, of a speedy fulfilment of the trust bequeathed to
+him?  Whether the result, in the death of the mother, and more especially
+of the child, left him rich, or, if the last survived, reduced his
+fortune to a modest independence, Isaura was equally lost to him, and
+fortune became valueless.  But his first emotions on recovering from the
+shock of hearing from Isaura's lips that she was irrevocably affianced to
+another, were not those of self-reproach.  They were those of intense
+bitterness against her who, if really so much attached to him as he had
+been led to hope, could within so brief a time reconcile her heart to
+marriage with another.  This bitterness was no doubt unjust; but I
+believe it to be natural to men of a nature so proud and of affections so
+intense as Graham's, under similar defeats of hope.  Resentment is the
+first impulse in a man loving with the whole ardour of his soul,
+rejected, no matter why or wherefore, by the woman by whom he had cause
+to believe he himself was beloved; and though Graham's standard of honour
+was certainly the reverse of low, yet man does not view honour in the
+same light as woman does, when involved in analogous difficulties of
+position.  Graham conscientiously thought that if Isaura so loved him
+as to render distasteful an engagement to another which could only very
+recently have been contracted, it would be more honourable frankly so to
+tell the accepted suitor than to leave him in ignorance that her heart
+was estranged.  But these engagements are very solemn things with girls
+like Isaura, and hers was no ordinary obligation of woman-honour.  Had
+the accepted one been superior in rank-fortune--all that flatters the
+ambition of woman in the choice of marriage; had he been resolute, and
+strong, and self-dependent amid the trials and perils of life--then
+possibly the woman's honour might find excuse in escaping the penalties
+of its pledge.  But the poor, ailing, infirm, morbid boy-poet, who looked
+to her as his saving angel in body, in mind, and soul-to say to him,
+"Give me back my freedom," would be to abandon him to death and to sin.
+But Graham could not of course divine why what he as a man thought right
+was to Isaura as woman impossible: and he returned to his old prejudiced
+notion that there is no real depth and ardour of affection for human
+lovers in the poetess whose mind and heart are devoted to the creation of
+imaginary heroes.  Absorbed in reverie, he took his way slowly and with
+downcast looks towards the British embassy, at which it was well to
+ascertain whether the impending war yet necessitated special passports
+for Germany.
+
+"_Bon-jour, cher ami_," said a pleasant voice; "and how long have you
+been at Paris?"
+
+"Oh, my dear M. Savarin!  charmed to see you looking so well!  Madame
+well too, I trust?  My kindest regards to her.  I have been in Paris but
+a day or two, and I leave this evening."
+
+"So soon?  The war frightens you away, I suppose.  Which way are you
+going now?"
+
+"To the British embassy."
+
+"Well, I will go with you so far--it is in my own direction.  I have to
+call at the charming Italian's with my congratulations--on news I only
+heard this morning."
+
+"You mean Mademoiselle Cicogna--and the news that demands congratulations
+--her approaching marriage!"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_! when could you have heard of that?"
+
+"Last night at the house of M. Duplessis."
+
+"_Parbleu_!  I shall scold her well for confiding to her new friend
+Valerie the secret she kept from her old friends, my wife and myself."
+
+"By the way," said Graham, with a tone of admirably-feigned indifference,
+"who is the happy man?  That part of the secret I did not hear."
+
+"Can't you guess?"
+
+"NO."
+
+"Gustave Rameau."
+
+"Ah!" Graham almost shrieked, so sharp and shrill was his cry.  "Ah!  I
+ought indeed to have guessed that!"
+
+"Madame Savarin, I fancy, helped to make up the marriage.  I hope it may
+turn out well; certainly it will be his salvation.  May it be for her
+happiness!"
+
+"No doubt of that!  Two poets-born for each other, I dare say.  Adieu, my
+dear Savarin!  Here we are at the embassy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+That evening Graham found himself in the coupe of the express train to
+Strasbourg.  He had sent to engage the whole coupe to himself, but that
+was impossible.  One place was bespoken as far as C-------, after which
+Graham might prosecute his journey alone on paying for the three places.
+
+When he took his seat another man was in the further corner whom he
+scarcely noticed.  The train shot rapidly on for some leagues.  Profound
+silence in the coupe, save at moments those heavy impatient sighs that
+came from the very depths of the heart, and of which he who sighs is
+unconscious, burst from the Englishman's lips, and drew on him the
+observant side-glance of his fellow-traveller.
+
+At length the fellow-traveller said in very good English, though with
+French accent, "Would you object, sir, to my lighting my little carriage-
+lantern?  I am in the habit of reading in the night train, and the
+wretched lamp they give us does not permit that.  But if you wish to
+sleep, and my lantern would prevent you doing so, consider my request
+unasked."
+
+"You are most courteous, sir.  Pray light your lantern--that will not
+interfere with my sleep."
+
+As Graham thus answered, far away from the place and the moment as his
+thoughts were, it yet faintly struck him that he had heard that voice
+before.
+
+The man produced a small lantern, which he attached to the window-sill,
+and drew forth from a small leathern bag sundry newspapers and pamphlets.
+Graham flung himself back, and in a minute or so again came his sigh.
+
+"Allow me to offer you those evening journals--you may not have had time
+to read them before starting," said the fellow-traveller, leaning
+forward, and extending the newspapers with one hand, while with the other
+he lifted his lantern.  Graham turned, and the faces of the two men were
+close to each other--Graham with his travelling-cap drawn over his brows,
+the other with head uncovered.
+
+"Monsieur Lebeau!"
+
+"Bon soir, Mr. Lamb!"
+
+Again silence for a moment or so.  Monsieur Lebeau then broke it--
+
+"I think, Mr. Lamb, that in better society than that of the Faubourg
+Montmartre you are known under another name."  Graham had no heart then
+for the stage-play of a part, and answered, with quiet haughtiness,
+"Possibly--and what name?"
+
+"Graham Vane.  And, sir," continued Lebeau, with a haughtiness equally
+quiet, but somewhat more menacing, "since we two gentlemen find ourselves
+thus close, do I ask too much if I inquire why you condescend to seek my
+acquaintance in disguise?"
+
+"Monsieur le Vicomte de Mauleon, when you talk of disguise, is it too
+much to inquire why my acquaintance was accepted by Monsieur Lebeau?"
+
+"Ha!  Then you confess that it was Victor de Mauleon whom you sought when
+you first visited the cafe Jean Jacques?"
+
+"Frankly I confess it."
+
+Monsieur Lebeau drew himself back, and seemed to reflect.
+
+"I see!  Solely for the purpose of learning whether Victor de Mauleon
+could give you any information about Louise Duval.  Is it so?"
+
+"Monsieur le Vicomte, you say truly."
+
+Again M. Lebeau paused as if in reflection; and Graham, in that state of
+mind when a man who may most despise and detest the practice of duelling,
+may yet feel a thrill of delight if some homicide would be good enough to
+put him out of his misery, flung aside his cap, lifted his broad frank
+forehead, and stamped his foot impatiently as if to provoke a quarrel.
+
+M. Lebeau lowered his spectacles, and, with those calm, keen, searching
+eyes of his, gazed at the Englishman.
+
+"It strikes me," he said, with a smile, the fascination of which not even
+those faded whiskers could disguise--"it strikes me that there are two
+ways in which gentlemen such as you and I are can converse: firstly, with
+reservation and guard against each other; secondly, with perfect
+openness.  Perhaps of the two I have more need of reservation and wary
+guard against any stranger than you have.  Allow me to propose the
+alternative--perfect openness.  What say you?" and he extended his hand.
+
+"Perfect openness," answered Graham, softened into sudden liking for this
+once terrible swordsman, and shaking, as an Englishman shakes, the hand
+held out to him in peace by the man from whom he had anticipated quarrel.
+
+"Permit me now, before you address any questions to me, to put one to
+you.  How did you learn that Victor de Mauleon was identical with Jean
+Lebeau?"
+
+"I heard that from an agent of the police."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Whom I consulted as to the means of ascertaining whether Louise Duval
+was alive,--if so, where she could be found."
+
+"I thank you very much for your information.  I had no notion that the
+police of Paris had divined the original alias of poor Monsieur Lebeau,
+though something occurred at Lyons which made me suspect it.  Strange
+that the Government, knowing through the police that Victor de Mauleon,
+a writer they had no reason to favour, had been in so humble a position,
+should never, even in their official journals, have thought it prudent to
+say so!  But, now I think of it, what if they had?  They could prove
+nothing against Jean Lebeau.  They could but say, 'Jean Lebeau is
+suspected to be too warm a lover of liberty, too earnest a friend of the
+people, and Jean Lebeau is the editor of La Sens Commun.'  Why, that
+assertion would have made Victor de Mauleon the hero of the Reds, the
+last thing a prudent Government could desire.  I thank you cordially for
+your frank reply.  Now, what question would you put to me?"
+
+"In one word, all you can tell me about Louise Duval."
+
+"You shall have it.  I had heard vaguely in my young days that a half-
+sister of mine by my father's first marriage with Mademoiselle de
+Beauvilliers had--when in advanced middle life he married a second time
+--conceived a dislike for her mother-in-law, and, being of age, with an
+independent fortune of her own, had quitted the house, taken up her
+residence with an elderly female relative, and there had contracted a
+marriage with a man who gave her lessons in drawing.  After that
+marriage, which my father in vain tried to prevent, my sister was
+renounced by her family.  That was all I knew till, after I came into my
+inheritance by the death of both my parents, I learned from my father's
+confidential lawyer that the drawing-master, M. Duval, had soon
+dissipated his wife's fortune, become a widower with one child--a girl--
+and fallen into great distress.  He came to my father, begging for
+pecuniary aid.  My father, though by no means rich, consented to allow
+him a yearly pension, on condition that he never revealed to his child
+her connection with our family.  The man agreed to the condition, and
+called at my father's lawyer quarterly for his annuity.  But the lawyer
+informed me that this deduction from my income had ceased, that M. Duval
+had not for a year called or sent for the sum due to him, and that he
+must therefore be dead.  One day my valet informed me that a young lady
+wished to see me--in those days young ladies very often called on me.  I
+desired her to be shown in.  There entered a young creature, almost of my
+own age, who, to my amazement saluted me as uncle.  This was the child of
+my half-sister.  Her father had been dead several months, fulfilling very
+faithfully the condition on which he had held his pension, and the girl
+never dreaming of the claims that, if wise, poor child, she ought not to
+have cared for, viz.,--to that obsolete useless pauper birthright, a
+branch on the family tree of a French noble.  But in pinch of
+circumstance, and from female curiosity, hunting among the papers her
+father had left for some clue to the reasons for the pension he had
+received, she found letters from her mother, letters from my father,
+which indisputably proved that she was grandchild to the _fue_ Vicomte de
+Mauleon, and niece to myself.  Her story as told to me was very pitiable.
+Conceiving herself to be nothing higher in birth than daughter to this
+drawing-master, at his death, poor, penniless orphan that she was, she
+had accepted the hand of an English student of medicine whom she did not
+care for.  Miserable with this man, on finding by the documents I refer
+to that she was my niece, she came to me for comfort and counsel.  What
+counsel could I or any man give to her but to make the best of what had
+happened, and live with her husband?  But then she started another
+question.  It seems that she had been talking with some one, I think her
+landlady, or some other woman with whom she had made acquaintance--was
+she legally married to this man?  Had he not entrapped her ignorance into
+a false marriage?  This became a grave question, and I sent at once to my
+lawyer.  On hearing the circumstances, he at once declared that the
+marriage was not legal according to the laws of France.  But, doubtless,
+her English soi-disant husband was not cognisant of the French law, and a
+legal marriage could, with his assent, be at once solemnised.  Monsieur
+Vane, I cannot find words to convey to you the joy that poor girl showed
+in her face and in her words when she learned that she was not bound to
+pass her life with that man as his wife.  It was in vain to talk and
+reason with her.  Then arose the other question, scarcely less important.
+True, the marriage was not legal, but would it not be better on all
+accounts to take steps to have it formally annulled, thus freeing her
+from the harassment of any claim the Englishman might advance, and
+enabling her to establish the facts in a right position, not injurious to
+her honour in the eyes of any future suitor to her hand?  She would not
+hear of such a proposal.  She declared that she could not bring to the
+family she pined to re-enter the scandal of disgrace.  To allow that she
+had made such a _misalliance_ would be bad enough in itself; but to
+proclaim to the world that, though nominally the wife, she had in fact
+been only the mistress of this medical student--she would rather throw
+herself into the Seine.  All she desired was to fund some refuge, some
+hiding-place for a time, whence she could write to the man informing him
+that he had no lawful hold on her.  Doubtless he would not seek then to
+molest her.  He would return to his own country, and be effaced from her
+life.  And then, her story unknown, she might form a more suitable
+alliance.  Fiery young creature though she was--true De Mauleon in being
+so fiery--she interested me strongly.  I should say that she was
+wonderfully handsome; and though imperfectly educated, and brought up in
+circumstances so lowly, there was nothing common about her--a certain _je
+ne sais quoi_ of stateliness and race.  At all events she did with me
+what she wished.  I agreed to aid her desire of a refuge and hiding-
+place.  Of course I could not lodge her in my own apartment, but I
+induced a female relation of her mother's, an old lady living at
+Versailles, to receive her, stating her birth, but of course concealing
+her illegal marriage.
+
+"From time to time I went to see her.  But one day I found this restless
+bright-plumaged bird flown.  Among the ladies who visited at her
+relative's house was a certain Madame Marigny, a very pretty young widow.
+Madame Marigny and Louise formed a sudden and intimate friendship.  The
+widow was moving from Versailles into an apartment at Paris, and invited
+Louise to share it.  She had consented.  I was not pleased at this; for
+the widow was too young, and too much of a coquette, to be a safe
+companion to Louise.  But though professing much gratitude and great
+regard for me, I had no power of controlling the poor girl's actions.
+Her nominal husband, meanwhile, had left France, and nothing more was
+heard or known of him.  I saw that the best thing that could possibly
+befall Louise was marriage with some one rich enough to gratify her taste
+for luxury and pomp; and that if such a marriage offered itself, she
+might be induced to free it from all possible embarrassment by procuring
+the annulment of the former, from which she had hitherto shrunk in such
+revolt.  This opportunity presented itself.  A man already rich, and in a
+career that promised to make him infinitely richer, an associate of mine
+in those days when I was rapidly squandering the remnant of my
+inheritance--this man saw her at the opera in company with Madame
+Marigny, fell violently in love with her, and ascertaining her
+relationship to me, besought an introduction.  I was delighted to give
+it; and, to say the truth, I was then so reduced to the bottom of my
+casket, I felt that it was becoming impossible for me to continue the aid
+I had hitherto given to Louise, and--what then would become of her?  I
+thought it fair to tell Louvier--"
+
+"Louvier--the financier?"
+
+"Ah, that was a slip of the tongue, but no matter; there is no reason
+for concealing his name.  I thought it right, I say, to tell Louvier
+confidentially the history of the unfortunate illegal marriage.  It did
+not damp his ardour.  He wooed her to the best of his power, but she
+evidently took him into great dislike.  One day she sent for me in much
+excitement, showed me some advertisements in the French journals which,
+though not naming her, evidently pointed at her, and must have been
+dictated by her _soi-disant_ husband.  The advertisements might certainly
+lead to her discovery if she remained in Paris.  She entreated my consent
+to remove elsewhere.  Madame Marigny had her own reason for leaving
+Paris, and would accompany her.  I supplied her with the necessary means,
+and a day or two afterwards she and her friend departed, as I understood,
+for Brussels.  I received no letter from her; and my own affairs so
+seriously pre-occupied me, that poor Louise might have passed altogether
+out of my thoughts, had it not been for the suitor she had left in
+despair behind.  Louvier besought me to ascertain her address; but I
+could give him no, other clue to it than that she said she was going to
+Brussels, but should soon remove to some quiet village.  It was not for a
+long time--I can't remember how long--it might be several weeks, perhaps
+two or three months, that I received a short note from her stating that
+she waited for a small remittance, the last she would accept from me, as
+she was resolved, so soon as her health would permit, to find means to
+maintain herself--and telling me to direct to her, Poste restante, Aix-
+la-Chapelle.  I sent her the sum she asked, perhaps a little more, but
+with a confession reluctantly wrung from me that I was a ruined man; and
+I urged her to think very seriously before she refused the competence and
+position which a union with M. Louvier would insure.
+
+"This last consideration so pressed on me that, when Louvier called on
+me, I think that day or the nests I gave him Louise's note, and told him
+that, if he were still as much in love with her as ever, _les absents ont
+toujours tort_, and he had better go to Aix-la-Chapelle and find her out;
+that he had my hearty approval of his wooing, and consent to his
+marriage, though I still urged the wisdom and fairness, if she would take
+the preliminary step--which, after all, the French law frees as much as
+possible from pain and scandal--of annulling the irregular marriage into
+which her childlike youth had been decoyed.
+
+"Louvier left me for Aix-la-Chapelle.  The very next day came that cruel
+affliction which made me a prey to the most intolerable calumny, which
+robbed me of every friend, which sent me forth from my native country
+penniless, and resolved to be nameless--until--until--well, until my hour
+could come again--every dog, if not hanged, has its day;--when that
+affliction befell me, I quitted France, heard no more of Louvier nor of
+Louise; indeed, no letter addressed to me at Paris would have reached--"
+
+The man paused here, evidently with painful emotion.  He resumed in the
+quiet matter-of-fact way in which he had commenced his narrative.
+
+"Louise had altogether faded out of my remembrance until your question
+revived it.  As it happened, the question came at the moment when I
+meditated resuming my real name and social position.  In so doing, I
+should of course come in contact with my old acquaintance Louvier; and
+the name of Louise was necessarily associated with us. I called on him,
+and made myself known.  The slight information I gave you as to my
+niece was gleaned from him.
+
+"I may now say more.  It appears that when he arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle
+he found that Louise Duval had left it a day or two previously, and
+according to scandal had been for some time courted by a wealthy and
+noble lover, whom she had gone to Munich to meet.  Louvier believed this
+tale: quitted Aix indignantly, and never heard more of her.  The
+probability is, M. Vane, that she must have been long dead.  But if
+living still, I feel quite sure that she will communicate with me some
+day or other.  Now that I have reappeared in Paris in my own name--
+entered into a career that, for good or for evil, must ere long bring my
+name very noisily before the public--Louise cannot fail to hear of my
+existence and my whereabouts; and unless I am utterly mistaken as to her
+character, she will assuredly inform me of her own.  Oblige me with your
+address, and in that case I will let you know.  Of course I take for
+granted the assurance you gave me last year, that you only desire to
+discover her in order to render her some benefit, not to injure or molest
+her?"
+
+"Certainly.  To that assurance I pledge my honour.  Any letter with which
+you may favour me had better be directed to my London address; here is my
+card.  But, M. le Vicomte, there is one point on which pray pardon me if
+I question you still.  Had you no suspicion that there was one reason why
+this lady might have quitted Paris so hastily, and have so shrunk from
+the thought of a marriage so advantageous, in a worldly point of view, as
+that with M. Louvier,--namely, that she anticipated the probability of
+becoming the mother of a child by the man whom she refused to acknowledge
+as a husband?"
+
+"That idea did not strike me until you asked me if she had a child.
+Should your conjecture be correct, it would obviously increase her
+repugnance to apply for the annulment of her illegal marriage.  But if
+Louise is still living and comes across me, I do not doubt that, the
+motives for concealment no longer operating, she will confide to me the
+truth.  Since we have been talking together thus frankly, I suppose I may
+fairly ask whether I do not guess correctly in supposing that this _soi-
+disant_ husband, whose name I forget,--Mac--something, perhaps, Scotch-I
+think she said he was _Ecossais_,--is dead and has left by will some
+legacy to Louise and any child she may have borne to him?"
+
+"Not exactly so.  The man, as you say, is dead; but he bequeathed no
+legacy to the lady who did not hold herself married to him.  But there
+are those connected with him who, knowing the history, think that some
+compensation is due for the wrong so unconsciously done to her, and yet
+more to any issue of a marriage not meant to be irregular or illegal.
+Permit me now to explain why I sought you in another guise and name than
+my own.  I could scarcely place in M. Lebeau the confidence which I now
+unreservedly place in the Vicomte de Mauleon."
+
+"_Cela va sans dire_.  You believed, then, that calumny about the jewels;
+you do not believe it now?"
+
+"Now!  my amazement is, that any one who had known you could believe it."
+
+"Oh, how often, and with tears of rage in my exile--my wanderings--have I
+asked that question of myself!  That rage has ceased; and I have but one
+feeling left for that credulous, fickle Paris, of which one day I was the
+idol, the next the byword.  Well, a man sometimes plays chess more
+skilfully for having been long a mere bystander.  He understands better
+how to move, and when to sacrifice the pieces.  Politics, M. Vane, is the
+only exciting game left to me at my years.  At yours, there is still that
+of love.  How time flies! we are nearing the station at which I descend.
+I have kinsfolk of my mother's in these districts.  They are not
+Imperialists; they are said to be powerful in the department.  But before
+I apply to them in my own name, I think it prudent that M. Lebeau should
+quietly ascertain what is their real strength, and what would be the
+prospects of success if Victor de Mauleon offered himself as depute at
+the next election.  Wish him joy, M. Vane!  If he succeed, you will hear
+of him some day crowned in the Capitol, or hurled from the Tarpeian
+rock."
+
+Here the train stopped.  The false Lebeau gathered up his papers,
+readjusted his spectacles and his bag, descended lightly, and, pressing
+Graham's hand as he paused at the door, said, "Be sure I will not forget
+your address if I have anything to say. _Bon voyage_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Graham continued his journey to Strasbourg.  On arriving there he felt
+very unwell.  Strong though his frame was, the anguish and self-struggle
+through which he had passed since the day he had received in London Mrs.
+Morley's letter, till that on which he had finally resolved on his course
+of conduct at Paris, and the shock which had annihilated his hopes in
+Isaura's rejection, had combined to exhaust its endurance, and fever had
+already commenced when he took his place in the coupe.  If there be a
+thing which a man should not do when his system is undermined, and his
+pulse between 90 and 100, it is to travel all night by a railway express.
+Nevertheless, as the Englishman's will was yet stronger than his frame,
+he would not give himself more than an hour's rest, and again started for
+Berlin.  Long before he got to Berlin, the will failed him--as well as
+the frame.  He was lifted out of the carriage, taken to a hotel in a
+small German town, and six hours afterwards he was delirious.  It was
+fortunate for him that under such circumstances plenty of money and
+Scott's circular-notes for some hundreds were found in his pocketbook,
+so that he did not fail to receive attentive nursing and skilful medical
+treatment.  There, for the present, I must leave him--leave him for how
+long?  But any village apothecary could say that fever such as his must
+run its course.  He was still in bed, and very dimly--and that but at
+times--conscious, when the German armies were gathering round the penfold
+of Sedan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+When the news of the disastrous day at Sedan reached Paris, the first
+effect was that of timid consternation.  There were a few cries of
+_Decheance_! fewer still of _Vive la Republique_ among the motley crowds;
+but they were faint, and chiefly by ragged _gamins_.  A small body
+repaired to Trochu and offered him the sceptre, which he politely
+declined.  A more important and respectable body--for it comprised the
+majority of the _Corps Legislatif_--urged Palikao to accept the temporary
+dictatorship, which the War Minister declined with equal politeness.  In
+both these overtures it was clear that the impulse of the proposers was
+towards any form of government rather than republican.  The _sergens de
+ville_ were sufficient that day to put down riot.  They did make a charge
+on a mob, which immediately ran away.
+
+The morning of that day the Council of Ten were summoned by Lebeau--minus
+only Rameau, who was still too unwell to attend, and the Belgian, not
+then at Paris; but their place was supplied by the two travelling
+members, who had been absent from the meeting before recorded.  These
+were conspirators better known in history than those I have before
+described; professional conspirators--personages who from their youth
+upwards had done little else but conspire.  Following the discreet plan
+pursued elsewhere throughout this humble work, I give their names other
+than they bore.  One, a very swarthy and ill-favoured man, between forty
+and fifty, I call Paul Grimm--by origin a German, but by rearing and
+character French; from the hair on his head, staring up rough and ragged
+as a bramblebush, to the soles of small narrow feet, shod with dainty
+care, he was a personal coxcomb, and spent all he could spare on his
+dress.  A clever man, not ill-educated--a vehement and effective speaker
+at a club.  Vanity and an amorous temperament had made him a conspirator,
+since he fancied he interested the ladies more in that capacity than any
+other.  His companion, Edgar Ferrier, would have been a journalist, only
+hitherto his opinions had found no readers; the opinions were those of
+Marat.  He rejoiced in thinking that his hour for glory, so long
+deferred, had now arrived.  He was thoroughly sincere: his father and
+grandfather had died in a madhouse.  Both these men, insignificant in
+ordinary times, were likely to become of terrible importance in the
+crisis of a revolution.  They both had great power with the elements that
+form a Parisian mob.  The instructions given to these members of the
+Council by Lebeau were brief: they were summed up in the one word,
+_Decheance_.  The formidable nature of a council apparently so meanly
+constituted became strikingly evident at that moment, because it was so
+small in number, while each one of these could put in movement a large
+section of the populace; secondly, because, unlike a revolutionary club
+or a numerous association, no time was wasted in idle speeches, and all
+were under the orders of one man of clear head and resolute purpose; and
+thirdly, and above all, because one man supplied the treasury, and money
+for an object desired was liberally given and promptly at hand.  The
+meeting did not last ten minutes, and about two hours afterwards its
+effects were visible.  From Montmartre and Belleville and Montretout
+poured streams of _ouvriers_, with whom Armand Monnier was a chief, and
+the _Medecin des Pauvres_ an oracle.  Grimm and Ferrier headed other
+detachments that startled the well-dressed idlers on the Boulevards.  The
+stalwart figure of the Pole was seen on the Place de la Concorde,
+towering amidst other refugees, amid which glided the Italian champion of
+humanity.  The cry of _Decheance_ became louder.  But as yet there were
+only few cries of _Vive la Republique_!--such a cry was not on the orders
+issued by Lebeau.  At midnight the crowd round the hall of the _Corps
+Legislatif_ is large: cries of _La Dechaeance_ loud--a few cries, very
+feeble, of _Vive la Republique_!
+
+What followed on the 4th--the marvellous audacity with which half-a-dozen
+lawyers belonging to a pitiful minority in a Chamber elected by universal
+suffrage walked into the Hotel de Ville and said, "The Republic is
+established, and we are its Government," history has told too recently
+for me to narrate.  On the evening of the 5th the Council of Ten met
+again: the Pole; the Italian radiant; Grimm and Ferrier much excited and
+rather drunk; the Medecin des Pauvres thoughtful; and Armand Monnier
+gloomy.  A rumour has spread that General Trochu, in accepting the charge
+imposed on him, has exacted from the Government the solemn assurance of
+respect for God, and for the rights of Family and Property.  The Atheist
+is very indignant at the assent of the Government to the first
+proposition; Monnier equal indignant at the assent to the second and
+third.  What has that honest _ouvrier_ conspired for?--what has he
+suffered for?--of late nearly starved for?--but to marry another man's
+wife, getting rid of his own, and to legalise a participation in the
+property of his employer,--and now he is no better off than before.
+"There must be another revolution," he whispers to the Atheist.
+
+"Certainly," whispers back the Atheist; "he who desires to better this
+world must destroy all belief in another."  The conclave was assembled
+when Lebeau entered by the private door.  He took his place at the head
+of the table; and, fixing on the group eyes that emitted a cold gleam
+through the spectacles, thus spoke:
+
+"Messieurs, or Citoyens, which ye will--I no longer call ye confreres--
+you have disobeyed or blundered my instructions.  On such an occasion
+disobedience and blunder are crimes equally heinous."
+
+Angry murmurs.
+
+"Silence!  Do not add mutiny to your other offences.  My instructions
+were simple and short.  Aid in the abolition of the Empire.  Do not aid
+in any senseless cry for a Republic or any other form of government.
+Leave that to the Legislature.  What have you done?  You swelled the
+crowd that invaded the _Corps Ligislatif_.  You, Dombinsky, not even a
+Frenchman, dare to mount the President's rostrum, and brawl forth your
+senseless jargon.  You, Edgar Ferrier, from whom I expected better,
+ascend the tribune, and invite the ruffians in the crowd to march to the
+prisons and release the convicts; and all of you swell the mob at the
+Hotel de Ville, and inaugurate the reign of folly by creating an
+oligarchy of lawyers to resist the march of triumphal armies.  Messieurs,
+I have done with you.  You are summoned for the last time: the Council is
+dissolved."
+
+With these words Lebeau put on his hat, and turned to depart.  But the
+Pole, who was seated near him, sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "Traitor,
+thou shalt not escape!  Comrades, he wants to sell us!"
+
+"I have a right to sell you at least, for I bought you, and a very bad
+bargain I made," said Lebeau, in a tone of withering sarcasm.
+
+"Liar!" cried the Pole, and seized Lebeau by the left hand, while with
+the right he drew forth a revolver.  Ferrier and Grimm, shouting, "_A bas
+le renegat_!" would have rushed forward in support of the Pole, but
+Monnier thrust himself between them and their intended victim, crying
+with a voice that dominated their yell, "Back!--we are not assassins."
+Before he had finished the sentence the Pole was on his knees.  With a
+vigour which no one could have expected from the seeming sexagenarian,
+Lebeau had caught the right arm of his assailant, twisted it back so
+mercilessly as almost to dislocate elbow and shoulder joint.  One barrel
+of the revolver discharged itself harmlessly against the opposite wall,
+and the pistol itself then fell from the unnerved hand of the would-be
+assassin; and what with the pain and the sudden shock, the stalwart
+Dombinsky fell in the attitude of a suppliant at the feet of his
+unlooked-for vanquisher.
+
+Lebeau released his hold, possessed himself of the pistol, pointing the
+barrels towards Edgar Ferrier, who stood with mouth agape and lifted arm
+arrested, and said quietly: "Monsieur, have the goodness to open that
+window."  Ferrier mechanically obeyed.  "Now, hireling," continued
+Lebeau, addressing the vanquished Pole, "choose between the door and the
+window."
+
+"Go, my friend," whispered the Italian.  The Pole did not utter a word;
+but rising nimbly, and rubbing his arm, stalked to the door.  There he
+paused a moment and said, "I retire overpowered by numbers," and
+vanished.
+
+"Messieurs," resumed Lebeau, calmly, "I repeat that the Council is
+dissolved.  In fact its object is fulfilled more abruptly than any of us
+foresaw, and by means which I at least had been too long out of Paris to
+divine as possible.  I now see that every aberration of reason is
+possible to the Parisians.  The object that united us was the fall of the
+Empire.  As I have always frankly told you, with that object achieved,
+separation commences.  Each of us has his own crotchet, which differs
+from the other man's.  Pursue yours as you will--I pursue mine--you will
+find Jean Lebeau no more in Paris: _il s'eface.  Au plaisir, mais pas au
+revoir_."
+
+He retreated to the masked door and disappeared.
+
+Marc le Roux, the porter or custos of that ruinous council-hall, alarmed
+at the explosion of the pistol, had hurried into the room, and now stood
+unheeded by the door with mouth agape, while Lebeau thus curtly dissolved
+the assembly.  But when the president vanished through the secret
+doorway, Le Roux also retreated.  Hastily descending the stairs, he made
+as quickly as his legs could carry him for the mouth of the alley in the
+rear of the house, through which he knew that Lebeau must pass.  He
+arrived, panting and breathless, in time to catch hold of the ex-
+president's arm.  "Pardon, citizen," stammered he, "but do I understand
+that you have sent the Council of Ten to the devil?"
+
+"I?  Certainly not, my good Paul; I dismiss them to go where they like.
+If they prefer the direction you name, it is their own choice.  I
+declined to accompany them, and I advise you not to do so."
+
+"But, citizen, have you considered what is to become of Madame?  Is she
+to be turned out of the lodge?  Are my wages to stop, and Madame to be
+left without a crust to put into her soup?"
+
+"Not so bad as that; I have just paid the rent of the baraque for three
+months in advance, and there is your quarter's pay, in advance also.  My
+kind regards to Madame, and tell her to keep your skin safe from the
+schemes of these lunatics."  Thrusting some pieces of gold into the hands
+of the porter, Lebeau nodded his adieu, and hastened along his way.
+
+Absorbed in his own reflections, he did not turn to look behind.  But if
+he had, he could not have detected the dark form of the porter, creeping
+in the deep shadow of the streets with distant but watchful footsteps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER, IX.
+
+The conspirators, when left by their president, dispersed in deep, not
+noisy resentment.  They were indeed too stunned for loud demonstration;
+and belonging to different grades of life, and entertaining different
+opinions, their confidence in each other seemed lost now that the chief
+who had brought and kept them together was withdrawn from their union.
+The Italian and the Atheist slunk away, whispering to each other.  Grimm
+reproached Ferrier for deserting Dombinsky and obeying Lebeau.  Ferrier
+accused Grimm of his German origin, and hinted at denouncing him as a
+Prussian spy.  Gaspard le Noy linked his arm in Monnier's, and when they
+had gained the dark street without, leading into a labyrinth of desolate
+lanes, the Medicin des Pauvres said to the mechanic: "You are a brave
+fellow, Monnier.  Lebeau owes you a good turn.  But for your cry, 'We are
+not assassins,' the Pole might not have been left without support.  No
+atmosphere is so infectious as that in which we breathe the same air of
+revenge: when the violence of one man puts into action the anger or
+suspicion of others, they become like a pack of hounds, which follow the
+spring of the first hound, whether on the wild boar or their own master.
+Even I, who am by no means hot-headed, had my hand on my case-knife when
+the word 'assassin' rebuked and disarmed me."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Monnier, gloomily, "I half repent the impulse which
+made me interfere to save that man.  Better he should die than live to
+betray the cause we allowed him to lead."
+
+"Nay, mon ami, speaking candidly, we must confess that he never from the
+first pretended to advocate the cause for which you conspired.  On the
+contrary, he always said that with the fall of the Empire our union would
+cease, and each become free to choose his own way towards his own after-
+objects."
+
+"Yes," answered Armand, reluctantly; "he said that to me privately, with
+still greater plainness than he said it to the Council.  But I answered
+as plainly."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I told him that the man who takes the first step in a revolution, and
+persuades others to go along with him, cannot in safety stand still or
+retreat when the next step is to be taken.  It is 'en avant' or 'a la
+lanterne.'  So it shall be with him.  Shall a fellow-being avail himself
+of the power over my mind which he derives from superior education or
+experience,--break into wild fragments my life, heretofore tranquil,
+orderly, happy,--make use of my opinions, which were then but harmless
+desires, to serve his own purpose, which was hostile to the opinions he
+roused into action,--say to me, 'Give yourself up to destroy the first
+obstacle in the way of securing a form of society which your inclinations
+prefer,' and then, that first obstacle destroyed, cry, 'Halt!  I go with
+you no further; I will not help you to piece together the life I have
+induced you to shatter; I will not aid you to substitute for the society
+that pained you the society that would please; I leave you, struggling,
+bewildered, maddened, in the midst of chaos within and without you'?
+Shall a fellow-being do this, and vanish with a mocking cry: 'Tool!  I
+have had enough of thee; I cast thee aside as worthless lumber'?  Ah!
+let him beware!  The tool is of iron, and can be shaped to edge and
+point."  The passion with which this rough eloquence was uttered, and the
+fierce sinister expression that had come over a countenance habitually
+open and manly, even when grave and stern, alarmed and startled Le Noy.
+"Pooh, my friend!" he said, rather falteringly, "you are too excited now
+to think justly.  Go home and kiss your children.  Never do anything that
+may make them shrink from their father.  And as to Lebeau, try and forget
+him.  He says he shall disappear from Paris.  I believe him.  It is clear
+to me that the man is not what he seemed to us.  No man of sixty could by
+so easy a sleight of hand have brought that giant Pole to his knee.  If
+Lebeau reappear it will be in some other form.  Did you notice that in
+the momentary struggle his flaxen wig got disturbed, and beneath it I saw
+a dark curl.  I suspect that the man is not only younger than he seemed,
+but of higher rank--a conspirator against one throne, perhaps, in order
+to be minister under another.  There are such men."
+
+Before Monnier, who seemed struck by these conjectures, collected his
+thoughts to answer, a tall man in the dress of a _sous lieutenant_
+stopped under a dim gas-lamp, and, catching sight of the artisan's face,
+seized him by the hand, exclaiming, "Armand, _mon frere_! well met;
+strange times, eh?  Come and discuss them at the cafe de Lyon yonder over
+a bowl of punch.  I'll stand treat."
+
+"Agreed, dear Charles."
+
+"And if this monsieur is a friend of yours, perhaps he will join us."
+
+"You are too obliging, Monsieur," answered Le Noy, not ill-pleased to get
+rid of his excited companion; "but it has been a busy day with me, and I
+am only fit for bed.  Be abstinent of the punch, Armand.  You are
+feverish already.  Good-night, Messieurs."
+
+The cafe de Lyon, in vogue among the National Guard of the quartier, was
+but a few yards off, and the brothers turned towards it arm in arm.  "Who
+is the friend?" asked Charles; "I don't remember to have seen him with
+thee before."
+
+"He belongs to the medical craft--a good patriot and a kind man--attends
+the poor gratuitously.  Yes, Charles, these are strange times; what dost
+thou think will come of them?"
+
+They had now entered the cafe; and Charles had ordered the punch, and
+seated himself at a vacant table before he replied.  "What will come of
+these times?  I will tell thee.  National deliverance and regeneration
+through the ascendency of the National Guard."
+
+"Eh?  I don't take," said Armand, bewildered.
+
+"Probably not," answered Charles, with an air of compassionate conceit;
+"thou art a dreamer, but I am a politician."  He tapped his forehead
+significantly.  "At this custom-house, ideas are examined before they are
+passed."
+
+Armand gazed at his brother wistfully, and with a defence he rarely
+manifested towards any one who disputed his own claims to superior
+intelligence.  Charles was a few years older than Monnier; he was of
+large build; he had shaggy lowering eyebrows, a long obstinate upper
+lip, the face of a man who was accustomed to lay down the law.
+Inordinate self-esteem often gives that character to a physiognomy
+otherwise commonplace.  Charles passed for a deep thinker in his own
+set, which was a very different set from Armand's--not among workmen but
+small shopkeepers.  He had risen in life to a grade beyond Armand's; he
+had always looked to the main chance, married the widow of a hosier and
+glover much older than himself, and in her right was a very respectable
+tradesman, comfortably well off; a Liberal, of course, but a Liberal
+bourgeois, equally against those above him and those below.  Needless to
+add that he had no sympathy with his brother's socialistic opinions.
+Still he loved that brother as well as he could love any one except
+himself.  And Armand, who was very affectionate, and with whom family
+ties were very strong, returned that love with ample interest; and
+though so fiercely at war with the class to which Charles belonged, was
+secretly proud of having a brother who was of that class.  So in England
+I have known the most violent antagonist of the landed aristocracy--
+himself a cobbler--who interrupts a discourse on the crimes of the
+aristocracy by saying, "Though I myself descend from a county family."
+
+In an evil day Charles Monnier, enrolled in the National Guard, had
+received promotion in that patriotic corps.  From that date he began to
+neglect his shop, to criticise military matters, and to think that if
+merit had fair play he should be a Cincinnatus or a Washington, he had
+not decided which.
+
+"Yes," resumed Charles, ladling out the punch, "thou hast wit enough to
+perceive that our generals are imbeciles or traitors; that _gredin_
+Bonaparte has sold the army for ten millions of francs to Bismarck, and I
+have no doubt that Wimpffen has his share of the bargain.  McMahon was
+wounded conveniently, and has his own terms for it.  The regular army is
+nowhere.  Thou wilt see--thou wilt see--they will not stop the march of
+the Prussians.  Trochu will be obliged to come to the National Guard.
+Then we shall say, 'General, give us our terms, and go to sleep.'
+
+"I shall be summoned to the council of war.  I have my plan.  I explain
+it--'tis accepted--it succeeds.  I am placed in supreme command--the
+Prussians are chased back to their sour-krout.  And I--well--I don't like
+to boast, but thou'lt see--thou'lt see--what will happen."
+
+"And thy plan, Charles--thou hast formed it already?"
+
+"Ay, ay,--the really military genius is prompt, _mon petit Armand_--a
+flash of the brain.  Hark ye!  Let the Vandals come to Paris and invest
+it.  Whatever their numbers on paper, I don't care a button; they can
+only have a few thousands at any given point in the vast circumference of
+the capital.  Any fool must grant that--thou must grant it eh?"
+
+"It seems just."
+
+"Of course.  Well, then, we proceed by sorties of 200,000 men repeated
+every other day, and in twelve days the Prussians are in full flight.
+The country rises on their flight--they are cut to pieces.  I depose
+Trochu--the National Guard elects the Saviour of France.  I have a place
+in my eye for thee.  Thou art superb as a decorator--thou shalt be
+Minister des Beaux Arts.  But keep clear of the canaille.  No more
+strikes then--thou wilt be an employer--respect thy future order."
+
+     [Charles Monnier seems to have indiscreetly blabbed out his "idea,"
+     for it was plagiarised afterwards at a meeting of the National
+     Guards in the Salle de la Bourse by Citizen Rochebrune (slain 19th
+     January, 1871, in the affair of Montretout).  The plan, which he
+     developed nearly in the same words as Charles Monnier, was received
+     with lively applause; and at the close of his speech it was proposed
+     to name at once Citizen Rochebrune General of the National Guard, an
+     honour which, unhappily for his country, the citizen had the modesty
+     to decline.]
+
+Armand smiled mournfully.  Though of intellect which, had it been
+disciplined, was far superior to his brother's, it was so estranged from
+practical opinions, so warped, so heated, so flawed and cracked in parts,
+that he did not see the ridicule of Charles's braggadocio.  Charles had
+succeeded in life, Armand had failed; and Armand believed in the worldly
+wisdom of the elder born.  But he was far too sincere for any bribe to
+tempt him to forsake his creed and betray his opinions.  And he knew that
+it must be a very different revolution from that which his brother
+contemplated, that could allow him to marry another man's wife, and his
+"order" to confiscate other people's property.
+
+"Don't talk of strikes, Charles.  What is done is done.  I was led into
+heading a strike, not on my own account, for I was well paid and well
+off, but for the sake of my fellow-workmen.  I may regret now what I did,
+for the sake of Marie and the little ones.  But it is an affair of
+honour, and I cannot withdraw from the cause till my order, as thou
+namest my class, has its rights."
+
+"Bah! thou wilt think better of it when thou art an employer.  Thou hast
+suffered enough already.  Remember that I warned thee against that old
+fellow in spectacles whom I met once at thy house.  I told thee he would
+lead thee into mischief, and then leave thee to get out of it.  I saw
+through him.  I have a head!  Va!"
+
+"Thou wert a true prophet--he has duped me.  But in moving me he has set
+others in movement; and I suspect he will find he has duped himself.
+Time will show."
+
+Here the brothers were joined by some loungers belonging to the National
+Guard.  The talk became general, the potations large.  Towards daybreak
+Armand reeled home, drunk for the first time in his life.  He was one of
+those whom drink makes violent.  Marie had been sitting up for him,
+alarmed at his lengthened absence.  But when she would have thrown
+herself on his breast, her pale face and her passionate sobs enraged him.
+He flung her aside roughly.  From that night the man's nature was
+changed.  If, as a physiognomist has said, each man has in him a portion
+of the wild beast, which is suppressed by mild civilising circumstances,
+and comes uppermost when self-control is lost, the nature of many an
+honest workman, humane and tender-hearted as the best of us, commenced a
+change into the wild beast that raged through the civil war of the
+Communists, on the day when half-a-dozen Incapables, with no more claim
+to represent the people of Paris than half-a-dozen monkeys would have,
+were allowed to elect themselves to supreme power, and in the very fact
+of that election released all the elements of passion, and destroyed all
+the bulwarks of order.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+No man perhaps had more earnestly sought and more passionately striven
+for the fall of the Empire than Victor de Mauleon; and perhaps no man was
+more dissatisfied and disappointed by the immediate consequences of that
+fall, In first conspiring against the Empire, he had naturally enough,
+in common with all the more intelligent enemies of the dynasty, presumed
+that its fate would be worked out by the normal effect of civil causes--
+the alienation of the educated classes, the discontent of the artisans,
+the eloquence of the press and of popular meetings, strengthened in
+proportion as the Emperor had been compelled to relax the former checks
+upon the license of either.  And De Mauleon had no less naturally
+concluded that there would be time given for the preparation of a
+legitimate and rational form of government to succeed that which was
+destroyed.  For, as has been hinted or implied, this remarkable man was
+not merely an instigator of revolution through the Secret Council, and
+the turbulent agencies set in movement through the lower strata of
+society;--he was also in confidential communication with men eminent for
+wealth, station, and political repute, from whom he obtained the funds
+necessary for the darker purposes of conspiracy, into the elaboration of
+which they did not inquire; and these men, though belonging like himself
+to the Liberal party, were no hot-blooded democrats.  Most of them were
+in favour of constitutional monarchy; all of them for forms of government
+very different from any republic in which socialists or communists could
+find themselves uppermost.  Among these politicians were persons
+ambitious and able, who, in scheming for the fall of the Empire, had been
+prepared to undertake the task of conducting to ends compatible with
+modern civilisation the revolution they were willing to allow a mob at
+Paris to commence.  The opening of the war necessarily suspended their
+designs.  How completely the events of the 4th September mocked the
+calculations of their ablest minds, and paralysed the action of their
+most energetic spirits, will appear in the conversation I am about to
+record.  It takes place between Victor de Mauleon and the personage to
+whom he had addressed the letter written on the night before the
+interview with Louvier, in which Victor had announced his intention of
+reappearing in Paris in his proper name and rank.  I shall designate this
+correspondent as vaguely as possible; let me call him the Incognito.  He
+may yet play so considerable a part in the history of France as a potent
+representative of the political philosophy of De Tocqueville--that is,
+of Liberal principles incompatible with the absolute power either of a
+sovereign or a populace, and resolutely opposed to experiments on the
+foundations of civilised society--that it would be unfair to himself and
+his partisans if, in a work like this, a word were said that could lead
+malignant conjecture to his identity with any special chief of the
+opinions of which I here present him only as a type.
+
+The Incognito, entering Victor's apartment:
+
+"My dear friend, even if I had not received your telegram, I should have
+hastened hither on the news of this astounding revolution.  It is only in
+Paris that such a tragedy could be followed by such a farce.  You were on
+the spot--a spectator.  Explain it if you can."
+
+DE MAULEON.--"I was more than a spectator; I was an actor.  Hiss me--
+I deserve it.  When the terrible news from Sedan reached Paris, in the
+midst of the general stun and bewilderment I noticed a hesitating
+timidity among all those who had wares in their shops and a good coat on
+their backs.  They feared that to proclaim the Empire defunct would be to
+install the Red Republic with all its paroxysm of impulsive rage and all
+its theories of wholesale confiscation.  But since it was impossible for
+the object we had in view to let slip the occasion of deposing the
+dynasty which stood in its way, it was necessary to lose no time in using
+the revolutionary part of the populace for that purpose.  I assisted in
+doing so; my excuse is this--that in a time of crisis a man of action
+must go straight to his immediate object, and in so doing employ the
+instruments at his command.  I made, however, one error in judgment which
+admits no excuse: I relied on all I had heard, and all I had observed, of
+the character of Trochu, and I was deceived, in common, I believe, with
+all his admirers, and three parts of the educated classes of Paris."
+
+INCOGNITO.--"I should have been equally deceived!  Trochu's conduct is a
+riddle that I doubt if he himself can ever solve.  He was master of the
+position; he had the military force in his hands if he combined with
+Palikao, which, whatever the jealousies between the two, it was his
+absolute duty to do.  He had a great prestige--"
+
+DE MAULEON.--"And for the moment a still greater popularity.  His _ipse
+dixit_ could have determined the wavering and confused spirits of the
+population.  I was prepared for his abandonment of the Emperor--even of
+the Empress and the Regency.  But how could I imagine that he, the man of
+moderate politics, of Orleanistic leanings, the clever writer, the fine
+talker, the chivalrous soldier, the religious Breton, could abandon
+everything that was legal, everything that could save France against the
+enemy, and Paris against civil discord; that he would connive at the
+annihilation of the Senate, of the popular Assembly, of every form of
+Government that could be recognised as legitimate at home or abroad,
+accept service under men whose doctrines were opposed to all his
+antecedents, all his professed opinions, and inaugurate a chaos under the
+name of a Republic!"
+
+INCOGNITO.--"How, indeed?  How suppose that the National Assembly, just
+elected by a majority of seven millions and a half, could be hurried into
+a conjuring-bog, and reappear as the travesty of a Venetian oligarchy,
+composed of half-a-dozen of its most unpopular members!  The sole excuse
+for Trochu is, that he deemed all other considerations insignificant
+compared with the defence of Paris, and the united action of the nation
+against the invaders.  But if that were his honest desire in siding with
+this monstrous usurpation of power, he did everything by which the desire
+could be frustrated.  Had there been any provisional body composed of men
+known and esteemed, elected by the Chambers, supported by Trochu and the
+troops at his back, there would have been a rallying-point for the
+patriotism of the provinces; and in the wise suspense of any constitution
+to succeed that Government until the enemy were chased from the field,
+all partisans--Imperialists, Legitimists, Orleanists, Republicans--would
+have equally adjourned their differences.  But a democratic Republic,
+proclaimed by a Parisian mob for a nation in which sincere democratic
+Republicans are a handful, in contempt of an Assembly chosen by the
+country at large; headed by men in whom the provinces have no trust, and
+for whom their own representatives are violently cashiered;--can you
+conceive such a combination of wet blankets supplied by the irony of Fate
+for the extinction of every spark of ardour in the population from which
+armies are to be gathered in haste, at the beck of usupers they distrust
+and despise?  Paris has excelled itself in folly.  Hungering for peace,
+it proclaims a Government which has no legal power to treat for it.
+Shrieking out for allies among the monarchies, it annihilates the hope of
+obtaining them; its sole chance of escape from siege, famine, and
+bombardment, is in the immediate and impassioned sympathy of the
+provinces; and it revives all the grudges which the provinces have long
+sullenly felt against the domineering pretensions of the capital, and
+invokes the rural populations, which comprise the pith and sinew of
+armies, in the name of men whom I verily believe they detest still more
+than they do the Prussians.  Victor, it is enough to make one despair of
+his country!  All beyond the hour seems anarchy and ruin."
+
+"Not so!" exclaimed De Mauleon.  "Everything comes to him who knows how
+to wait.  The Empire is destroyed; the usurpation that follows it has no
+roots.  It will but serve to expedite the establishment of such a
+condition as we have meditated and planned--a constitution adapted to our
+age and our people, not based wholly on untried experiments, taking the
+best from nations that do not allow Freedom and Order to be the sport of
+any popular breeze.  From the American Republic we must borrow the only
+safeguards against the fickleness of the universal suffrage which, though
+it was madness to concede in any ancient community, once conceded cannot
+be safely abolished,--viz., the salutary law that no article of the
+Constitution, once settled, can be altered without the consent of two-
+thirds of the legislative body.  By this law we insure permanence, and
+that concomitant love for institutions which is engendered by time and
+custom.  Secondly, the formation of a senate on such principles as may
+secure to it in all times of danger a confidence and respect which
+counteract in public opinion the rashness and heat of the popular
+assembly.  On what principles that senate should be formed, with what
+functions invested, what share of the executive--especially in foreign
+affairs, declarations of war, or treaties of peace--should be accorded to
+it, will no doubt need the most deliberate care of the ablest minds.  But
+a senate I thus sketch has alone rescued America from the rashness of
+counsel incident to a democratic Chamber; and it is still more essential
+to France, with still more favourable elements for its creation.  From
+England we must borrow the great principle that has alone saved her from
+revolution--that the head of the State can do no wrong.  He leads no
+armies, he presides over no Cabinet.  All responsibility rests with
+his advisers; and where we upset a dynasty, England changes an
+administration.  Whether the head of the State should have the title of
+sovereign or president, whether he be hereditary or elected, is a
+question of minor importance impossible now to determine, but on which I
+heartily concur with you that hereditary monarchy is infinitely better
+adapted to the habits of Frenchmen, to their love of show and of honours
+--and infinitely more preservative from all the dangers which result from
+constant elections to such a dignity, with parties so heated, and
+pretenders to the rank so numerous--than any principle by which a popular
+demagogue or a successful general is enabled to destroy the institutions
+he is elected to guard.  On these fundamental doctrines for the
+regeneration of France I think we are agreed.  And I believe when the
+moment arrives to promulgate them, through an expounder of weight like
+yourself, they will rapidly commend themselves to the intellect of
+France.  For they belong to common sense; and in the ultimate prevalence
+of common-sense I have a faith which I refuse to medievalists who would
+restore the right divine; and still more to fanatical quacks, who imagine
+that the worship of the Deity, the ties of family, and the rights of
+property are errors at variance with the progress of society. _Qui
+vivera, verra_."
+
+INCOGNITO.--"In the outlines of the policy you so ably enunciate I
+heartily concur.  But if France is, I will not say to be regenerated, but
+to have fair play among the nations of Europe, I add one or two items to
+the programme.  France must be saved from Paris, not by subterranean
+barracks and trains, the impotence of which we see to-day with a general
+in command of the military force, but by conceding to France its
+proportionate share of the power now monopolised by Paris.  All this
+system of centralisation, equally tyrannical and corrupt, must be
+eradicated.  Talk of examples from America, of which I know little--from
+England, of which I know much,--what can we more advantageously borrow
+from England than that diffusion of all her moral and social power which
+forbids the congestion of blood in one vital part?  Decentralise!
+decentralise! decentralise! will be my incessant cry, if ever the time
+comes when my cry will be heard.  France can never be a genuine France
+until Paris has no more influence over the destinies of France than
+London has over those of England.  But on this theme I could go on till
+midnight.  Now to the immediate point: what do you advise me to do in
+this crisis, and what do you propose to do yourself?"
+
+De Mauleon put his hand to his brow, and remained a few moments silent
+and thoughtful.  At last he looked up with that decided expression of
+face which was not the least among his many attributes for influence over
+those with whom he came into contact.
+
+"For you, on whom so much of the future depends, my advice is brief--have
+nothing to do with the present.  All who join this present mockery of a
+Government will share the fall that attends it--a fall from which one or
+two of their body may possibly recover by casting blame on their
+confreres,--you never could.  But it is not for you to oppose that
+Government with an enemy on its march to Paris.  You are not a soldier;
+military command is not in your rode.  The issue of events is uncertain;
+but whatever it be, the men in power cannot conduct a prosperous war nor
+obtain an honourable peace.  Hereafter you may be the _Deus ex machina_.
+No personage of that rank and with that mission appears till the end of
+the play: we are only in the first act.  Leave Paris at once, and abstain
+from all action."
+
+INCOGNITO (dejectedly).--"I cannot deny the soundness of your advice,
+though in accepting it I feel unutterably saddened.  Still you, the
+calmest and shrewdest observer among my friends, think there is cause for
+hope, not despair.  Victor, I have more than most men to make life
+pleasant, but I would lay down life at this moment with you.  You know me
+well enough to be sure that I utter no melodramatic fiction when I say
+that I love my country as a young man loves the ideal of his dreams--with
+my whole mind and heart and soul! and the thought that I cannot now aid
+her in the hour of her mortal trial is--is--"
+
+The man's voice broke down, and he turned aside, veiling his face with a
+hand that trembled.
+
+DE MAULEON--"Courage--patience!  All Frenchmen have the first; set them
+an example they much need in the second.  I, too, love my country, though
+I owe to it little enough, heaven knows.  I suppose love of country is
+inherent in all who are not Internationalists.  They profess only to love
+humanity, by which, if they mean anything practical, they mean a rise in
+wages."
+
+INCOGNITO (rousing himself, and with a half smile).  "Always cynical,
+Victor--always belying yourself.  But now that you have advised my
+course, what will be your own?  Accompany me, and wait for better times."
+
+"No, noble friend; our positions are different.  Yours is made--mine yet
+to make.  But for this war I think I could have secured a seat in the
+Chamber.  As I wrote you, I found that my kinsfolk were of much influence
+in their department, and that my restitution to my social grade, and the
+repute I had made as an Orleanist, inclined them to forget my youthful
+errors and to assist my career.  But the Chamber ceases to exist.  My
+journal I shall drop.  I cannot support the Government; it is not a
+moment to oppose it.  My prudent course is silence."
+
+INCOGNITO.--"But is not your journal essential to your support?"
+
+DE MAULEON.--"Fortunately not.  Its profits enabled me to lay by for the
+rainy day that has come; and having reimbursed you and all friends the
+sums necessary to start it, I stand clear of all debt, and, for my
+slender wants, a rich man.  If I continued the journal I should be
+beggared; for there would be no readers to Common Sense in this interval
+of lunacy.  Nevertheless, during this interval, I trust to other ways for
+winning a name that will open my rightful path of ambition whenever we
+again have a legislature in which Common Sense can be heard."
+
+INCOGNITO.--"But how win that name, silenced as a writer?"
+
+DE MAULEON.--"You forget that I have fought in Algeria.  In a few days
+Paris will be in a state of siege; and then--and then," he added, and
+very quietly dilated on the renown of a patriot or the grave of a
+soldier.
+
+"I envy you the chance of either," said the Incognito; and after a few
+more brief words he departed, his hat drawn over his brows, and entering
+a hired carriage which he had left at the corner of the quiet street, was
+consigned to the station du --------, just in time for the next train.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Victor dressed and went out.  The streets were crowded.  Workmen were
+everywhere employed in the childish operation of removing all insignia,
+and obliterating all names that showed where an Empire had existed.  One
+greasy citizen, mounted on a ladder, was effacing the words "Boulevard
+Haussman," and substituting for Haussman, "Victor Hugo."
+
+Suddenly De Mauleon came on a group of blouses, interspersed with women
+holding babies and ragged boys holding stones, collected round a well-
+dressed slender man, at whom they were hooting and gesticulating, with
+menaces of doing something much worse.  By an easy effort of his strong
+frame the Vicomte pushed his way through the tormentors, and gave his arm
+to their intended victim.
+
+"Monsieur, allow me to walk home with you."  Therewith the shrieks and
+shouts and gesticulations increased.  "Another impertinent!  Another
+traitor!  Drown him!  Drown them both!  To the Seine!  To the Seine!"
+A burly fellow rushed forward, and the rest made a plunging push.  The
+outstretched arm of De Mauleon kept the ringleader at bay.  "Mes enfans,"
+cried Victor with a calm clear voice, "I am not an Imperialist.  Many of
+you have read the articles signed Pierre Firmin, written against the
+tyrant Bonaparte when he was at the height of his power.  I am Pierre
+Firmin--make way for me."  Probably not one in the crowd had ever read a
+word written by Pierre Firmin, nor even heard of the name.  But they did
+not like to own ignorance; and that burly fellow did not like to
+encounter that arm of iron which touched his throat.  So he cried out,
+"Oh! if you are the great Pierre Firmin, that alters the case.  Make way
+for the patriot Pierre!"  "But," shrieked a virago, thrusting her baby
+into De Mauleon's face, "the other is the Imperialist, the capitalist,
+the vile Duplessis.  At least we will have him."  De Mauleon suddenly
+snatched the baby from her, and said, with imperturbable good temper,
+"Exchange of prisoners.  I resign the man, and I keep the baby."
+
+No one who does not know the humours of a Parisian mob can comprehend the
+suddenness of popular change, or the magical mastery over crowds which is
+effected by quiet courage and a ready joke.  The group was appeased at
+once.  Even the virago laughed; and when De Mauleon restored the infant
+to her arms, with a gold piece thrust into its tiny clasp, she eyed the
+gold, and cried, "God bless you, citizen!" The two gentlemen made their
+way safely now.
+
+"M. de Mauleon," said Duplessis, "I know not how to thank you.  Without
+your seasonable aid I should have been in great danger of life; and--
+would you believe it?--the woman who denounced and set the mob on me was
+one of the objects of a charity which I weekly dispense to the poor."
+
+"Of course I believe that.  At the Red clubs no crime is more denounced
+than that of charity.  It is the 'fraud against _Egalite_'--a vile trick
+of the capitalist to save to himself the millions he ought to share with
+all by giving a sou to one.  Meanwhile, take my advice, M. Duplessis, and
+quit Paris with your young daughter.  This is no place for rich
+Imperialists at present."
+
+"I perceived that before to-day's adventure.  I distrust the looks of my
+very servants, and shall depart with Valerie this evening for Bretagne."
+
+"Ah! I heard from Louvier that you propose to pay off his mortgage on
+Rochebriant, and make yourself sole proprietor of my young kinsman's
+property."
+
+"I trust you only believe half what you hear.  I mean to save Rochebriant
+from Louvier, and consign it, free of charge, to your kinsman, as the dot
+of his bride, my daughter."
+
+"I rejoice to learn such good news for the head of my house.  But Alain
+himself--is he not with the prisoners of war?"
+
+"No, thank heaven.  He went forth an officer of a regiment of Parisian
+Mobiles--went full of sanguine confidence; he came back with his regiment
+in mournful despondency.  The undiscipline of his regiment, of the
+Parisian Mobiles generally, appears incredible.  Their insolent
+disobedience to their officers, their ribald scoffs at their general
+--oh, it is sickening to speak of it!  Alain distinguished himself by
+repressing a mutiny and is honoured by a signal compliment from the
+commander in a letter of recommendation to Palikao.  But Palikao is
+nobody now.  Alain has already been sent into Bretagne, commissioned to
+assist in organising a corps of Mobiles in his neighbourhood.  Trochu, as
+you know, is a Breton.  Alain is confident of the good conduct of the
+Bretons.  What will Louvier do?  He is an arch Republican; is he pleased
+now he has got what he wanted?"
+
+"I suppose he is pleased, for he is terribly frightened.  Fright is one
+of the great enjoyments of a Parisian.  Good day.  Your path to your
+hotel is clear now.  Remember me kindly to Alain."
+
+De Mauleon continued his way through streets sometimes deserted,
+sometimes thronged.  At the commencement of the Rue de Florentin he
+encountered the brothers Vandemar walking arm in arm.
+
+"Ha, De Mauleon!" cried Enguerrand; "what is the last minute's news?"
+
+"I can't guess.  Nobody knows at Paris how soon one folly swallows up
+another.  Saturn here is always devouring one or other of his children."
+
+"They say that Vinoy, after a most masterly retreat, is almost at our
+gates with 80,000 men."
+
+"And this day twelvemonth we may know what he does with them."
+
+Here Raoul, who seemed absorbed in gloomy reflections, halted before the
+hotel in which the Contessa di Rimini lodged, and with a nod to his
+brother, and a polite, if not cordial salutation to Victor, entered the
+_porte cochere_.
+
+"Your brother seems out of spirits,--a pleasing contrast to the
+uproarious mirth with which Parisians welcome the advance of calamity."
+
+"Raoul, as you know, is deeply religious.  He regards the defeat we have
+sustained, and the peril that threatens us, as the beginning of a divine
+chastisement, justly incurred by our sins--I mean, the sins of Paris.  In
+vain my father reminds him of Voltaire's story, in which the ship goes
+down with a _fripon_ on board.  In order to punish the _fripon_, the
+honest folks are drowned."
+
+"Is your father going to remain on board the ship, and share the fate of
+the other honest folks?"
+
+"_Pas si bete_.  He is off to Dieppe for sea-bathing.  He says that Paris
+has grown so dirty since the 4th September, that it is only fit for the
+feet of the Unwashed.  He wished my mother to accompany him; but she
+replies, 'No; there are already too many wounded not to need plenty of
+nurses.'  She is assisting to inaugurate a society of ladies in aid of
+the _Soeurs de Charite_.  Like Raoul, she is devout, but she has not his
+superstitions.  Still his superstitions are the natural reaction of a
+singularly earnest and pure nature from the frivolity and corruption
+which, when kneaded well up together with a slice of sarcasm, Paris calls
+philosophy."
+
+"And what, my dear Enguerrand, do you propose to do?"
+
+"That depends on whether we are really besieged.  If so, of course I
+become a soldier."
+
+"I hope not a National Guard?"
+
+"I care not in what name I fight, so that I fight for France."
+
+
+As Enguerrand said these simple words, his whole countenance, seemed
+changed.  The crest rose; his eyes sparkled; the fair and delicate beauty
+which had made him the darling of women--the joyous sweetness of
+expression and dainty grace of high breeding which made him the most
+popular companion to men,--were exalted in a masculine nobleness of
+aspect, from which a painter might have taken hints for a study of the
+young Achilles separated for ever from effeminate companionship at the
+sight of the weapons of war.  De Mauleon gazed on him admiringly.  We
+have seen that he shared the sentiments uttered--had resolved on the same
+course of action.  But it was with the tempered warmth of a man who seeks
+to divest his thoughts and his purpose of the ardour of romance, and who,
+in serving his country, calculates on the gains to his own ambition.
+Nevertheless he admired in Enguerrand the image of his own impulsive and
+fiery youth.
+
+"And you, I presume," resumed Enguerrand, "will fight too, but rather
+with pen than with sword."
+
+"Pens will now only be dipped in red ink, and commonsense never writes in
+that colour; as for the sword, I have passed the age of forty-five, at
+which military service halts.  But if some experience in active service,
+some knowledge of the art by which soldiers are disciplined and led, will
+be deemed sufficient title to a post of command, however modest the grade
+be, I shall not be wanting among the defenders of Paris."
+
+"My brave dear Vicomte, if you are past the age to serve, you are in the
+ripest age to command; and with the testimonials and the cross you won in
+Algeria, your application for employment will be received with gratitude
+by any general so able as Trochu."
+
+"I don't know whether I shall apply to Trochu.  I would rather be elected
+to command even by the Mobiles or the National Guard, of whom I have just
+spoken disparagingly; and no doubt both corps will soon claim and win the
+right to choose their officers.  But if elected, no matter by whom, I
+shall make a preliminary condition; the men under me shall train, and
+drill, and obey,--soldiers of a very different kind from the youthful
+Pekins nourished on absinthe and self-conceit, and applauding that
+Bombastes Furioso, M. Hugo, when he assures the enemy that Paris will
+draw an idea from its scabbard.  But here comes Savarin. _Bon jour_, my
+dear poet."
+
+"Don't say good day.  An evil day for journalists and writers who do not
+out-Herod Blanqui and Pyat.  I know not how I shall get bread and cheese.
+My poor suburban villa is to be pulled down by way of securing Paris; my
+journal will be suppressed by way of establishing the liberty of the
+press.  I ventured to suggest that the people of France should have some
+choice in the form of their government."
+
+"That was very indiscreet, my poor Savarin," said Victor; "I wonder your
+printing-office has not been pulled down.  We are now at the moment when
+wise men hold their tongues."
+
+"Perhaps so, M. de Mauleon.  It might have been wiser for all of us, you
+as well as myself, if we had not allowed our tongues to be so free before
+this moment arrived.  We live to learn; and if we ever have what may be
+called a passable government again, in which we may say pretty much what
+we like, there is one thing I will not do, I will not undermine that
+government without seeing a very clear way to the government that is to
+follow it.  What say you, Pierre Firmin?"
+
+"Frankly, I say that I deserve your rebuke," answered De Mauleon
+thoughtfully.  "But, of course, you are going to take or send Madame
+Savarin out of Paris."
+
+"Certainly.  We have made a very pleasant party for our hegira this
+evening-among others the Morleys.  Morley is terribly disgusted.  A Red
+Republican slapped him on the shoulder and said, 'American, we have a
+republic as well as you.'  'Pretty much you know about republics,'
+growled Morley; 'a French republic is as much like ours as a baboon is
+like a man.'  On which the Red roused the mob, who dragged the American
+off to the nearest station of the National Guard, where he was accused of
+being a Prussian spy.  With some difficulty, and lots of brag about the
+sanctity of the stars and stripes, he escaped with a reprimand, and
+caution how to behave himself in future.  So he quits a city in which
+there no longer exists freedom of speech.  My wife hoped to induce
+Mademoiselle Cicogna to accompany us; I grieve to say she refuses.  You
+know she is engaged in marriage to Gustave Rameau; and his mother dreads
+the effect that these Red Clubs and his own vanity may have upon his
+excitable temperament if the influence of Mademoiselle Cicogna be
+withdrawn."
+
+"How could a creature so exquisite as Isaura Cicogna ever find
+fascination in Gustave Rameau!" exclaimed Enguerrand.
+
+"A woman like her," answered De Mauleon, "always finds a fascination in
+self-sacrifice."
+
+"I think you divine the truth," said Savarin, rather mournfully.  "But I
+must bid you good-bye.  May we live to shake hands _reunis sons des
+meilleurs auspices_."
+
+Here Savarin hurried off, and the other two men strolled into the Champs
+Elysees, which were crowded with loungers, gay and careless, as if there
+had been no disaster at Sedan, no overthrow of an Empire, no enemy on its
+road to Paris.
+
+In fact the Parisians, at once the most incredulous and the most
+credulous of all populations, believed that the Prussians would never be
+so impertinent as to come in sight of the gates.  Something would occur
+to stop them!  The king had declared he did not war on Frenchmen, but on
+the Emperor: the Emperor gone, the war was over.  A democratic republic
+was instituted.  A horrible thing in its way, it is true; but how could
+the Pandour tyrant brave the infection of democratic doctrines among his
+own barbarian armies?  Were not placards, addressed to our "German
+brethren," posted upon the walls of Paris, exhorting the Pandours to
+fraternise with their fellow-creatures?  Was not Victor Hugo going to
+publish "a letter to the German people"?  Had not Jules Favre graciously
+offered peace, with the assurance that "France would not cede a stone of
+her fortresses--an inch of her territory?  She would pardon the invaders
+and not march upon Berlin!"  To all these, and many more such
+incontestable proofs, that the idea of a siege was moonshine, did
+Enguerrand and Victor listen as they joined group after group of their
+fellow-countrymen: nor did Paris cease to harbour such pleasing
+illusions, amusing itself with piously laying crowns at the foot of the
+statue of Strasbourg, swearing "they would be worthy of their Alsatian
+brethren," till on the 19th of September the last telegram was received,
+and Paris was cut of from the rest of the world by the iron line of the
+Prussian invaders.  "Tranquil and terrible," says Victor Hugo, "she
+awaits the invasion!  A volcano needs no assistance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+We left Graham Vane slowly recovering from the attack of fever which had
+arrested his journey to Berlin in quest of the Count von Rudesheimn.  He
+was, however, saved the prosecution of that journey, and his direction
+turned back to France by a German newspaper which informed him that the
+King of Prussia was at Rheims, and that the Count von Rudesheim was among
+the eminent personages gathered there around their sovereign.  In
+conversing the same day with the kindly doctor who attended him, Graham
+ascertained that this German noble held a high command in the German
+armies, and bore a no less distinguished reputation as a wise political
+counsellor than he had earned as a military chief.  As soon as he was
+able to travel, and indeed before the good doctor sanctioned his
+departure, Graham took his way to Rheims, uncertain, however, whether the
+Count would still be found there.  I spare the details of his journey,
+interesting as they were.  On reaching the famous and, in the eyes of
+Legitimists, the sacred city, the Englishman had no difficulty in
+ascertaining the house, not far from the cathedral, in which the Count
+von Rudesheim had taken his temporary abode.  Walking towards it from the
+small hotel in which he had been lucky enough to find a room disengaged--
+slowly, for he was still feeble--he was struck by the quiet conduct of
+the German soldiery, and, save in their appearance, the peaceful aspect
+of the streets.  Indeed, there was an air of festive gaiety about the
+place, as in an English town in which some popular regiment is quartered.
+The German soldiers thronged the shops, buying largely; lounged into the
+cafes; here and there attempted flirtations with the _grisettes_, who
+laughed at their French and blushed at their compliments; and in their
+good-humoured, somewhat bashful cheeriness, there was no trace of the
+insolence of conquest.
+
+But as Graham neared the precincts of the cathedral his ear caught a
+grave and solemn music, which he at first supposed to come from within
+the building.  But as he paused and looked round, he saw a group of the
+German military, on whose stalwart forms and fair manly earnest faces the
+setting sun cast its calm lingering rays.  They were chanting, in voices
+not loud but deep, Luther's majestic hymn:
+
+"Nun danket alle Gott."  The chant awed even the ragged beggar boys who
+had followed the Englishman, as they followed any stranger, would have
+followed King William himself, whining for alms.  "What a type of the
+difference between the two nations!" thought Graham; "the Marseillaise,
+and Luther's Hymn!"  While thus meditating and listening, a man in a
+general's uniform came slowly out of the cathedral, with his hands
+clasped behind his back, and his head bent slightly downwards.  He, too,
+paused on hearing the hymn; then unclasped his hand and beckoned to one
+of the officers, to whom approaching he whispered a word or two, and
+passed on towards the Episcopal palace.  The hymn hushed, and the singers
+quietly dispersed.  Graham divined rightly that the general had thought a
+hymn thanking the God of battles might wound the feelings of the
+inhabitants of the vanquished city--not, however, that any of them were
+likely to understand the language in which the thanks were uttered.
+Graham followed the measured steps of the general, whose hands were again
+clasped behind his back--the musing habit of Von Moltke, as it had been
+of Napoleon the First.  Continuing his way, the Englishman soon reached
+the house in which the Count von Rudesheim was lodged, and, sending in
+his card, was admitted at once through an anteroom in which sate two
+young men, subaltern officers apparently employed in draughting maps,
+into the presence of the Count.
+
+"Pardon me," said Graham, after the first conventional salutation, "if I
+interrupt you for a moment or so in the midst of events so grave, on a
+matter that must seem to you very trivial."
+
+"Nay," answered the Count, "there is nothing so trivial in this world but
+what there will be some one to whom it is important.  Say how I can serve
+you."
+
+"I think, M. le Comte, that you once received in your household, as
+teacher or governess, a French lady, Madame Marigny."
+
+"Yes, I remember her well--a very handsome woman.  My wife and daughter
+took great interest in her.  She was married out of my house."
+
+"Exactly--and to whom?"
+
+"An Italian of good birth, who was then employed by the Austrian
+Government in some minor post, and subsequently promoted to a better one
+in the Italian dominion, which then belonged to the house of Hapsburg,
+after which we lost sight of him and his wife."
+
+"An Italian--what was his name?"
+
+"Ludovico Cicogna."
+
+"Cicogna!" exclaimed Graham, turning very pale.  "Are you sure that was
+the name?"
+
+"Certainly.  He was a cadet of a very noble house, and disowned by
+relations too patriotic to forgive him for accepting employment under the
+Austrian Government."
+
+"Can you not give me the address of the place in Italy to which he was
+transferred on leaving Austria?"
+
+"No; but if the information be necessary to you, it can be obtained
+easily at Milan, where the head of the family resides, or indeed in
+Vienna, through any ministerial bureau."
+
+"Pardon me one or two questions more.  Had Madame Marigny any children by
+a former husband?"
+
+"Not that I know of: I never heard so.  Signor Cicogna was a widower, and
+had, if I remember right, children by his first wife, who was also a
+Frenchwoman.  Before he obtained office in Austria, he resided, I
+believe, in France.  I do not remember how many children he had by his
+first wife.  I never saw them.  Our acquaintance began at the baths of
+Toplitz, where he saw and fell violently in love with Madame Marigny.
+After their marriage, they went to his post, which was somewhere, I
+think, in the Tyrol.  We saw no more of them; but my wife and daughter
+kept up a correspondence with the Signora Cicogna for a short time.  It
+ceased altogether when she removed into Italy."
+
+"You do not even know if the Signora is still living?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Her husband, I am told, is dead."
+
+"Indeed!  I am concerned to hear it.  A good-looking, lively, clever man.
+I fear he must have lost all income when the Austrian dominions passed to
+the house of Savoy."
+
+"Many thanks for your information.  I can detain you no longer," said
+Graham, rising.
+
+"Nay, I am not very busy at this moment; but I fear we Germans have
+plenty of work on our hands."
+
+"I had hoped that, now the French Emperor, against whom your king made
+war, was set aside, his Prussian majesty would make peace with the French
+people."
+
+"Most willingly would he do so if the French people would let him.  But
+it must be through a French Government legally chosen by the people.  And
+they have chosen none!  A mob at Paris sets up a provisional
+administration, that commences by declaring that it will not give up 'an
+inch of its territory nor a stone of its fortresses.'  No terms of peace
+can be made with such men holding such talk."  After a few words more
+over the state of public affairs,--in which Graham expressed the English
+side of affairs, which was all for generosity to the vanquished; and the
+Count argued much more ably on the German, which was all for security
+against the aggressions of a people that would not admit itself to be
+vanquished,--the short interview closed.
+
+As Graham at night pursued his journey to Vienna, there came into his
+mind Isaura's song of the Neapolitan fisherman.  Had he, too, been blind
+to the image on the rock?  Was it possible that all the while he had been
+resisting the impulse of his heart, until the discharge of the mission
+entrusted to him freed his choice and decided his fortunes, the very
+person of whom he was in search had been before him, then to be for ever
+won, lost to him now for ever?  Could Isaura Cicogna be the child of
+Louise Duval by Richard King?  She could not have been her child by
+Cicogna: the dates forbade that hypothesis.  Isaura must have been five
+years old when Louise married the Italian.  Arrived at Milan, Graham
+quickly ascertained that the post to which Ludovico Cicogna had been
+removed was in Verona, and that he had there died eight years ago.
+Nothing was to be learned as to his family or his circumstances at the
+time of his death.  The people of whose history we know the least are the
+relations we refuse to acknowledge.  Graham continued his journey to
+Verona.  There he found on inquiry that the Cicognas had occupied an
+apartment in a house which stood at the outskirts of the town and had
+been since pulled down to make way for some public improvements.  But his
+closest inquiries could gain him no satisfactory answers to the all-
+important questions as to Ludovico Cicogna's family.  His political
+alienation from the Italian cause, which was nowhere more ardently
+espoused than at Verona, had rendered him very unpopular.  He visited at
+no Italian houses.  Such society as he had was confined to the Austrian
+military within the Quadrilateral or at Venice, to which city he made
+frequent excursions: was said to lead there a free and gay life, very
+displeasing to the Signora, whom he left in Verona.  She was but little
+seen, and faintly remembered as very handsome and proud-looking.  Yes,
+there were children--a girl, and a boy several years younger than the
+girl; but whether she was the child of the Signora by a former marriage,
+or whether the Signora was only the child's stepmother, no one could say.
+The usual clue, in such doubtful matters obtainable through servants, was
+here missing.  The Cicognas had only kept two servants, and both were
+Austrian subjects, who had long left the country,--their very names
+forgotten.
+
+Graham now called to mind the Englishman Selby, for whom Isaura had such
+grateful affection, as supplying to her the place of her father.  This
+must have been the Englishman whom Louise Duval had married after
+Cicogna's death.  It would be no difficult task, surely, to ascertain
+where he had resided.  Easy enough to ascertain all that Graham wanted to
+know from Isaura herself, if a letter could reach her.  But, as he knew
+by the journals, Paris was now invested--cut off from all communication
+with the world beyond.  Too irritable, anxious, and impatient to wait for
+the close of the siege, though he never suspected it could last so long
+as it did, he hastened to Venice, and there learned through the British
+consul that the late Mr. Selby was a learned antiquarian, an accomplished
+general scholar, a _fanatico_ in music, a man of gentle temper though
+reserved manners; had at one time lived much at Venice: after his
+marriage with the Signora Cicogna he had taken up his abode near
+Florence.  To Florence Graham now went.  He found the villa on the skirts
+of Fiesole at which Mr. Selby had resided.  The peasant who had
+officiated as gardener and shareholder in the profits of vines and figs,
+was still, with his wife, living on the place.  Both man and wife
+remembered the Inglese well; spoke of him with great affection, of his
+wife with great dislike.  They said her manners were very haughty, her
+temper very violent; that she led the Inglese a very unhappy life; that
+there were a girl and a boy, both hers by a former marriage; but when
+closely questioned whether they were sure that the girl was the Signora's
+child by the former husband, or whether she was not the child of that
+husband by a former wife, they could not tell; they could only say that
+both were called by the same name--Cicogna; that the boy was the
+Signora's favourite--that indeed she seemed wrapt up in him; that he died
+of a rapid decline a few months after Mr. Selby had hired the place, and
+that shortly after his death the Signora left the place and never
+returned to it; that it was little more than a year that she had lived
+with her husband before this final separation took place.  The girl
+remained with Mr. Selby, who cherished and loved her as his own child.
+Her Christian name was Isaura, the boy's Luigi.  A few years later, Mr.
+Selby left the villa and went to Naples, where they heard he had died.
+They could give no information as to what had become of his wife:  Since
+the death of her boy that lady had become very much changed--her spirits
+quite broken, no longer violent.  She would sit alone and weep bitterly.
+The only person out of her family she would receive was the priest; till
+the boy's death she had never seen the priest, nor been known to attend
+divine service.
+
+"Was the priest living?"
+
+"Oh, no; he had been dead two years.  A most excellent man--a saint,"
+said the peasant's wife.
+
+"Good priests are like good women," said the peasant, drily; "there are
+plenty of them, but they are all underground."
+
+On which remark the wife tried to box his ears.  The contadino had become
+a freethinker since the accession of the house of Savoy.  His wife
+remained a good Catholic.  Said the peasant as, escaping from his wife,
+he walked into the high-road with Graham, "My belief, Eccellenza, is,
+that the priest did all the mischief."
+
+"What mischief?"
+
+"Persuaded the Signora to leave her husband.  The Inglese was not a
+Catholic.  I heard the priest call him a heretic.  And the padre, who,
+though not so bad as some of his cloth, was a meddling bigot, thought it
+perhaps best for her soul that it should part company with a heretic's
+person.  I can't say for sure, but I think that was it.  The padre seemed
+to triumph when the Signora was gone."  Graham mused.  The peasant's
+supposition was not improbable.  A woman such as Louise Duval appeared to
+be--of vehement passions and ill-regulated mind--was just one of those
+who, in a moment of great sorrow, and estranged from the ordinary
+household affections, feel, though but imperfectly, the necessity of a
+religion, and, ever in extremes, pass at once from indifferentism into
+superstition.
+
+Arrived at Naples, Graham heard little of Selby except as a literary
+recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage.  But
+he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil had
+shown to her, when left by Selby's death alone in the world; of the
+interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent as
+the great French writer had created for Isaura in the artistic circles;
+of the intense sensation her appearance, her voice, her universal genius,
+had made in that society, and the brilliant hopes of her subsequent
+career on the stage the cognoscenti had formed.  No one knew anything of
+her mother; no one entertained a doubt that Isaura was by birth a
+Cicogna.  Graham could not learn the present whereabouts of Madame de
+Grantmesnil.  She had long left Naples, and had been last heard of at
+Genoa; was supposed to have returned to France a little before the war.
+In France she had no fixed residence.
+
+The simplest mode of obtaining authentic information whether Isaura was
+the daughter of Ludovico Cicogna by his first wife--namely, by
+registration of her birth--failed him; because, as von Rudesheim had
+said, his first wife was a Frenchwoman.  The children had been born
+somewhere in France, no one could even guess where.  No one had ever seen
+the first wife, who had never appeared in Italy, nor had even heard what
+was her maiden name.
+
+Graham, meanwhile, was not aware that Isaura was still in the besieged
+city, whether or not already married to Gustave Rameau; so large a number
+of the women had quitted Paris before the siege began, that he had reason
+to hope she was among them.  He heard through an American that the
+Morleys had gone to England before the Prussian investment; perhaps
+Isaura had gone with them.  He wrote to Mrs. Morley, inclosing his letter
+to the Minister of the United States at the Court of St. James's, and
+while still at Naples received her answer.  It was short, and malignantly
+bitter.  "Both myself and Madame Savarin, backed by Signora Venosta,
+earnestly entreated Mademoiselle Cicogna to quit Paris, to accompany us
+to England.  Her devotion to her affianced husband would not permit her
+to listen to us.  It is only an Englishman who could suppose Isaura
+Cicogna to be one of those women who do not insist on sharing the perils
+of those they love.  You ask whether she was the daughter of Ludovico
+Cicogna by his former marriage, or of his second wife by him.  I cannot
+answer.  I don't even know whether Signor Cicogna ever had a former wife.
+Isaura Cicogna never spoke to me of her parents.  Permit me to ask--what
+business is it of yours now?  Is it the English pride that makes you wish
+to learn whether on both sides she is of noble family?  How can that
+discovery alter your relations towards the affianced bride of another?"
+
+On receipt of this letter, Graham quitted Naples, and shortly afterwards
+found himself at Versailles.  He obtained permission to establish himself
+there, though the English were by no means popular.  Thus near to Isaura,
+thus sternly separated from her, Graham awaited the close of the siege.
+Few among those at Versailles believed that the Parisians would endure it
+much longer.  Surely they would capitulate before the bombardment, which
+the Germans themselves disliked to contemplate as a last resource, could
+commence.
+
+In his own mind Graham was convinced that Isaura was the child of Richard
+King.  It seemed to him probable that Louise Duval, unable to assign any
+real name to the daughter of the marriage she disowned,--neither the name
+borne by the repudiated husband, nor her own maiden name,--would, on
+taking her daughter to her new home, have induced Cicogna to give the
+child his name, or that after Cicogna's death she herself had so
+designated the girl.  A dispassionate confidant, could Graham have
+admitted any confidant whatever, might have suggested the more than equal
+probability that Isaura was Cicogna's daughter by his former espousal.
+But then what could have become of Richard King's child?  To part with
+the fortune in his hands, to relinquish all the ambitious dreams which
+belonged to it, cost Graham Vane no pang: but he writhed with indignant
+grief when he thought that the wealth of Richard King's heiress was to
+pass to the hands of Gustave Rameau,--that this was to be the end of his
+researches--this the result of the sacrifice his sense of honour imposed
+on him.  And now that there was the probability that he must convey to
+Isaura this large inheritance, the practical difficulty of inventing some
+reason for such a donation, which he had, while at a distance made light
+of, became seriously apparent.  How could he say to Isaura that he had
+L200,000. in trust for her, without naming any one so devising it?  Still
+more, how constitute himself her guardian, so as to secure it to herself,
+independently of her husband?  Perhaps Isaura was too infatuated with
+Rameau, or too romantically unselfish, to permit the fortune so
+mysteriously conveyed being exclusively appropriated to herself.  And if
+she were already married to Rameau, and if he were armed with the right
+to inquire into the source of this fortune, how exposed to the risks of
+disclosure would become the secret Graham sought to conceal.  Such a
+secret affecting the memory of the sacred dead, affixing a shame on the
+scutcheon of the living, in the irreverent hands of a Gustave Rameau,--
+it was too dreadful to contemplate such a hazard.  And yet, if Isaura
+were the missing heiress, could Graham Vane admit any excuse for basely
+withholding from her, for coolly retaining to himself the wealth for
+which he was responsible?  Yet, torturing as were these communings with
+himself, they were mild in their torture compared to the ever-growing
+anguish of the thought that in any case the only woman he had ever loved
+--ever could love,--who might but for his own scruples and prejudices
+have been the partner of his life, was perhaps now actually the wife of
+another, and, as such, in what terrible danger!  Famine within the walls
+of the doomed city: without, the engines of death waiting for a signal.
+So near to her, and yet so far!  So willing to die for her, if for her he
+could not live: and with all his devotion, all his intellect, all his
+wealth, so powerless!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+It is now the middle of November-a Sunday.  The day has been mild, and is
+drawing towards its close.  The Parisians have been enjoying the
+sunshine.  Under the leafless trees in the public gardens and the Champs
+Elysees children have been at play.  On the Boulevards the old elegance
+of gaiety is succeeded by a livelier animation.  Itinerant musicians
+gather round them ragged groups.  Fortune-tellers are in great request,
+especially among the once brilliant Laises and Thaises, now looking more
+shabby, to whom they predict the speedy restoration of Nabobs and
+Russians, and golden joys.  Yonder Punch is achieving a victory over the
+Evil One, who wears the Prussian spiked helmet, and whose face has been
+recently beautified into a resemblance to Bismarck.  Punch draws to his
+show a laughing audience of _Moblots_ and recruits to the new companies
+of the National Guard.  Members of the once formidable police, now
+threadbare and hunger-pinched, stand side by side with unfortunate
+beggars and sinister-looking patriots who have served their time in the
+jails or galleys.
+
+Uniforms of all variety are conspicuous--the only evidence visible of an
+enemy at the walls.  But the aspects of the wearers of warlike
+accoutrements are debonnaire and smiling, as of revellers on a holiday of
+peace.  Among these defenders of their country, at the door of a crowded
+_cafe_, stands Frederic Lemercier, superb in the costume, bran-new, of a
+National Guard,--his dog Fox tranquilly reposing on its haunches, with
+eyes fixed upon its fellow-dog philosophically musing on the edge of
+Punch's show, whose master is engaged in the conquest of the Bismarck
+fiend.
+
+"Lemercier," cried the Vicomte de Breze, approaching the _cafe_, "I
+scarcely recognise you in that martial guise.  You look _magnifique_--
+the _galons_ become you. _Peste_! an officer already?"
+
+"The National Guards and Mobiles are permitted to choose their own
+officers, as you are aware.  I have been elected, but to subaltern grade,
+by the warlike patriots of my department.  Enguerrand de Vandemar is
+elected a captain of the Mobiles in his, and Victor de Mauleon is
+appointed to the command of a battalion of the National Guards.  But I
+soar above jealousy at such a moment,--
+
+               "'Rome a choisi mon bras; je n'examine rien.'"
+
+"You have no right to be jealous.  De Mauldon has had experience and won
+distinction in actual service, and from all I hear is doing wonders with
+his men--has got them not only to keep but to love drill.  I heard no
+less an authority than General V---- say that if all the officers of the
+National Guard were like De Mauleon, that body would give an example of
+discipline to the line."
+
+"I say nothing as to the promotion of a real soldier like the Vicomte--
+but a Parisian dandy like Euguerrand de Vande--"
+
+"You forget that Enguerrand received a military education--an advantage
+denied to you."
+
+"What does that matter?  Who cares for education nowadays?  Besides, have
+I not been training ever since the 4th of September, to say nothing of
+the hard work on the ramparts?"
+
+"_Parlez moi de cela_ it is indeed hard work on the ramparts. _Infandum
+dolorem quorum pars magna fui_.  Take the day duty.  What with rising at
+seven o'clock, and being drilled between a middle-aged and corpulent
+grocer on one side and a meagre beardless barber's apprentice on the
+other; what with going to the bastions at eleven, and seeing half one's
+companions drunk before twelve; what with trying to keep their fists off
+one's face when one politely asks them not to call one's general a
+traitor or a poltroon,--the work of the ramparts would be insupportable,
+if I did not take a pack of cards with me, and enjoy a quiet rubber with
+three other heroes in some sequestered corner.  As for night work,
+nothing short of the indomitable fortitude of a Parisian could sustain
+it; the tents made expressly not to be waterproof, like the groves of the
+Muses,
+
+                                           "' per
+                    Quos et aquea subeant et aurae.'
+
+A fellow-companion of mine tucks himself up on my rug, and pillows his
+head on my knapsack.  I remonstrate--he swears--the other heroes wake up
+and threaten to thrash us both; and just when peace is made, and one
+hopes for a wink of sleep, a detachment of spectators, chiefly gamins,
+coming to see that all is safe in the camp, strike up the Marseillaise.
+Ah, the world will ring to the end of time with the sublime attitude of
+Paris in the face of the Vandal invaders, especially when it learns that
+the very shoes we stand in are made of cardboard.  In vain we complain.
+The contractor for shoes is a staunch Republican, and jobs by right
+divine.  May I ask if you have dined yet?"
+
+"Heavens! no, it is too early.  But I am excessively hungry.  I had only
+a quarter of jugged cat for breakfast, and the brute was tough.  In reply
+to your question, may I put another--Did you lay in plenty of stores?"
+
+"Stores? no; I am a bachelor, and rely on the stores of my married
+friends."
+
+"Poor De Breze!  I sympathise with you, for I am in the same boat, and
+dinner invitations have become monstrous rare."
+
+"Oh, but you are so confoundedly rich!  What to you are forty francs for
+a rabbit, or eighty francs for a turkey?"
+
+"Well, I suppose I am rich, but I have no money, and the ungrateful
+restautrants will not give me credit.  They don't believe in better
+days."
+
+"How can you want money?"
+
+"Very naturally.  I had invested my capital famously-the best
+speculations--partly in house rents, partly in company shares; and houses
+pay no rents, and nobody will buy company shares.  I had 1,000 napoleons
+on hand, it is true, when Duplessis left Paris--much more, I thought,
+than I could possibly need, for I never believed in the siege.  But
+during the first few weeks I played at whist with bad luck, and since
+then so many old friends have borrowed of me that I doubt if I have 200
+francs left.  I have despatched four letters to Duplessis by pigeon and
+balloon, entreating him to send me 25,000 francs by some trusty fellow
+who will pierce the Prussian lines.  I have had two answers: 1st, that he
+will find a man; 2nd, that the man is found and on his way.  Trust to
+that man, my dear friend, and meanwhile lend me 200 francs."
+
+"_Mon cher, desole_ to refuse; but I was about to ask you to share your
+200 francs with me who live chiefly by my pen; and that resource is cut
+off.  Still, _il faut vivre_--one must dine."
+
+"That is a fact, and we will dine together to-day at my expense; limited
+liability, though--eight francs a head."
+
+"Generous Monsieur, I accept.  Meanwhile let us take a turn towards the
+Madeleine."
+
+The two Parisians quit the cafe, and proceed up the Boulevard.  On their
+way they encounter Savarin.  "Why," said De Breze, "I thought you had
+left Paris with Madame."
+
+"So I did, and deposited her safely with the Morleys at Boulogne.  These
+kind Americans were going to England, and they took her with them.  But I
+quit Paris!  No: I am old; I am growing obese.  I have always been
+short-sighted.  I can neither wield a sword nor handle a musket.  But
+Paris needs defenders; and every moment I was away from her I sighed to
+myself, '_ il faut etre la_!'  I returned before the Vandals had
+possessed themselves of our railways, the _convoi_ overcrowded with men
+like myself, who had removed wives and families; and when we asked each
+other why we went back, every answer was the same, '_il faut etre la_.'
+No, poor child, no--I have nothing to give you."
+
+These last words were addressed to a woman young and handsome, with a
+dress that a few weeks ago might have been admired for taste and elegance
+by the lady leaders of the ton, but was now darned, and dirty, and
+draggled.
+
+"Monsieur, I did not stop you to ask for alms.  You do not seem to
+remember me, M. Savarin."
+
+"But I do," said Lemercier, "surely I address Mademoiselle Julie
+Caumartin."
+
+"Ah, excuse me, _le petit_ Frederic," said Julie with a sickly attempt at
+coquettish sprightliness; "I had no eyes except for M. Savarin."
+
+"And why only for me, my poor child?" asked the kindhearted author.
+
+"Hush!"  She drew him aside.  "Because you can give me news of that
+monster Gustave.  It is not true, it cannot be true, that he is going to
+be married?"
+
+"Nay, surely, Mademoiselle, all connection between you and young Rameau
+has ceased for months--ceased from the date of that illness in July which
+nearly carried him off."
+
+"I resigned him to the care of his mother," said the girl; "but when he
+no longer needs a mother, he belongs to me.  Oh, consider, M. Savarin,
+for his sake I refused the most splendid offers!  When he sought me, I
+had my _coupe_, my opera-box, my _cachemires_, my jewels.  The Russians--
+the English--vied for my smiles.  But I loved the man.  I never loved
+before: I shall never love again; and after the sacrifices I have made
+for him, nothing shall induce me to give him up.  Tell me, I entreat, my
+dear M. Savarin, where he is hiding.  He has left the parental roof, and
+they refused there to give me his address."
+
+"My poor girl, don't be _mechante_.  It is quite true that Gustave Rameau
+is engaged to be married; and any attempt of yours to create scandal--"
+
+"Monsieur," interrupted Julie, vehemently, "don't talk to me about
+scandal!  The man is mine, and no one else shall have him.  His address?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," cried Savarin, angrily, "find it out for yourself."
+Then--repentant of rudeness to one so young and so desolate--he added, in
+mild expostulatory accents: "Come, come, _ma belle enfant_, be
+reasonable: Gustave is no loss.  He is reduced to poverty."
+
+"So much the better.  When he was well off I never cost him more than a
+supper at the _Maison Doree_; and if he is poor he shall marry me, and I
+will support him!"
+
+"You!--and how?"
+
+"By my profession when peace comes; and meanwhile I have offers from a
+_cafe_ to recite warlike songs.  Ah!  you shake your head incredulously.
+The ballet-dancer recite verses?  Yes!  he taught me to recite his own
+_Soyez bon pour moi_.  M. Savarin! do say where I can find _mon homme_."
+
+"No."
+
+"That is your last word?"
+
+"It is."
+
+The girl drew her thin shawl round her and hurried off.  Savarin rejoined
+his friends.  "Is that the way you console yourself for the absence of
+Madame?" asked De Breze, drily.
+
+"Fie!" cried Savarin, indignantly; "such bad jokes are ill-timed.  What
+strange mixtures of good and bad, of noble and base, every stratum of
+Paris life contains!  There is that poor girl, in one way contemptible,
+no doubt, and yet in another way she has an element of grandeur.  On the
+whole, at Paris, the women, with all their faults, are of finer mould
+than the men."
+
+"French gallantry has always admitted that truth," said Lemercier.  "Fox,
+Fox, Fox."  Uttering this cry, he darted forward after the dog, who had
+strayed a few yards to salute another dog led by a string, and caught the
+animal in his arms.  "Pardon me," he exclaimed, returning to his friends,
+"but there are so many snares for dogs at present.  They are just coming
+into fashion for roasts, and Fox is so plump."
+
+"I thought," said Savarin, "that it was resolved at all the sporting
+clubs that, be the pinch of famine ever so keen, the friend of man should
+not be eaten."
+
+"That was while the beef lasted; but since we have come to cats, who
+shall predict immunity to dogs?  _Quid intactum nefasti linquimus_?
+Nothing is sacred from the hand of rapine."
+
+The church of the Madeleine now stood before them. _Moblots_ were playing
+pitch-and-toss on its steps.
+
+"I don't wish you to accompany me, Messieurs," said Lemercier,
+apologetically, "but I am going to enter the church."
+
+"To pray?" asked De Breze, in profound astonishment.  "Not exactly; but I
+want to speak to my friend Rochebriant, and I know I shall find him
+there."
+
+"Praying?" again asked De Breze.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is curious--a young Parisian exquisite at prayer--that is worth
+seeing.  Let us enter, too, Savarin."
+
+They enter the church.  It is filled, and even the sceptical De Breze is
+impressed and awed by the sight.  An intense fervour pervades the
+congregation.  The majority, it is true, are women, many of them in deep
+mourning, and many of their faces mourning deeper than the dress.
+Everywhere may be seen gushing tears, and everywhere faintly heard the
+sound of stifled sighs.  Besides the women are men of all ages--young,
+middle-aged, old, with heads bowed and hands clasped, pale, grave, and
+earnest.  Most of them were evidently of the superior grade of life--
+nobles, and the higher bourgeoisie: few of the _ouvrier_ class, very few,
+and these were of an earlier generation.  I except soldiers, of whom
+there were many, from the provincial Mobiles, chiefly Bretons; you know
+the Breton soldiers by the little cross worn on their kepis.
+
+Among them Lemercier at once distinguished the noble countenance of Alain
+de Rochebriant.  De Breze and Savarin looked at each other with solemn
+eyes.  I know not when either had last been within a church; perhaps both
+were startled to find that religion still existed in Paris--and largely
+exist it does, though little seen on the surface of society, little to be
+estimated by the articles of journals and the reports of foreigners.
+Unhappily, those among whom it exists are not the ruling class--are of
+the classes that are dominated over and obscured in every country the
+moment the populace becomes master.  And at that moment the journals
+chiefly read were warring more against the Deity than the Prussians--were
+denouncing soldiers who attended mass.  "The Gospel certainly makes a bad
+soldier," writes the patriot Pyat.
+
+Lemercier knelt down quietly.  The other two men crept noiselessly out,
+and stood waiting for him on the steps, watching the _Moblots_ (Parisian
+_Moblots_) at play.
+
+"I should not wait for the _roturier_ if he had not promised me a
+_roti_," said the Vicomte de Breze, with a pitiful attempt at the
+patrician wit of the ancien regime.
+
+Savarin shrugged his shoulders.  "I am not included in the invitation,"
+said he, "and therefore free to depart.  I must go and look up a former
+_confrere_ who was an enthusiastic Red Republican, and I fear does not
+get so much to eat since he has no longer an Emperor to abuse."
+
+So Savarin went away.  A few minutes afterwards Lemercier emerged from
+the church with Alain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+"I knew I should find you in the Madeleine," said Lemercier, "and I
+wished much to know when you had news from Duplessis.  He and your fair
+fiancee are with your aunt still staying at Rochebriant?"
+
+"Certainly.  A pigeon arrived this morning with a few lines.  All well
+there."
+
+"And Duplessis thinks, despite the war, that he shall be able, when the
+time comes, to pay Louvier the mortgage-sum?"
+
+"He never doubts that.  His credit in London is so good.  But of course
+all works of improvement are stopped."
+
+"Pray did he mention me?--anything about the messenger who was to pierce
+the Prussian lines?"
+
+"What! has the man not arrived?  It is two weeks since he left."
+
+"The Uhlans have no doubt shot him--the assassins, and drunk up my 25,000
+francs--the thieves."
+
+"I hope not.  But in case of delay, Duplessis tells me I am to remit to
+you 2,000 francs for your present wants.  I will send them to you this
+evening."
+
+"How the deuce do you possess such a sum?"
+
+"I came from Brittany with a purse well filled.  Of course I could have
+no scruples in accepting money from my destined father-in-law."
+
+"And you can spare this sum?"
+
+"Certainly--the State now provides for me; I am in command of a Breton
+company."
+
+"True.  Come and dine with me and De Breze."
+
+"Alas!  I cannot.  I have to see both the Vandemars before I return to
+the camp for the night.  And now-hush--come this way (drawing Frederic
+further from De Breze), I have famous news for you.  A sortie on a grand
+scale is imminent; in a few days we may hope for it."
+
+"I have heard that so often that I am incredulous."
+
+"Take it as a fact now."
+
+"What!  Trochu has at last matured his plan?"
+
+"He has changed its original design, which was to cut through the
+Prussian lines to Rouen, occupying there the richest country for
+supplies, guarding the left bank of the Seine and a watercourse to convoy
+them to Paris.  The incidents of war prevented that: he has a better plan
+now.  The victory of the army of the Loire at Orleans opens a new
+enterprise.  We shall cut our way through the Prussians, join that army,
+and with united forces fall on the enemy at the rear.  Keep this a secret
+as yet, but rejoice with me that we shall prove to the invaders what men
+who fight for their native soil can do under the protection of Heaven."
+
+"Fox, Fox, _mon cheri_," said Lemercier, as he walked towards the _cafe
+Riche_ with De Breze; "thou shalt have a _festin de Balthazar_ under the
+protection of Heaven."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+On leaving Lemercier and De Breze, Savarin regained the Boulevard, and
+pausing every now and then to exchange a few words with acquaintances--
+the acquaintances of the genial author were numerous--turned into the
+_quartier_ Chaussee d'Antin, and gaining a small neat house, with a
+richly-ornamented _facade_, mounted very clean, well-kept stairs to a
+third story.  On one of the doors on the landing-place was nailed a card,
+inscribed, "Gustave Rameau, _homme de lettres_."  Certainly it is not
+usual in Paris thus to _afficher_ one's self as a "man of letters"?  But
+Genius scorns what is usual.  Had not Victor Hugo left in the hotel-books
+on the Rhine his designation "homme de lettres"?  Did not the heir to one
+of the loftiest houses in the peerage of England, and who was also a
+first-rate amateur in painting, inscribe on his studio when in Italy, "--
+_artiste_"?  Such examples, no doubt, were familiar to Gustave Rameau,
+and "_homme de lettres_" was on the scrap of pasteboard nailed to his
+door.
+
+Savarin rang; the door opened, and Gustave appeared.  The poet was, of
+course, picturesquely attired.  In his day of fashion he had worn within
+doors a very pretty fanciful costume, designed after portraits of the
+young Raffaelle; that costume he had preserved--he wore it now.  It
+looked very threadbare, and the _pourpoint_ very soiled.  But the beauty
+of the poet's face had survived the lustre of the garments.  True, thanks
+to absinthe, the cheeks had become somewhat puffy and bloated.  Grey was
+distinctly visible in the long ebon tresses.  But still the beauty of the
+face was of that rare type which a Thorwaldsen or a Gibson seeking a
+model for a Narcissus would have longed to fix into marble.
+
+Gustave received his former chief with a certain air of reserved dignity;
+led him into his chamber, only divided by a curtain from his
+accommodation for washing and slumber, and placed him in an arm-chair
+beside a drowsy fire--fuel had already become very dear.
+
+"Gustave," said Savarin, "are you in a mood favourable to a little
+serious talk?"
+
+"Serious talk from M. Savarin is a novelty too great not to command my
+profoundest interest."
+
+"Thank you,--and to begin: I who know the world and mankind advise you,
+who do not, never to meet a man who wishes to do you a kindness with an
+ungracious sarcasm.  Irony is a weapon I ought to be skilled in, but
+weapons are used against enemies, and it is only a tyro who flourishes
+his rapier in the face of his friends."
+
+"I was not aware that M. Savarin still permitted me to regard him as a
+friend."
+
+"Because I discharged the duties of friend--remonstrated, advised, and
+warned.  However, let bygones be bygones.  I entreated you not to quit
+the safe shelter of the paternal roof.  You insisted on doing so.  I
+entreated you not to send to one of the most ferocious of the Red, or
+rather, the Communistic, journals, articles, very eloquent, no doubt, but
+which would most seriously injure you in the eyes of quiet, orderly
+people, and compromise your future literary career for the sake of a
+temporary flash in the pan during a very evanescent period of
+revolutionary excitement.  You scorned my adjurations, but at all events
+you had the grace not to append your true name to those truculent
+effusions.  In literature, if literature revive in France, we two are
+henceforth separated.  But I do not forego the friendly interest I took
+in you in the days when you were so continually in my house.  My wife,
+who liked you so cordially, implored me to look after you during her
+absence from Paris, and, _enfin, mon pauvre garcon_, it would grieve me
+very much if, when she comes back, I had to say to her, 'Gustave Rameau
+has thrown away the chance of redemption and of happiness which you
+deemed was secure to him.' _A l'oeil malade, la lumiere nuit_."
+
+So saying, he held out his hand kindly.
+
+Gustave, who was far from deficient in affectionate or tender impulses,
+took the hand respectfully, and pressed it warmly.
+
+"Forgive me if I have been ungracious, M. Savarin, and vouchsafe to hear
+my explanation."
+
+"Willingly, _mon garcon_."
+
+"When I became convalescent, well enough to leave my father's house,
+there were circumstances which compelled me to do so.  A young man
+accustomed to the life of a _garcon_ can't be always tied to his mother's
+apron-strings."
+
+"Especially if the apron-pocket does not contain a bottle of absinthe,"
+said Savarin, drily.  "You may well colour and try to look angry; but I
+know that the doctor strictly forbade the use of that deadly _liqueur_,
+and enjoined your mother to keep strict watch on your liability to its
+temptations.  And hence one cause of your ennui under the paternal roof.
+But if there you could not imbibe absinthe, you were privileged to enjoy
+a much diviner intoxication.  There you could have the foretaste of
+domestic bliss,--the society of the girl you loved, and who was pledged
+to become your wife.  Speak frankly.  Did not that society itself begin
+to be wearisome?"
+
+"No," cried Gustave, eagerly, "it was not wearisome--"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"But it could not be all-sufficing to a soul of fire like mine."
+
+"Hem," murmured Savarin--"a soul of fire!  This is very interesting; pray
+go on."
+
+"The calm, cold, sister-like affection of a childish undeveloped nature,
+which knew no passion except for art, and was really so little
+emancipated from the nursery as to take for serious truth all the old
+myths of religion--such companionship may be very soothing and pleasant
+when one is lying on one's sofa, and must live by rule, but when one
+regains the vigour of youth and health--"
+
+"Do not pause," said Savarin, gazing with more compassion than envy on
+that melancholy impersonation of youth and health.  "When one regains
+that vigour of which I myself have no recollection, what happens?"
+
+"The thirst for excitement, the goads of ambition, the irresistible
+claims which the world urges upon genius, return."
+
+"And that genius, finding itself at the North Pole amid Cimmerian
+darkness in the atmosphere of a childish intellect--in other words, the
+society of a pure-minded virgin, who, though a good romance-writer,
+writes nothing but what a virgin may read, and, though a _bel esprit_,
+says her prayers and goes to church--then genius--well, pardon my
+ignorance, what does genius do?"
+
+"Oh, M. Savarin, M. Savarin! don't let us talk any more.  There is no
+sympathy between us.  I cannot bear that bloodless, mocking, cynical mode
+of dealing with grand emotions, which belongs to the generation of the
+Doctrinaires.  I am not a Thiers or a Guizot."
+
+"Good heavens! who ever accused you of being either?  I did not mean to
+be cynical.  Mademoiselle Cicogna has often said I am, but I did not
+think you would.  Pardon me.  I quite agree with the philosopher who
+asserted that the wisdom of the past was an imposture, that the meanest
+intellect now living is wiser than the greatest intellect which is buried
+in Pere la Chaise; because the dwarf who follows the giant, when perched
+on the shoulders of the giant, sees farther than the giant ever could.
+_Allez_.  I go in for your generation.  I abandon Guizot and Thiers.  Do
+condescend and explain to my dull understanding, as the inferior mortal
+of a former age, what are the grand emotions which impel a soul of fire
+in your wiser generation.  The thirst of excitement--what excitement?
+The goads of ambition--what ambition?"
+
+"A new social system is struggling from the dissolving elements of the
+old one, as, in the fables of priestcraft, the soul frees itself from the
+body which has become ripe for the grave.  Of that new system I aspire to
+be a champion--a leader.  Behold the excitement that allures me, the
+ambition that goads."
+
+"Thank you," said Savarin, meekly; "I am answered.  I recognise the dwarf
+perched on the back of the giant.  Quitting these lofty themes, I venture
+to address to you now one simple matter-of-fact question: How about
+Mademoiselle Cicogna?  Do you think you can induce her to transplant
+herself to the new social system, which I presume will abolish, among
+other obsolete myths, the institution of marriage?"
+
+"M. Savarin, your question offends me.  Theoretically I am opposed to the
+existing superstitions that encumber the very simple principle by which
+may be united two persons so long as they desire the union, and separated
+so soon as the union becomes distasteful to either.  But I am perfectly
+aware that such theories would revolt a young lady like Mademoiselle
+Cicogna.  I have never even named them to her, and our engagement holds
+good."
+
+"Engagement of marriage?  No period for the ceremony fixed?"
+
+"That is not my fault.  I urged it on Isaura with all earnestness before
+I left my father's house."
+
+"That was long after the siege had begun.  Listen to me, Gustave.  No
+persuasion of mine or my wife's, nor Mrs. Morley's, could induce Isaura
+to quit Paris while it was yet time.  She said very simply that, having
+pledged her truth and hand to you, it would be treason to honour and duty
+if she should allow any considerations for herself to be even discussed
+so long as you needed her presence.  You were then still suffering, and,
+though convalescent, not without danger of a relapse.  And your mother
+said to her--I heard the words: ''Tis not for his bodily health I could
+dare to ask you to stay, when every man who can afford it is sending away
+his wife, sisters, daughters.  As for that, I should suffice to tend him;
+but if you go, I resign all hope for the health of his mind and his
+soul.'  I think at Paris there may be female poets and artists whom that
+sort of argument would not have much influenced.  But it so happens that
+Isaura is not a Parisienne.  She believes in those old myths which you
+think fatal to sympathies with yourself; and those old myths also lead
+her to believe that where a woman has promised she will devote her life
+to a man, she cannot forsake him when told by his mother that she is
+necessary to the health of his mind and his soul.  Stay.  Before you
+interrupt me, let me finish what I have to say.  It appears that, so soon
+as your bodily health was improved, you felt that your mind and your soul
+could take care of themselves; and certainly it seems to me that Isaura
+Cicogna is no longer of the smallest use to either."
+
+Rameau was evidently much disconcerted by this speech.  He saw what
+Savarin was driving at--the renunciation of all bond between Isaura and
+himself.  He was not prepared for such renunciation.  He still felt for
+the Italian as much of love as he could feel for any woman who did not
+kneel at his feet, as at those of Apollo condescending to the homage of
+Arcadian maids.  But on the one hand, he felt that many circumstances had
+occurred since the disaster at Sedan to render Isaura a very much less
+desirable _partie_ than she had been when he had first wrung from her the
+pledge of betrothal.  In the palmy times of a Government in which
+literature and art commanded station and insured fortune, Isaura, whether
+as authoress or singer, was a brilliant marriage for Gustave Rameau.  She
+had also then an assured and competent, if modest, income.  But when
+times change, people change with them.  As the income for the moment (and
+Heaven only can say how long that moment might last), Isaura's income had
+disappeared.  It will be recollected that Louvier had invested her whole
+fortune in the houses to be built in the street called after his name.
+No houses, even when built, paid any rent now.  Louvier had quitted
+Paris; and Isaura could only be subsisting upon such small sum as she
+might have had in hand before the siege commenced.  All career in such
+literature and art as Isaura adorned was at a dead stop.  Now, to do
+Rameau justice, he was by no means an avaricious or mercenary man.  But
+he yearned for modes of life to which money was essential.  He liked his
+"comforts;" and his comforts included the luxuries of elegance and show-
+comforts not to be attained by marriage with Isaura under existing
+circumstances.
+
+Nevertheless it is quite true that he had urged her to marry him at once,
+before he had quitted his father's house; and her modest shrinking from
+such proposal, however excellent the reasons for delay in the national
+calamities of the time, as well as the poverty which the calamity
+threatened, had greatly wounded his _amour propre_.  He had always felt
+that her affection for him was not love; and though he could reconcile
+himself to that conviction when many solid advantages were attached to
+the prize of her love, and when he was ill, and penitent, and maudlin,
+and the calm affection of a saint seemed to him infinitely preferable to
+the vehement passion of a sinner,--yet when Isaura was only Isaura by
+herself--Isaura minus all the _et cetera_ which had previously been taken
+into account--the want of adoration for himself very much lessened her
+value.
+
+Still, though he acquiesced in the delayed fulfilment of the engagement
+with Isaura, he had no thought of withdrawing from the engagement itself,
+and after a slight pause he replied: "You do me great injustice if you
+suppose that the occupations to which I devote myself render me less
+sensible to the merits of Mademoiselle Cicogna, or less eager for our
+union.  On the contrary, I will confide to you--as a man of the world--
+one main reason why I quitted my father's house, and why I desire to keep
+my present address a secret.  Mademoiselle Caumartin conceived for me a
+passion--a caprice--which was very flattering for a time, but which
+latterly became very troublesome.  Figure to yourself--she daily came to
+our house while I was lying ill, and with the greatest difficulty my
+mother got her out of it.  That was not all.  She pestered me with
+letters containing all sorts of threats--nay, actually kept watch at the
+house; and one day when I entered the carriage with my mother and Signora
+Venosta for a drive in the Bois (meaning to call for Isaura by the way),
+she darted to the carriage-door, caught my hand, and would have made a
+scene if the coachman had given her leave to do so.  Luckily he had the
+tact to whip on his horses, and we escaped.  I had some little difficulty
+in convincing the Signora Venosta that the girl was crazed.  But I felt
+the danger I incurred of her coming upon me some moment when in company
+with Isaura, and so I left my father's house; and naturally wishing to
+steer clear of this vehement little demon till I am safely married, I
+keep my address a secret from all who are likely to tell her of it."
+
+"You do wisely if you are really afraid of her, and cannot trust your
+nerves to say to her plainly, 'I am engaged to be married; all is at an
+end between us.  Do not force me to employ the police to protect myself
+from unwelcome importunities.'"
+
+"Honestly speaking, I doubt if I have the nerve to do that, and I doubt
+still more if it would be of any avail.  It is very _ennuayant_ to be so
+passionately loved; but, _que voulez vous_?  It is my fate."
+
+"Poor martyr!  I condole with you: and, to say truth, it was chiefly to
+warn you of Mademoiselle Caumartin's pertinacity that I call this
+evening."
+
+Here Savarin related the particulars of his _rencontre_ with Julie, and
+concluded by saying: "I suppose I may take your word of honour that you
+will firmly resist all temptation to renew a connection which would be so
+incompatible with the respect due to your fiancee?  Fatherless and
+protectorless as Isaura is, I feel bound to act as a virtual guardian to
+one in whom my wife takes so deep an interest, and to whom, as she
+thinks, she had some hand in bringing about your engagement: she is
+committed to no small responsibilities.  Do not allow poor Julie, whom I
+sincerely pity, to force on me the unpleasant duty of warning your
+fiancee of the dangers to which she might be subjected by marriage with
+an Adonis whose fate it is to be so profoundly beloved by the sex in
+general, and ballet nymphs in particular."
+
+"There is no chance of so disagreeable a duty being incumbent on you,
+M. Savarin.  Of course, what I myself have told you in confidence is
+sacred."
+
+"Certainly.  There are things in the life of a _garcon_ before marriage
+which would be an affront to the modesty of his _fiancee_ to communicate
+and discuss.  But then those things must belong exclusively to the past
+and cast no shadow over the future.  I will not interrupt you further.
+No doubt you have work for the night before you.  Do the Red journalists
+for whom you write pay enough to support you in these terribly dear
+times?"
+
+"Scarcely.  But I look forward to wealth and fame in the future.  And
+you?"
+
+"I just escape starvation.  If the siege last much longer, it is not of
+the gout I shall die.  Good-night to you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Isaura had, as we have seen, been hitherto saved by the siege and its
+consequences from the fulfilment of her engagement to Gustave Rameau; and
+since he had quitted his father's house she had not only seen less of
+him, but a certain chill crept into his converse in the visits he paid to
+her.  The compassionate feeling his illness had excited, confirmed by the
+unwonted gentleness of his mood, and the short-lived remorse with which
+he spoke of his past faults and follies, necessarily faded away in
+proportion as he regained that kind of febrile strength which was his
+normal state of health, and with it the arrogant self-assertion which was
+ingrained in his character.  But it was now more than ever that she
+became aware of the antagonism between all that constituted his inner
+life and her own.  It was not that he volunteered in her presence the
+express utterance of those opinions, social or religious, which he
+addressed to the public in the truculent journal to which, under a _nom
+de plume_, he was the most inflammatory contributor.  Whether it was that
+he shrank from insulting the ears of the pure virgin whom he had wooed as
+wife with avowals of his disdain of marriage bonds, or perhaps from
+shocking yet more her womanly humanity and her religious faith by cries
+for the blood of anti-republican traitors and the downfall of Christian
+altars; or whether he yet clung, though with relapsing affection, to the
+hold which her promise had imposed on him, and felt that that hold would
+be for ever gone, and that she would recoil from his side in terror and
+dismay, if she once learned that the man who had implored her to be his
+saving angel from the comparatively mild errors of youth, had so belied
+his assurance, so mocked her credulity, as deliberately to enter into
+active warfare against all that he knew her sentiments regarded as noble
+and her conscience received as divine: despite the suppression of avowed
+doctrine on his part, the total want of sympathy between these
+antagonistic natures made itself felt by both--more promptly felt by
+Isaura.  If Gustave did not frankly announce to her in that terrible time
+(when all that a little later broke out on the side of the Communists was
+more or less forcing ominous way to the lips of those who talked with
+confidence to each other, whether to approve or to condemn) the
+associates with whom he was leagued, the path to which he had committed
+his career--still for her instincts for genuine Art--which for its
+development needs the serenity of peace, which for its ideal needs dreams
+that soar into the Infinite--Gustave had only the scornful sneer of the
+man who identifies with his ambition the violent upset of all that
+civilisation has established in this world, and the blank negation of all
+that patient hope and heroic aspiration which humanity carries on into
+the next.
+
+On his side, Gustave Rameau, who was not without certain fine and
+delicate attributes in a complicated nature over which the personal
+vanity and the mobile temperament of the Parisian reigned supreme, chafed
+at the restraints imposed on him.  No matter what a man's doctrines may
+be--however abominable you and I may deem them--man desires to find, in
+the dearest fellowship he can establish, that sympathy in the woman his
+choice singles out from her sex-deference to his opinions, sympathy with
+his objects, as man.  So, too, Gustave's sense of honour and according to
+his own Parisian code that sense was keen--became exquisitely stung by
+the thought that he was compelled to play the part of a mean dissimulator
+to the girl for whose opinions he had the profoundest contempt.  How
+could these two, betrothed to each other, not feel, though without coming
+to open dissension, that between them had flowed the inlet of water by
+which they had been riven asunder?  What man, if he can imagine himself a
+Gustave Rameau, can blame the revolutionist absorbed in ambitious
+projects for turning the pyramid of society topsy-turvy, if he shrank
+more and more from the companionship of a betrothed with whom he could
+not venture to exchange three words without caution and reserve?  And
+what woman can blame an Isaura if she felt a sensation of relief at the
+very neglect of the affianced whom she had compassionated and could never
+love?
+
+Possibly the reader may best judge of the state of Isaura's mind at this
+time by a few brief extracts from an imperfect fragmentary journal, in
+which, amid saddened and lonely hours, she held converse with herself.
+
+"One day at Enghien I listened silently to a conversation between M.
+Savarin and the Englishman, who sought to explain the conception of duty
+in which the German poet has given such noble utterance to the thoughts
+of the German philosopher--viz., that moral aspiration has the same goal
+as the artistic,--the attainment to the calm delight wherein the pain of
+effort disappears in the content of achievement.  Thus in life, as in
+art, it is through discipline that we arrive at freedom, and duty only
+completes itself when all motives, all actions, are attuned into one
+harmonious whole, and it is not striven for as duty, but enjoyed as
+happiness.  M. Savarin treated this theory with the mockery with which
+the French wit is ever apt to treat what it terms German mysticism.
+According to him, duty must always be a hard and difficult struggle; and
+he said laughingly, 'Whenever a man says, "I have done my duty," it is
+with a long face and a mournful sigh.'
+
+"Ah, how devoutly I listened to the Englishman! how harshly the
+Frenchman's irony jarred upon my ears!  And yet now, in the duty that
+life imposes on me, to fulfil which I strain every power vouchsafed to my
+nature, and seek to crush down every impulse that rebels, where is the
+promised calm, where any approach to the content of achievement?
+Contemplating the way before me, the Beautiful even of Art has vanished.
+I see but cloud and desert.  Can this which I assume to be duty really be
+so?  Ah, is it not sin even to ask my heart that question?
+
+"Madame Rameau is very angry with her son for his neglect both of his
+parents and of me.  I have had to take his part against her.  I would not
+have him lose their love.  Poor Gustave!  But when Madame Rameau suddenly
+said to-day: 'I erred in seeking the union between thee and Gustave.
+Retract thy promise; in doing so thou wilt be justified,'--oh, the
+strange joy that flashed upon me as she spoke.  Am I justified?  Am I?
+Oh, if that Englishman had never crossed my path!  Oh, if I had never
+loved! or if in the last time we met he had not asked for my love, and
+confessed his own!  Then, I think, I could honestly reconcile my
+conscience with my longings, and say to Gustave, 'We do not suit each
+other; be we both released!' But now-is it that Gustave is really changed
+from what he was, when in despondence at my own lot, and in pitying
+belief that I might brighten and exalt his, I plighted my troth to him?
+or is it not rather that the choice I thus voluntarily made became so
+intolerable a thought the moment I knew I was beloved and sought by
+another; and from that moment I lost the strength I had before,--strength
+to silence the voice at my own heart?  What! is it the image of that
+other one which is persuading me to be false?--to exaggerate the
+failings, to be blind to the merits of him who has a right to say, 'I am
+what I was when thou didst pledge thyself to take me for better or for
+worse'?
+
+"Gustave has been here after an absence of several days.  He was not
+alone.  The good Abbe Vertpre and Madame de Vandemar, with her son, M.
+Raoul, were present.  They had come on matters connected with our
+ambulance.  They do not know of my engagement to Gustave; and seeing him
+in the uniform of a National Guard, the Abbe courteously addressed to him
+some questions as to the possibility of checking the terrible increase of
+the vice of intoxication, so alien till of late to the habits of the
+Parisians, and becoming fatal to discipline and bodily endurance,--could
+the number of the _cantines_ on the ramparts be more limited?  Gustave
+answered with rudeness and bitter sarcasm, 'Before priests could be
+critics in military matters they must undertake military service
+themselves.'
+
+"The Abbe replied with unalterable good-humour, 'But, in order to
+criticise the effects of drunkenness, must one get drunk one's self?'
+Gustave was put out, and retired into a corner of the room, keeping
+sullen silence till my other visitors left.
+
+"Then before I could myself express the pain his words and manner had
+given me, he said abruptly, 'I wonder how you can tolerate the
+_tartuferie_ which may amuse on the comic stage, but in the tragedy of
+these times is revolting.'  This speech roused my anger, and the
+conversation that ensued was the gravest that had ever passed between us.
+
+"If Gustave were of stronger nature and more concentrated will, I believe
+that the only feelings I should have for him would be antipathy and
+dread.  But it is his very weaknesses and inconsistencies that secure to
+him a certain tenderness of interest.  I think he could never be judged
+without great indulgence by women; there is in him so much of the child,
+--wayward, irritating one moment, and the next penitent, affectionate.
+One feels as if persistence in evil were impossible to one so delicate
+both in mind and form.  That peculiar order of genius to which he belongs
+seems as if it ought to be so estranged from all directions, violent or
+coarse.  When in poetry he seeks to utter some audacious and defying
+sentiment, the substance melts away in daintiness of expression, in soft,
+lute-like strains of slender music.  And when he has stung, angered,
+revolted my heart the most, suddenly he subsides into such pathetic
+gentleness, such tearful remorse, that I feel as if resentment to one so
+helpless, desertion of one who must fall without the support of a
+friendly hand, were a selfish cruelty.  It seems to me as if I were
+dragged towards a precipice by a sickly child clinging to my robe.
+
+"But in this last conversation with him, his language in regard to
+subjects I hold most sacred drew forth from me words which startled him,
+and which may avail to save him from that worst insanity of human minds,
+--the mimicry of the Titans who would have dethroned a God to restore a
+Chaos.  I told him frankly that I had only promised to share his fate on
+my faith in his assurance of my power to guide it heavenward; and that if
+the opinions he announced were seriously entertained, and put forth in
+defiance of heaven itself, we were separated for ever.  I told him how
+earnestly, in the calamities of the time, my own soul had sought to take
+refuge in thoughts and hopes beyond the earth; and how deeply many a
+sentiment that in former days passed by me with a smile in the light talk
+of the salons, now shocked me as an outrage on the reverence which the
+mortal child owes to the Divine Father.  I owned to him how much of
+comfort, of sustainment, of thought and aspiration, elevated beyond the
+sphere of Art in which I had hitherto sought the purest air, the loftiest
+goal, I owed to intercourse with minds like those of the Abbe de Vertpre;
+and how painfully I felt as if I were guilty of ingratitude when he
+compelled me to listen to insults on those whom I recognised as
+benefactors.
+
+"I wished to speak sternly; but it is my great misfortune, my prevalent
+weakness, that I cannot be stern when I ought to be.  It is with me in
+life as in art.  I never could on the stage have taken the part of a
+Norma or a Medea.  If I attempt in fiction a character which deserves
+condemnation, I am untrue to poetic justice.  I cannot condemn and
+execute; I can but compassionate and pardon the creature I myself have
+created.  I was never in the real world stern but to one; and then, alas!
+it was because I loved where I could no longer love with honour; and I,
+knowing my weakness, had terror lest I should yield.
+
+"So Gustave did not comprehend from my voice, my manner, how gravely I
+was in earnest.  But, himself softened, affected to tears, he confessed
+his own faults--ceased to argue in order to praise; and--and--uttering
+protestations seemingly the most sincere, he left me bound to him still
+--bound to him still--woe is me!"
+
+It is true that Isaura had come more directly under the influence of
+religion than she had been in the earlier dates of this narrative.  There
+is a time in the lives of most of us, and especially in the lives of
+women, when, despondent of all joy in an earthly future, and tortured by
+conflicts between inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and
+fervour of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the Divine
+Love; seeking to rebaptise ourselves in the fountain of its mercy, taking
+thence the only hopes that can cheer, the only strength that can sustain
+us.  Such a time had come to Isaura.  Formerly she had escaped from the
+griefs of the work-a-day world into the garden-land of Art.  Now, Art had
+grown unwelcome to her, almost hateful.  Gone was the spell from the
+garden-land; its flowers were faded, its paths were stony, its sunshine
+had vanished in mist and rain.  There are two voices of Nature in the
+soul of the genuine artist,--that is, of him who, because he can create,
+comprehends the necessity of the great Creator.  Those voices are never
+both silent.  When one is hushed, the other becomes distinctly audible.
+The one speaks to him of Art, the other of Religion.
+
+At that period several societies for the relief and tendance of the
+wounded had been formed by the women of Paris,--the earliest, if I
+mistake not, by ladies of the highest rank--amongst whom were the
+Comtesse de Vandemar and the Contessa di Rimini--though it necessarily
+included others of stations less elevated.  To this society, at the
+request of Alain de Rochebriant and of Enguerrand, Isaura had eagerly
+attached herself.  It occupied much of her time; and in connection with
+it she was brought much into sympathetic acquaintance with Raoul de
+Vandemar--the most zealous and active member of that Society of St.
+Francois de Sales, to which belonged other young nobles of the Legitimist
+creed.  The passion of Raoul's life was the relief of human suffering.
+In him was personified the ideal of Christian charity.  I think all, or
+most of us, have known what it is to pass under the influence of a nature
+that is so far akin to ours that it desires to become something better
+and higher than it is--that desire being paramount in ourselves--but
+seeks to be that something in ways not akin to, but remote from, the ways
+in which we seek it.  When this contact happens, either one nature, by
+the mere force of will, subjugates and absorbs the other, or both, while
+preserving their own individuality, apart and independent, enrich
+themselves by mutual interchange, and the asperities which differences of
+taste and sentiment in detail might otherwise provoke melt in the
+sympathy which unites spirits striving with equal earnestness to rise
+nearer to the unseen and unattainable Source, which they equally
+recognise as Divine.
+
+Perhaps, had these two persons met a year ago in the ordinary intercourse
+of the world, neither would have detected the sympathy of which I speak.
+Raoul was not without the prejudice against artists and writers of
+romance, that is shared by many who cherish the persuasion that all is
+vanity which does not concentrate imagination and intellect in the
+destinies of the soul hereafter; and Isaura might have excited his
+compassion, certainly not his reverence.  While to her, his views on all
+that seeks to render the actual life attractive and embellished, through
+the accomplishments of Muse and Grace, would have seemed the narrow-
+minded asceticism of a bigot.  But now, amid the direful calamities of
+the time, the beauty of both natures became visible to each.  To the eyes
+of Isaura tenderness became predominant in the monastic self-denial of
+Raoul.  To the eyes of Raoul, devotion became predominant in the gentle
+thoughtfulness of Isaura.  Their intercourse was in ambulance and
+hospital-in care for the wounded, in prayer for the dying.  Ah! it is
+easy to declaim against the frivolities and vices of Parisian society as
+they appear on the surface; and, in revolutionary times, it is the very
+worst of Paris that ascends in scum to the top.  But descend below the
+surface, even in that demoralising suspense of order, and nowhere on
+earth might the angel have beheld the image of humanity more amply
+vindicating its claim to the heritage of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The warning announcement of some great effort on the part of the
+besieged, which Alain had given to Lemercier, was soon to be fulfilled.
+
+For some days the principal thoroughfares were ominously lined with
+military _convois_.  The loungers on the Boulevards stopped to gaze on
+the long defiles of troops and cannons, commissariat conveyances, and,
+saddening accompaniments! the vehicles of various ambulances for the
+removal of the wounded.  With what glee the loungers said to each other
+"_Enfin_!"  Among all the troops that Paris sent forth, none were so
+popular as those which Paris had not nurtured--the sailors.  From the
+moment they arrived, the sailors had been the pets of the capital.  They
+soon proved themselves the most notable contrast to that force which
+Paris herself had produced--the National Guard.  Their frames were hardy,
+their habits active, their discipline perfect, their manners mild and
+polite.  "Oh, if all our troops were like these!" was the common
+exclamation of the Parisians.
+
+At last burst forth upon Paris the proclamations of General Trochu and
+General Ducrot; the first brief, calm, and Breton-like, ending with
+"Putting our trust in God.  March on for our country:" the second more
+detailed, more candidly stating obstacles and difficulties, but fiery
+with eloquent enthusiasm, not unsupported by military statistics, in the
+400 cannon, two-thirds of which were of the largest calibre, that no
+material object could resist; more than 150,000 soldiers, all well armed,
+well equipped, abundantly provided with munitions, and all (_j'en a
+l'espoir_) animated by an irresistible ardour.  "For me," concludes the
+General, "I am resolved.  I swear before you, before the whole nation,
+that I will not re-enter Paris except as dead or victorious."
+
+At these proclamations, who then at Paris does not recall the burst of
+enthusiasm that stirred the surface?  Trochu became once more popular;
+even the Communistic or atheistic journals refrained from complaining
+that he attended mass, and invited his countrymen to trust in God.
+Ducrot was more than popular--he was adored.
+
+The several companies in which De Mauleon and Enguerrand served departed
+towards their post early on the same morning, that of the 28th.  All the
+previous night, while Enguerrand was buried in profound slumber, Raoul
+remained in his brother's room; sometimes on his knees before the ivory
+crucifix which had been their mother's last birthday gift to her youngest
+son--sometimes seated beside the bed in profound and devout meditation.
+At daybreak, Madame de Vandemar stole into the chamber.  Unconscious of
+his brother's watch, he had asked her to wake him in good time, for the
+young man was a sound sleeper.  Shading the candle she bore with one
+hand, with the other she drew aside the curtain, and looked at
+Enguerrand's calm fair face, its lips parted in the happy smile which
+seemed to carry joy with it wherever its sunshine played.  Her tears fell
+noiselessly on her darling's cheek; she then knelt down and prayed for
+strength.  As she rose she felt Raoul's arm around her; they looked at
+each other in silence; then she bowed her head and wakened Enguerrand
+with her lips.  "_Pas de querelle, mes amis_," he murmured, opening his
+sweet blue eyes drowsily.  "Ah, it was a dream!  I thought Jules and
+Emile [two young friends of his] were worrying each other; and you know,
+dear Raoul, that I am the most officious of peacemakers.  Time to rise,
+is it?  No peacemaking to-day.  Kiss me again, mother, and say 'Bless
+thee.'"
+
+"Bless thee, bless thee, my child," cried the mother, wrapping her arms
+passionately round him, and in tones choked with sobs.
+
+"Now leave me, _maman_," said Enguerrand, resorting to the infantine
+ordinary name, which he had not used for years.  "Raoul, stay and help me
+to dress.  I must be _tres beau_ to-day.  I shall join thee at breakfast,
+_maman_.  Early for such repast, but _l'appetit vient en mangeant_.  Mind
+the coffee is hot."
+
+Enguerrand, always careful of each detail of dress, was especially so
+that morning, and especially gay, humming the old air, "_Partant pour la
+Syrie_."  But his gaiety was checked when Raoul, taking from his breast a
+holy talisman, which he habitually wore there, suspended it with loving
+hands round his brother's neck.  It was a small crystal set in Byzantine
+filigree; imbedded in it was a small splinter of wood, said by pious
+tradition to be a relic of the Divine Cross.  It had been for centuries
+in the family of the Contessa di Rimini, and was given by her to Raoul,
+the only gift she had ever made him, as an emblem of the sinless purity
+of the affection that united those two souls in the bonds of the
+beautiful belief.
+
+"She bade me transfer it to thee to-day, my brother," said Raoul, simply;
+"and now without a pang I can gird on thee thy soldier's sword."
+
+Enguerrand clasped his brother in his arms, and kissed him with
+passionate fervour.  "Oh, Raoul, how I love thee! how good thou hast ever
+been to me! how many sins thou hast saved me from! how indulgent thou
+hast been to those from which thou couldst not save!  Think on that, my
+brother, in case we do not meet again on earth."
+
+"Hush, hush, Enguerrand!  No gloomy forebodings now!  Come, come hither,
+my half of life, my sunny half of life!" and uttering these words, he led
+Enguerrand towards the crucifix, and there, in deeper and more solemn
+voice, said, "Let us pray."  So the brothers knelt side by side, and
+Raoul prayed aloud as only such souls can pray.
+
+When they descended into the salon where breakfast was set out, they
+found assembled several of their relations, and some of Enguerrand's
+young friends not engaged in the sortie.  One or two of the latter,
+indeed, were disabled from fighting by wounds in former fields; they left
+their sick-beds to bid him good-bye.  Unspeakable was the affection this
+genial nature inspired in all who came into the circle of its winning
+magic; and when, tearing himself from them, he descended the stair, and
+passed with light step through the _Porte cochere_, there was a crowd
+around the house--so widely had his popularity spread among even the
+lower classes, from which the Mobiles in his regiment were chiefly
+composed.  He departed to the place of rendezvous amid a chorus of
+exhilarating cheers.
+
+Not thus lovingly tended on, not thus cordially greeted, was that equal
+idol of a former generation, Victor de Mauleon.  No pious friend prayed
+beside his couch, no loving kiss waked him from his slumbers.  At the
+grey of the November dawn he rose from a sleep which had no smiling
+dreams, with that mysterious instinct of punctual will which cannot even
+go to sleep without fixing beforehand the exact moment in which sleep
+shall end.  He, too, like Enguerrand, dressed himself with care--unlike
+Enguerrand, with care strictly soldier-like.  Then, seeing he had some
+little time yet before him, he rapidly revisited the pigeonholes and
+drawers in which might be found by prying eyes anything he would deny to
+them curiosity.  All that he found of this sort were some letters in
+female handwriting, tied together with faded ribbon, relics of earlier
+days, and treasured throughout later vicissitudes; letters from the
+English girl to whom he had briefly referred in his confession to
+Louvier,--the only girl he had ever wooed as his wife.  She was the only
+daughter of highborn Roman Catholics, residing at the time of his youth
+in Paris.  Reluctantly they had assented to his proposals; joyfully they
+had retracted their assent when his affairs had become so involved; yet
+possibly the motive that led him to his most ruinous excesses--the
+gambling of the turf--had been caused by the wild hope of a nature, then
+fatally sanguine, to retrieve the fortune that might suffice to satisfy
+the parents.  But during his permitted courtship the lovers had
+corresponded.  Her letters were full of warm, if innocent, tenderness--
+till came the last cold farewell.  The family had long ago returned to
+England; he concluded, of course, that she had married another.
+
+Near to these letters lay the papers which had served to vindicate his
+honour in that old affair, in which the unsought love of another had
+brought on him shame and affliction.  As his eye fell on the last, he
+muttered to him self, "I kept these, to clear my repute.  Can I keep
+those, when, if found, they might compromise the repute of her who might
+have been my wife had I been worthy of her?  She is doubtless now
+another's; or, if dead,--honour never dies."  He pressed his lips to the
+letters with a passionate, lingering, mournful kiss; then, raking up the
+ashes of yesterday's fire, and rekindling them, he placed thereon those
+leaves of a melancholy romance in his past, and watched them slowly,
+reluctantly smoulder away into tinder.  Then he opened a drawer in which
+lay the only paper of a political character which he had preserved.  All
+that related to plots or conspiracies in which his agency had committed
+others, it was his habit to destroy as soon as received.  For the sole
+document thus treasured he alone was responsible; it was an outline of
+his ideal for the future constitution of France, accompanied with
+elaborate arguments, the heads of which his conversation with the
+Incognito made known to the reader.  Of the soundness of this political
+programme, whatever its merits or faults (a question on which I presume
+no judgment), he had an intense conviction.  He glanced rapidly over its
+contents, did not alter a word, sealed it up in an envelope, inscribed,
+"My Legacy to my Countrymen."  The papers refuting a calumny relating
+solely to himself he carried into the battle-field, placed next to his
+heart,--significant of a Frenchman's love of honour in this world--as the
+relic placed round the neck of Enguerrand by his pious brother was
+emblematic of the Christian hope of mercy in the next.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The streets swarmed with the populace troops as they passed to their
+destination.  Among those of the Mobiles who especially caught the eye
+were two companies in which Enguerrand de Vandemar and Victor de Mauleon
+commanded.  In the first were many young men of good family, or in the
+higher ranks of the bourgeoisie, known to numerous lookers-on; there was
+something inspiriting in their gay aspects, and in the easy carelessness
+of their march.  Mixed with this company, however, and forming of course
+the bulk of it, were those who belonged to the lower classes of the
+population; and though they too might seem gay to an ordinary observer,
+the gaiety was forced.  Many of them were evidently not quite sober; and
+there was a disorderly want of soldiership in their mien and armament
+which inspired distrust among such vieux moustaches as, too old for other
+service than that of the ramparts, mixed here and there among the crowd.
+
+But when De Mauleon's company passed, the _vieux moustaches_ impulsively
+touched each other.  They recognised the march of well-drilled men; the
+countenances grave and severe, the eyes not looking on this side and that
+for admiration, the step regularly timed; and conspicuous among these men
+the tall stature and calm front of the leader.
+
+"These fellows will fight well," growled a _vieux moustache_, "where did
+they fish out their leader?"
+
+"Don't you know?" said a bourgeois_.  "Victor de Mauleon.  He won the
+cross in Algeria for bravery.  I recollect him when I was very young; the
+very devil for women and fighting."
+
+"I wish there were more such devils for fighting and fewer for women,"
+growled again _le vieux moustache_.
+
+One incessant roar of cannon all the night of the 29th.  The populace had
+learned the names of the French cannons, and fancied they could
+distinguish the several sounds of their thunder.  "There spits
+'Josephine'!" shouts an invalid sailor.  "There howls our own
+'Populace'!" cries a Red Republican from Belleville.
+
+     [The "Populace" had been contributed to the artillery,
+     _sou d sou_, by the working class.]
+
+"There sings 'Le Chatiment'!" laughed Gustave Rameau, who was now become
+an enthusiastic admirer of the Victor Hugo he had before affected to
+despise.  And all the while, mingled with the roar of the cannon, came,
+far and near from the streets, from the ramparts, the gusts of song--song
+sometimes heroic, sometimes obscene, more often carelessly joyous.  The
+news of General Vinoy's success during the early part of the day had been
+damped by the evening report of Ducrot's delay in crossing the swollen
+Marne.  But the spirits of the Parisians rallied from a momentary
+depression on the excitement at night of that concert of martial music.
+
+During that night, close under the guns of the double redoubt of Gravelle
+and La Faisanderie, eight pontoon-bridges were thrown over the Marne; and
+at daybreak the first column of the third army under Blanchard and
+Renoult crossed with all their artillery, and, covered by the fire of the
+double redoubts, of the forts of Vincennes, Nogent, Rossuey, and the
+batteries of Mont Avron, had an hour before noon carried the village of
+Champingy, and the first echelon of the important plateau of Villiers,
+and were already commencing the work of intrenchment, when, rallying from
+the amaze of a defeat, the German forces burst upon them, sustained by
+fresh batteries.  The Prussian pieces of artillery established at
+Chennevieres and at Neuilly opened fire with deadly execution; while a
+numerous infantry, descending from the intrenchments of Villiers, charged
+upon the troops under Renoult.  Among the French in that strife were
+Enguerrand and the Mobiles of which he was in command.  Dismayed by the
+unexpected fire, these Mobiles gave way, as indeed did many of the line.
+Enguerrand rushed forward to the front: "On, _mes enfans_, on!  What will
+our mothers and wives say of us if we fly?  _Vive la France_!--On!"
+Among those of the better class in that company there rose a shout of
+applause, but it found no sympathy among the rest.  They wavered, they
+turned.  "Will you suffer me to go on alone, countrymen?" cried
+Enguerrand; and alone he rushed on towards the Prussian line--rushed, and
+fell, mortally wounded, by a musket-ball.  "Revenge, revenge!" shouted
+some of the foremost; "Revenge!" shouted those in the rear; and, so
+shouting, turned on their heels and fled.  But ere they could disperse
+they encountered the march, steadfast though rapid, of the troop led by
+Victor de Mauleon.  "Poltroons!" he thundered, with the sonorous depth of
+his strong voice, "halt and turn, or my men shall fire on you as
+deserters."
+
+"Va, citoyen," said one fugitive, an officer-popularly elected, because
+he was the loudest brawler in the club of the Salle Favre,--we have seen
+him before--Charles, the brother of Armand Monnier;--"men can't fight
+when they despise their generals.  It is our generals who are poltroons
+and fools both."
+
+"Carry my answer to the ghosts of cowards," cried De Mauldon, and shot
+the man dead.
+
+His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, and the voice and the look
+of the death-giver, halted.  The officers, who had at first yielded to
+the panic of their men, took fresh courage, and finally led the bulk of
+the troop back to their, post "enlevis a la baionette," to use the phrase
+of a candid historian of that day.
+
+Day, on the whole, not inglorious to France.  It was the first, if it was
+the last, really important success of the besieged.  They remained
+masters of the ground, the Prussians leaving to them the wounded and the
+dead.
+
+That night what crowds thronged from Paris to the top of the Montmartre
+heights, from the observatory on which the celebrated inventor Bazin had
+lighted up, with some magical electric machine, all the plain of
+Gennevilliers from Mont Valerien to the Fort de la Briche!  The splendour
+of the blaze wrapped the great city;--distinctly above the roofs of the
+houses soared the Dome des Invalides, the spires of Notre Dame, the giant
+turrets of the Tuileries;--and died away on resting on the _infames
+scapulos Acroceraunia_, the "thunder crags" of the heights occupied by
+the invading army.
+
+Lemercier, De Breze, and the elder Rameau--who, despite his peaceful
+habits and grey hairs, insisted on joining in the aid of _la patrie_--
+were among the National Guards attached to the Fort de la Briche and the
+neighbouring eminence, and they met in conversation.
+
+"What a victory we have had!" said the old Rameau.
+
+"Rather mortifying to your son, M. Rameau," said LeMercier.
+
+"Mortifying to my son, sir!--the victory of his countrymen.  What do you
+mean?"
+
+"I had the honour to hear M. Gustave the other night at the club de la
+Vengeance."
+
+"Bon Dieu! do you frequent those tragic reunions?" asked De Breze.
+
+"They are not at all tragic: they are the only comedies left us, as one
+must amuse one's self somewhere, and the club de la Vengeance is the
+prettiest thing of the sort going.  I quite understand why it should
+fascinate a poet like your son, M. Rameau.  It is held in a _salle de
+cafe chantant_--style _Louis Quinze_--decorated with a pastoral scene
+from Watteau.  I and my dog Fox drop in.  We hear your son haranguing.
+In what poetical sentences he despaired of the Republic!  The Government
+(he called them _les charlatans de l'Hotel de Ville_) were imbeciles.
+They pretended to inaugurate a revolution, and did not employ the most
+obvious of revolutionary means.  There Fox and I pricked up our ears:
+what were those means?  Your son proceeded to explain: 'All mankind were
+to be appealed to against individual interests.  The commerce of luxury
+was to be abolished.  Clearly luxury was not at the command of all
+mankind.  Cafes and theatres were to be closed for ever--all mankind
+could not go to cafes and theatres.  It was idle to expect the masses to
+combine for anything in which the masses had not an interest in common.
+The masses had no interest in any property that did not belong to the
+masses.  Programmes of the society to be founded, called the Ligue
+Cosmopolite Democratique, should be sent at once into all the States of
+the civilised world--how?  by balloons.  Money corrupts the world as now
+composed: but the money at the command of the masses could buy all the
+monarchs and courtiers and priests of the universe.'  At that sentiment,
+vehemently delivered, the applauses were frantic, and Fox in his
+excitement began to bark.  At the sound of his bark one man cried out,
+'That's a Prussian!' another, 'Down with the spy!' another, 'There's an
+aristo present--he keeps alive a dog which would be a week's meal for a
+family!'  I snatch up Fox at the last cry, and clasp him to a bosom
+protected by the uniform of the National Guard.
+
+"When the hubbub had subsided, your son, M. Rameau, proceeded, quitting
+mankind in general, and arriving at the question in particular most
+interesting to his audience--the mobilisation of the National Guard; that
+is, the call upon men who like talking and hate fighting to talk less and
+fight more.  'It was the sheerest tyranny to select a certain number of
+free citizens to be butchered.  If the fight was for the mass, there
+ought to be _la levee en masse_.  If one did not compel everybody to
+fight, why should anybody fight?'  Here the applause again became
+vehement, and Fox again became indiscreet.  I subdued Fox's bark into a
+squeak by pulling his ears.  'What!' cries your poet-son, '_la levee en
+masse_ gives us fifteen millions of soldiers, with which we could crush,
+not Prussia alone, but the whole of Europe.  (Immense sensation.)  Let
+us, then, resolve that the charlatans of the _Hotel de Ville_ are
+incapable of delivering us from the Prussians; that they are deposed;
+that the _Ligue_ of the _Democratie Cosmopolite_ is installed; that
+meanwhile the Commune shall be voted the Provisional Government, and
+shall order the Prussians to retire within three days from the soil of
+Paris.'
+
+"Pardon me this long description, my dear M. Rameau, but I trust I have
+satisfactorily explained why victory obtained in the teeth of his
+eloquent opinions, if gratifying to him as a Frenchman, must be
+mortifying to him as a politician."
+
+The old Rameau sighed, hung his head, and crept away.  While, amid this
+holiday illumination, the Parisians enjoyed the panorama before them, the
+_Freres Chretiens_ and the attendants of the various ambulances were
+moving along the battle-plains; the first in their large-brimmed hats and
+sable garbs, the last in strange motley costume, many of them in
+glittering uniform--all alike in their serene indifference to danger;
+often pausing to pick up among the dead their own brethren who had been
+slaughtered in the midst of their task.  Now and then they came on
+sinister forms apparently engaged in the same duty of tending the wounded
+and dead, but in truth murderous plunderers, to whom the dead and the
+dying were equal harvests.  Did the wounded man attempt to resist the
+foul hands searching for their spoil, they added another wound more
+immediately mortal, grinning as they completed on the dead the robbery
+they had commenced on the dying.
+
+Raoul de Vandemar had been all the earlier part of the day with the
+assistants of the ambulance over which he presided, attached to the
+battalions of the National Guard in a quarter remote from that in which
+his brother had fought and fallen.  When those troops, later in the day,
+were driven from the Montmedy plateau, which they had at first carried,
+Raoul repassed towards the plateau at Villiers, on which the dead lay
+thickest.  On the way he heard a vague report of the panic which had
+dispersed the Mobiles of whom Enguerrand was in command, and of
+Enguerrand's vain attempt to inspirit them.  But his fate was not known.
+There, at midnight, Raoul is still searching among the ghastly heaps and
+pools of blood, lighted from afar by the blaze from the observatory of
+Montmartre, and more near at hand by the bivouac fires extended along the
+banks to the left of the Marne, while everywhere about the field flitted
+the lanterns of the _Frere Chretiens_.  Suddenly, in the dimness of a spot
+cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork, he observed a small
+sinister figure perched on the breast of some wounded soldier, evidently
+not to succour.  He sprang forward and seized a hideous-looking urchin,
+scarcely twelve years old, who held in one hand a small crystal locket,
+set in filigree gold, torn from the soldier's breast, and lifted high in
+the other a long case-knife.  At a glance Raoul recognised the holy relic
+he had given to Enguerrand, and, flinging the precocious murderer to be
+seized by his assistants, he cast himself beside his brother.  Enguerrand
+still breathed, and his languid eyes brightened as he knew the dear
+familiar face.  He tried to speak, but his voice failed, and he shook
+his head sadly, but still with a faint smile on his lips.  They lifted
+him tenderly, and placed him on a litter.  The movement, gentle as it
+was, brought back pain, and with the pain strength to mutter, "My mother
+---I would see her once more."
+
+As at daybreak the loungers on Montmartre and the ramparts descended into
+the streets--most windows in which were open, as they had been all night,
+with anxious female faces peering palely down-they saw the conveyances of
+the ambulances coming dismally along, and many an eye turned wistfully
+towards the litter on which lay the idol of the pleasure-loving Paris,
+with the dark, bareheaded figure walking beside it,--onwards, onwards,
+till it reached the Hotel de Vandemar, and a woman's cry was heard at the
+entrance--the mother's cry, "My son! my son!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                BOOK XII.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The last book closed with the success of the Parisian sortie on the 30th
+of November, to be followed by the terrible engagements no less
+honourable to French valour, on the 2nd of December.  There was the
+sanguine belief that deliverance was at hand; that Trochu would break
+through the circle of iron, and effect that junction with the army of
+Aurelles de Paladine which would compel the Germans to raise the
+investment;--belief rudely shaken by Ducrot's proclamation of the 4th, to
+explain the recrossing of the Marne, and the abandonment of the positions
+conquered, but not altogether dispelled till von Moltke's letter to
+Trochu on the 5th announcing the defeat of the army of the Loire and the
+recapture of Orleans.  Even then the Parisians did not lose hope of
+succour; and even after the desperate and fruitless sortie against Le
+Bourget on the 21st, it was not without witticisms on defeat and
+predictions of triumph, that Winter and Famine settled sullenly on the
+city.
+
+Our narrative reopens with the last period of the siege.
+
+It was during these dreadful days, that if the vilest and the most
+hideous aspects of the Parisian population showed themselves at the
+worst, so all its loveliest, its noblest, its holiest characteristics--
+unnoticed by ordinary observers in the prosperous days of the capital--
+became conspicuously prominent.  The higher classes, including the
+remnant of the old noblesse, had, during the whole siege, exhibited
+qualities in notable contrast to those assigned them by the enemies of
+aristocracy.  Their sons had been foremost among those soldiers who never
+calumniated a leader, never fled before a foe; their women had been among
+the most zealous and the most tender nurses of the ambulances they had
+founded and served; their houses had been freely opened, whether to the
+families exiled from the suburbs, or in supplement to the hospitals.  The
+amount of relief they afforded unostentatiously, out of means that shared
+the general failure of accustomed resource, when the famine commenced,
+would be scarcely credible if stated.  Admirable, too, were the fortitude
+and resignation of the genuine Parisian bourgeoisie,--the thrifty
+tradesfolk and small rentiers,--that class in which, to judge of its
+timidity when opposed to a mob, courage is not the most conspicuous
+virtue.  Courage became so now--courage to bear hourly increasing
+privation, and to suppress every murmur of suffering that would discredit
+their patriotism, and invoke "peace at any price."  It was on this class
+that the calamities of the siege now pressed the most heavily.  The
+stagnation of trade, and the stoppage of the rents, in which they had
+invested their savings, reduced many of them to actual want.  Those only
+of their number who obtained the pay of one-and-a-half franc a day as
+National Guards, could be sure to escape from starvation.  But this pay
+had already begun to demoralise the receivers.  Scanty for supply of
+food, it was ample for supply of drink.  And drunkenness, hitherto rare
+in that rank of the Parisians, became a prevalent vice, aggravated in the
+case of a National Guard, when it wholly unfitted him for the duties he
+undertook, especially such National Guards as were raised from the most
+turbulent democracy of the working class.
+
+But of all that population; there were two sections in which the most
+beautiful elements of our human nature were most touchingly manifest--
+the women and the priesthood, including in the latter denomination all
+the various brotherhoods and societies which religion formed and
+inspired.
+
+It was on the 27th of December that Frederic Lemercier stood gazing
+wistfully on a military report affixed to a blank wall, which stated that
+"the enemy, worn out by a resistance of over one hundred days," had
+commenced the bombardment.  Poor Frederic was sadly altered; he had
+escaped the Prussian's guns, but not the Parisian winter--the severest
+known for twenty years.  He was one of the many frozen at their posts--
+brought back to the ambulance with Fox in his bosom trying to keep him
+warm.  He had only lately been sent forth as convalescent,--ambulances
+were too crowded to retain a patient longer than absolutely needful,--and
+had been hunger-pinched and frost-pinched ever since.  The luxurious
+Frederic had still, somewhere or other, a capital yielding above three
+thousand a year, and of which he could not now realise a franc, the
+title-deeds to various investments being in the hands of Duplessis, the
+most trustworthy of friends, the most upright of men, but who was in
+Bretagne, and could not be got at.  And the time had come at Paris when
+you could not get trust for a pound of horse-flesh, or a daily supply of
+fuel.  And Frederic Lemercier, who had long since spent the 2000 francs
+borrowed from Alain (not ignobly, but somewhat ostentatiously, in
+feasting any acquaintance who wanted a feast), and who had sold to any
+one who could afford to speculate on such dainty luxuries,--clocks,
+bronzes, amber-mounted pipes,--all that had made the envied garniture of
+his bachelor's apartment--Frederic Lemercier was, so far as the task of
+keeping body and soul together, worse off than any English pauper who can
+apply to the Union.  Of course he might have claimed his half-pay of
+thirty sous as a National Guard.  But he little knows the true Parisian
+who imagines a seigneur of the Chaussee d'Antin, the oracle of those with
+whom he lived, and one who knew life so well that he had preached
+prudence to a seigneur of the Faubourg like Alain de Rochebriant,
+stooping to apply for the wages of thirty sons.  Rations were only
+obtained by the wonderful patience of women, who had children to whom
+they were both saints and martyrs.  The hours, the weary hours, one had
+to wait before one could get one's place on the line for the distribution
+of that atrocious black bread, defeated men,--defeated most wives if only
+for husbands, were defied only by mothers and daughters.  Literally
+speaking, Lemercier was starving.  Alain had been badly wounded in the
+sortie of the 21st, and was laid up in an ambulance.  Even if he could
+have been got at, he had probably nothing left to bestow upon Lemercier.
+
+Lemercier gazed on the announcement of the bombardment, and the Parisian
+gaiety, which some French historian of the siege calls _douce
+philosophie_, lingering on him still, he said, audibly, turning round to
+any stranger who heard: "Happiest of mortals that we are!  Under the
+present Government we are never warned of anything disagreeable that can
+happen; we are only told of it when it has happened, and then as rather
+pleasant than otherwise.  I get up.  I meet a civil gendarme.  'What is
+that firing?  which of our provincial armies is taking Prussia in the
+rear?  'Monsieur,' says the gendarme, 'it is the Prussian Krupp guns.'
+I look at the proclamation, and my fears varuish,--my heart is relieved.
+I read that the bombardment is a sure sign that the enemy is worn out."
+
+Some of the men grouped round Frederic ducked their heads in terror;
+others, who knew that the thunderbolt launched from the plateau of Avron
+would not fall on the pavements of Paris, laughed and joked.  But in
+front, with no sign of terror, no sound of laughter, stretched, moving
+inch by inch, the female procession towards the bakery in which the
+morsel of bread for their infants was doled out.
+
+"_Hist, mon ami_," said a deep voice beside Lemercier.  "Look at those
+women, and do not wound their ears by a jest."
+
+Lemercier, offended by that rebuke, though too susceptible to good
+emotions not to recognise its justice, tried with feeble fingers to turn
+up his moustache, and to turn a defiant crest upon the rebuker.  He was
+rather startled to see the tall martial form at his side, and to
+recognise Victor de Mauleon.  "Don't you think, M. Lemercier," resumed
+the Vicomte, half sadly, "that these women are worthy of better husbands
+and sons than are commonly found among the soldiers whose uniform we
+wear?"
+
+"The National Guard!  You ought not to sneer at them, Vicomte,--you whose
+troop covered itself with glory on the great days of Villiers and
+Champigny,--you in whose praise even the grumblers of Paris became
+eloquent, and in whom a future Marshal of France is foretold."
+
+"But, alas! more than half of my poor troop was left on the battle-field,
+or is now wrestling for mangled remains of life in the ambulances.  And
+the new recruits with which I took the field on the 21st are not likely
+to cover themselves with glory, or to insure their commander the baton of
+a marshal."
+
+"Ay, I heard when I was in the hospital that you had publicly shamed some
+of these recruits, and declared that you would rather resign than lead
+them again to battle."
+
+"True; and at this moment, for so doing, I am the man most hated by the
+rabble who supplied those recruits."  The men, while thus conversing, had
+moved slowly on, and were now in front of a large cafe, from the interior
+of which came the sound of loud bravos and clappings of hands.
+Lemercier's curiosity was excited.  "For what can be that applause?" he
+said; "let us look in and see."  The room was thronged.  In the distance,
+on a small raised platform, stood a girl dressed in faded theatrical
+finery, making her obeisance to the crowd.
+
+"Heavens!" exclaimed Frederic--"can I trust my eyes?  Surely that is the
+once superb Julie: has she been dancing here?"
+
+One of the loungers, evidently belonging to the same world as Lemercier,
+overheard the question and answered politely: "No, Monsieur: she has been
+reciting verses, and really declaims very well, considering it is not her
+vocation.  She has given us extracts from Victor Hugo and
+De Musset: and crowned all with a patriotic hymn by Gustave Rameau,--her
+old lover, if gossip be true."  Meanwhile De Mauleon, who at first had
+glanced over the scene with his usual air of calm and cold indifference,
+became suddenly struck by the girl's beautiful face, and gazed on it with
+a look of startled surprise.
+
+"Who and what did you say that poor fair creature is, M. Lemercier?"
+
+"She is a Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, and was a very popular
+_coryphee_.  She has hereditary right to be a good dancer, as the
+daughter of a once more famous ornament of the ballet, _la belle_ Leonie
+--whom you must have seen in your young days."
+
+"Of course.  Leonie--she married a M. Surville, a silly _bourgeois
+gentilhomme_, who earned the hatred of Paris by taking her off the stage.
+So that is her daughter  I see no likeness to her mother--much handsomer.
+Why does she call herself Caumartin?"
+
+"Oh," said Frederic, "a melancholy but trite story."
+
+"Leonie was left a widow, and died in want.  What could the poor young
+daughter do?  She found a rich protector, who had influence to get her an
+appointment in the ballet: and there she did as most girls so
+circumstanced do--appeared under an assumed name, which she has since
+kept."
+
+"I understand," said Victor, compassionately.  "Poor thing! she has
+quitted the platform, and is coming this way, evidently to speak to you.
+I saw her eyes brighten as she caught sight of your face."
+
+Lemercier attempted a languid air of modest self-complacency as the girl
+now approached him.  "_Bonjour_, M. Frederic!  Ah, mon Dieu! how thin you
+have grown!  You have been ill?"
+
+"The hardships of a military life, Mademoiselle.  Ah, for the _beaux
+fours_ and the peace we insisted on destroying under the Empire which we
+destroyed for listening to us!  But you thrive well, I trust.  I have
+seen you better dressed, but never in greater beauty."
+
+The girl blushed as she replied, "Do you really think as you speak?"
+
+"I could not speak more sincerely if I lived in the legendary House of
+Glass."
+
+The girl clutched his arm, and said in suppressed tones, "Where is
+Gustave?"
+
+"Gustave Rameau?  I have no idea.  Do you never see him now?"
+
+"Never,--perhaps I never shall see him again; but when you do meet him,
+say that Julie owes to him her livelihood.  An honest livelihood,
+Monsieur.  He taught her to love verses--told her how to recite them.
+I am engaged at this cafe--you will find me here the same hour every day,
+in case--in case--You are good and kind, and will come and tell me that
+Gustave is well and happy even if he forgets me. _Au revoir_!  Stop, you
+do look, my poor Frederic, as if--as if--pardon me, Monsieur Lemercier,
+is there anything I can do?  Will you condescend to borrow from me?  I am
+in funds."
+
+Lemercier at that offer was nearly moved to tears.  Famished though he
+was, he could not, however, have touched that girl's earnings.
+
+"You are an angel of goodness, Mademoiselle!  Ah, how I envy Gustave
+Rameau!  No, I don't want aid.  I am always a--_rentier_."
+
+"_Bien_!  and if you see Gustave, you will not forget."
+
+"Rely on me.  Come away," he said to De Mauleon; "I don't want to hear
+that girl repeat the sort of bombast the poets indite nowadays.  It is
+fustian; and that girl may have a brain of feather, but she has a heart
+of gold."
+
+"True," said Victor, as they regained the street.  "I overheard what she
+said to you.  What an incomprehensible thing is a woman! how more
+incomprehensible still is a woman's love!  Ah, pardon me; I must leave
+you.  I see in the procession a poor woman known to me in better days."
+
+De Mauleon walked towards the woman he spoke of--one of the long
+procession to the bakery--a child clinging to her robe.  A pale grief-
+worn woman, still young, but with the weariness of age on her face, and
+the shadow of death on her child's.
+
+"I think I see Madame Monnier," said De Mauleon, softly.
+
+She turned and looked at him drearily.  A year ago, she would have
+blushed if addressed by a stranger in a name not lawfully hers.
+
+"Well," she said, in hollow accents broken by cough; "I don't know you,
+Monsieur."
+
+"Poor woman!" he resumed, walking beside her as she moved slowly on,
+while the eyes of other women in the procession stared at him hungrily.
+"And your child looks ill too.  It is your youngest?"
+
+"My only one!  The others are in Pere la  Chaise.  There are but few
+children alive in my street now.  God has been very merciful, and taken
+them to Himself."
+
+De Mauleon recalled the scene of a neat comfortable apartment, and the
+healthful happy children at play on the floor.  The mortality among the
+little ones, especially in the quartier occupied by the working classes,
+had of late been terrible.  The want of food, of fuel, the intense
+severity of the weather, had swept them off as by a pestilence.
+
+"And Monnier--what of him?  No doubt he is a National Guard, and has his
+pay?"
+
+The woman made no answer, but hung down her head.  She was stifling a
+sob.  Till then her eyes seemed to have exhausted the last source of
+tears.
+
+"He lives still?" continued Victor, pityingly: "he is not wounded?"
+
+"No: he is well--in health; thank you kindly, Monsieur."
+
+"But his pay is not enough to help you, and of course he can get no work.
+Excuse me if I stopped you.  It is because I owed Armand Monnier a little
+debt for work, and I am ashamed to say that it quite escaped my memory in
+these terrible events.  Allow me, Madame, to pay it to you," and he
+thrust his purse into her hand.  "I think this contains about the sum I
+owed; if more or less, we will settle the difference later.  Take care of
+yourself."
+
+He was turning away when the woman caught hold of him.
+
+"Stay, Monsieur.  May Heaven bless you!--but--but tell me what name I am
+to give to Armand.  I can't think of any one who owed him money.  It must
+have been before that dreadful strike, the beginning of all our woes.
+Ah, if it were allowed to curse any one, I fear my last breath would not
+be a prayer."
+
+"You would curse the strike, or the master who did not forgive Armand's
+share in it?"
+
+"No, no,--the cruel man who talked him into it--into all that has changed
+the best workman, the kindest heart--the--the--" again her voice died in
+sobs.
+
+"And who was that man?" asked De Mauleon, falteringly.
+
+"His name was Lebeau.  If you were a poor man, I should say 'Shun him.'"
+
+"I have heard of the name you mention; but if we mean the same person,
+Monnier cannot have met him lately.  He has not been in Paris since the
+siege."
+
+"I suppose not, the coward!  He ruined us--us who were so happy before;
+and then, as Armand says, cast us away as instruments he had done with.
+But--but if you do know him, and do see him again, tell him--tell him
+not to complete his wrong--not to bring murder on Armand's soul.  For
+Armand isn't what he was--and has become, oh, so violent!  I dare not
+take this money without saying who gave it.  He would not take money as
+alms from an aristocrat.  Hush! he beat me for taking money from the good
+Monsieur Raoul de Vandemar--my poor Armand beat me!"
+
+De Mauleon shuddered.  "Say that it is from a customer whose rooms he
+decorated in his spare hours on his own account before the strike,--
+Monsieur --------;" here he uttered indistinctly some unpronounceable
+name and hurried off, soon lost as the streets grew darker.  Amid groups
+of a higher order of men-military men, nobles, _ci-devant_ deputies--
+among such ones his name stood very high.  Not only his bravery in the
+recent sorties had been signal, but a strong belief in his military
+talents had become prevalent; and conjoined with the name he had before
+established as a political writer, and the remembrance of the vigour and
+sagacity with which he had opposed the war, he seemed certain, when peace
+and order became established, of a brilliant position and career in a
+future administration: not less because he had steadfastly kept aloof
+from the existing Government, which it was rumoured, rightly or
+erroneously, that he had been solicited to join; and from every
+combination of the various democratic or discontented factions.
+
+Quitting these more distinguished associates, he took his way alone
+towards the ramparts.  The day was closing; the thunders of the cannon
+were dying down.
+
+He passed by a wine-shop round which were gathered many of the worse
+specimens of the _Moblots_ and National Guards, mostly drunk, and loudly
+talking in vehement abuse of generals and officers and commissariat.  By
+one of the men, as he came under the glare of a petroleum lamp (there was
+gas no longer in the dismal city), he was recognised as the commander who
+had dared to insist on discipline, and disgrace honest patriots who
+claimed to themselves the sole option between fight and flight.  The man
+was one of those patriots--one of the new recruits whom Victor had
+shamed and dismissed for mutiny and cowardice.  He made a drunken plunge
+at his former chief, shouting, "A bas Pai-isto!  Comrades, this is the
+coquin De Mauleon who is paid by the Prussians for getting us killed: a
+la lanterne!" "A la lanterne!" stammered and hiccupped others of the
+group; but they did not stir to execute their threat.  Dimly seen as the
+stern face and sinewy form of the threatened man was by their drowsied
+eyes, the name of De Mauleon, the man without fear of a foe, and without
+ruth for a mutineer, sufficed to protect him from outrage; and with a
+slight movement of his arm that sent his denouncer reeling against the
+lamp-post, De Mauleon passed on:--when another man, in the uniform of a
+National Guard, bounded from the door of the tavern, crying with a loud
+voice, "Who said De Mauleon?--let me look on him:" and Victor, who had
+strode on with slow lion-like steps, cleaving the crowd, turned, and saw
+before him in the gleaming light a face, in which the bold frank,
+intelligent aspect of former days was lost in a wild, reckless, savage
+expression--the face of Armand Monnier.
+
+"Ha! are you really Victor de Mauleon?" asked Monnier, not fiercely, but
+under his breath,--in that sort of stage whisper which is the natural
+utterance of excited men under the mingled influence of potent drink and
+hoarded rage.
+
+"Certainly; I am Victor de Mauleon."
+
+"And you were in command of the -- company of the National Guard on the
+30th of November at Champigny and Villiers?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"And you shot with your own hand an officer belonging to another company
+who refused to join yours?"
+
+"I shot a cowardly soldier who ran away from the enemy, and seemed a
+ringleader of other runaways; and in so doing, I saved from dishonour the
+best part of his comrades."
+
+"The man was no coward.  He was an enlightened Frenchman, and worth fifty
+of such aristos as you; and he knew better than his officers that he was
+to be led to an idle slaughter.  Idle--I say idle.  What was France the
+better, how was Paris the safer, for the senseless butchery of that day?
+You mutinied against a wiser general than Saint Trochu when you murdered
+that mutineer."
+
+"Armand Monnier, you are not quite sober to-night, or I would argue with
+you that question.  But you no doubt are brave: how and why do you take
+the part of a runaway?"
+
+"How and why?  He was my brother, and you own you murdered him: my
+brother--the sagest head in Paris.  If I had listened to him, I should
+not be,--bah!--no matter now what I am."
+
+"I could not know he was your brother; but if he had been mine I would
+have done the same."
+
+Here Victor's lip quivered, for Monnier griped him by the arm, and looked
+him in the face with wild stony eyes.  "I recollect that voice!  Yet--
+yet--you say you are a noble, a Vicomte--Victor de Mauleon, and you shot
+my brother!"
+
+Here he passed his left hand rapidly over his forehead.  The fumes of
+wine still clouded his mind, but rays of intelligence broke through the
+cloud.  Suddenly he said in a loud, and calm, and natural voice:
+
+"Mons. le Vicomte, you accost me as Armand Monnier--pray how do you know
+my name?"
+
+"How should I not know it?  I have looked into the meetings of the 'Clubs
+rouges.'  I have heard you speak, and naturally asked your name.  _Bon
+soir_ M. Monnier!  When you reflect in cooler moments, you will see that
+if patriots excuse Brutus for first dishonouring and then executing his
+own son, an officer charged to defend his country may be surely pardoned
+for slaying a runaway to whom he was no relation, when in slaying he
+saved the man's name and kindred from dishonour--unless, indeed, you
+insist on telling the world why he was slain."
+
+"I know your voice--I know it.  Every sound becomes clearer to my ear.
+And if--"
+
+But while Monnier thus spoke, De Mauleon had hastened on.  Monnier looked
+round, saw him gone, but did not pursue.  He was just intoxicated enough
+to know that his footsteps were not steady, and he turned back to the
+wine-shop and asked surlily for more wine.  Could you have seen him then
+as he leant swinging himself to and fro against the wall,--had you known
+the man two years ago, you would have been a brute if you felt disgust.
+You could only have felt that profound compassion with which we gaze on a
+great royalty fallen.  For the grandest of all royalties is that which
+takes its crown from Nature, needing no accident of birth.  And Nature
+made the mind of Armand Monnier king-like; endowed it with lofty scorn of
+meanness and falsehood and dishonour, with warmth and tenderness of heart
+which had glow enough to spare from ties of kindred and hearth and home,
+to extend to those distant circles of humanity over which royal natures
+would fain extend the shadow of their sceptre.
+
+How had the royalty of the man's nature fallen thus?  Royalty rarely
+falls from its own constitutional faults.  It falls when, ceasing to be
+royal, it becomes subservient to bad advisers.  And what bad advisers,
+always appealing to his better qualities and so enlisting his worser, had
+discrowned this mechanic?
+
+"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," says the old-fashioned poet.
+
+"Not so," says the modern philosopher; "a little knowledge; is safer than
+no knowledge."  Possibly, as all individuals and all communities must go
+through the stage of a little knowledge before they can arrive at that of
+much knowledge, the philosopher's assertion may be right in the long-run,
+and applied to humankind in general.  But there is a period, as there is
+a class, in which a little knowledge tends to terrible demoralisation.
+And Armand Monnier lived in that period and was one of that class.  The
+little knowledge that his mind, impulsive and ardent, had picked up out
+of books that warred with the great foundations of existing society, had
+originated in ill advices.  A man stored with much knowledge would never
+have let Madame de Grantmesnil's denunciations of marriage rites, or
+Louis Blane's vindication of Robespierre as the representative of the
+working against the middle class, influence his practical life.  He would
+have assessed such opinions at their real worth; and whatever that worth
+might seem to him, would not to such opinions have committed the conduct
+of his life.  Opinion is not fateful: conduct is.  A little knowledge
+crazes an earnest, warm-blooded, powerful creature like Armand Monnier
+into a fanatic.  He takes an opinion which pleases him as a revelation
+from the gods; that opinion shapes his conduct; that conduct is his fate.
+Woe to the philosopher who serenely flings before the little knowledge of
+the artisan dogmas as harmless as the Atlantis of Plato if only to be
+discussed by philosophers, and deadly as the torches of Ate if seized as
+articles of a creed by fanatics!  But thrice woe to the artisan who makes
+himself the zealot of the Dogma!
+
+Poor Armand acts on the opinions he adopts; proves his contempt for the
+marriage state by living with the wife of another; resents, as natures so
+inherently manly must do, the Society that visits on her his defiance of
+its laws; throws himself, head foremost, against that society altogether;
+necessarily joins all who have other reasons for hostility to Society; he
+himself having every inducement not to join indiscriminate strikes--high
+wages, a liberal employer, ample savings, the certainty of soon becoming
+employer himself.  No; that is not enough to the fanatic: he persists on
+being dupe and victim.  He, this great king of labour, crowned by Nature,
+and cursed with that degree of little knowledge which does not comprehend
+how much more is required before a schoolboy would admit it to be
+knowledge at all,--he rushes into the maddest of all speculations--that
+of the artisan with little knowledge and enormous faith--that which
+intrusts the safety and repose and dignity of life to some ambitious
+adventurer, who uses his warm heart for the adventurer's frigid purpose,
+much as the lawyer-government of September used the Communists,--much as,
+in every revolution of France, a Bertrand has used a Raton--much as, till
+the sound of the last trumpet, men very much worse than Victor de Mauleon
+will use men very much better than Armand Monnier, if the Armand Monniers
+disdain the modesty of an Isaac Newton on hearing that a theorem to which
+he had given all the strength of his patient intellect was disputed: "It
+may be so;" meaning, I suppose, that it requires a large amount of
+experience ascertained before a man of much knowledge becomes that which
+a man of little knowledge is at a jump-the fanatic of an experiment
+untried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Scarcely had De Mauleon quitted Lemercier before the latter was joined by
+two loungers scarcely less famished than himself--Savarin and De Breze.
+Like himself, too, both had been sufferers from illness, though not of a
+nature to be consigned to an hospital.  All manner of diseases then had
+combined to form the pestilence which filled the streets with unregarded
+hearses--bronchitis, pneumonia, smallpox, a strange sort of spurious
+dysentery much more speedily fatal than the genuine.  The three men, a
+year before so sleek, looked like ghosts under the withering sky; yet all
+three retained embers of the native Parisian humour, which their very
+breath on meeting sufficed to kindle up into jubilant sparks or rapid
+flashes.
+
+"There are two consolations," said Savarin, as the friends strolled or
+rather crawled towards the Boulevards--"two consolations for the gourmet
+and for the proprietor in these days of trial for the gourmand, because
+the price of truffles is come down."
+
+"Truffles!" gasped De Breze, with watering mouth; "impossible!  They are
+gone with the age of gold."
+
+"Not so.  I speak on the best authority--my laundress; for she attends
+the _succursale_ in the Rue de Chateaudun; and if the poor woman, being,
+luckily for me, a childless widow, gets a morsel she can spare, she sells
+it to me."
+
+"Sells it!" feebly exclaimed Lemercier.  "Croesus!  you have money then,
+and can buy?"
+
+"Sells it--on credit!  I am to pension her for life if I live to have
+money again.  Don't interrupt me.  This honest woman goes this morning to
+the _succursale_.  I promise myself a delicious _bifteck_ of horse.  She
+gains the _succursale_, and the employee informs her that there is
+nothing left in his store except--truffles.  A glut of those in the
+market allows him to offer her a bargain-seven francs _la boite_.  Send
+me seven francs, De Breze, and you shall share the banquet."
+
+De Breze shook his head expressively.
+
+"But," resumed Savarin, "though credit exists no more except with my
+laundress, upon terms of which the usury is necessarily proportioned to
+the risk, yet, as I had the honour before to observe, there is comfort
+for the proprietor.  The instinct of property is imperishable."
+
+"Not in the house where I lodge," said Lemercier.  "Two soldiers were
+billeted there; and during my stay in the ambulance they enter my rooms,
+and cart away all of the little furniture left there, except a bed and a
+table.  Brought before a court-martial, they defend themselves by saying,
+'The rooms were abandoned.'  The excuse was held valid.  They were let
+off with a reprimand and a promise to restore what was not already
+disposed of.  They have restored me another table and four chairs."
+"Nevertheless, they had the instinct of property, though erroneously
+developed, otherwise they would not have deemed any excuse for their act
+necessary.  Now for my instance of the inherent tenacity of that
+instinct.  A worthy citizen in want of fuel sees a door in a garden wall,
+and naturally carries off the door.  He is apprehended by a gendarme who
+sees the act.  'Voleur,' he cries to the gendarme, 'do you want to rob me
+of my property?'  'That door your property?  I saw you take it away.'
+'You confess,' cries the citizen, triumphantly--'you confess that it
+is my property; for you saw me appropriate it.'  Thus you see how
+imperishable is the instinct of property.  No sooner does it disappear as
+yours than it reappears as mine."
+
+"I would laugh if I could," said Lemercier, "but such a convulsion would
+be fatal. _Dieu des dieux_, how empty I am!"  He reeled as he spoke, and
+clung to De Breze for support.  De Breze had the reputation of being the
+most selfish of men.  But at that moment, when a generous man might be
+excused for being selfish enough to desire to keep the little that he had
+for his own reprieve from starvation, this egotist became superb.
+"Friends," he cried, with enthusiasm, "I have something yet in my pocket;
+we will dine, all three of us."
+
+"Dine!" faltered Lemercier.  "Dine! I have not dined since I left the
+hospital.  I breakfasted yesterday--on two mice upon toast.  Dainty, but
+not nutritious.  And I shared them with Fox."
+
+"Fox! Fox lives still, then?" cried De Breze, startled.
+
+"In a sort of way he does.  But one mouse since yesterday morning is not
+much; and he can't expect that every day."
+
+"Why don't you take him out?" asked Savarin.  "Give him a chance of
+picking up a bone somewhere."
+
+"I dare not; he would be picked up himself.  Dogs are getting very
+valuable: they sell for 50 francs apiece.  Come, De Breze, where are we
+to dine?"
+
+"I and Savarin can dine at the London Tavern upon rat pate or jugged cat.
+But it would be impertinence to invite a satrap like yourself who has a
+whole dog in his larder--a dish of 50 francs--a dish for a king.  Adieu,
+my dear Frederic.  Allons, Savarin."
+
+"I feasted you on better meats than dog when I could afford it," said
+Frederic, plaintively; "and the first time you invite me you retract the
+invitation.  Be it so. _Bon appetit_."
+
+"_Bah_!"  said De Breze, catching Frederic's arm as he turned to depart.
+"Of course I was but jesting.  Only another day, when my pockets will be
+empty, do think what an excellent thing a roasted dog is, and make up
+your mind while Fox has still some little flesh on his bones."
+
+"Flesh!" said Savarin, detaining them.  "Look!  See how right Voltaire was
+in saying, 'Amusement is the first necessity of civilised man.'  Paris
+can do without bread Paris still retains Polichinello."
+
+He pointed to the puppet-show, round which a crowd, not of children
+alone, but of men-middle-aged and old-were collected; while sous were
+dropped into the tin handed round by a squalid boy.
+
+"And, _mon ami_," whispered De Breze to Lemercier, with the voice of a
+tempting fiend, "observe how Punch is without his dog."
+
+It was true.  The dog was gone,--its place supplied by a melancholy
+emaciated cat.
+
+Frederic crawled towards the squalid boy.  "What has become of Punch's
+dog?"
+
+"We ate him last Sunday.  Next Sunday we shall have the cat in a pie,"
+said the urchin, with a sensual smack of the lips.
+
+"O Fox! Fox!" murmured Frederic, as the three men went slowly down
+through the darkening streets--the roar of the Prussian guns heard afar,
+while distinct and near rang the laugh of the idlers round the Punch
+without a dog.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+While De Breze and his friends were feasting at the cafe Anglais, and
+faring better than the host had promised--for the bill of fare comprised
+such luxuries as ass, mule, peas, fried potatoes, and champagne
+(champagne in some mysterious way was inexhaustible during the time of
+famine)--a very different group had assembled in the rooms of Isaura
+Cicogna.  She and the Venosta had hitherto escaped the extreme
+destitution to which many richer persons had been reduced.  It is true
+that Isaura's fortune placed in the hands of the absent Louvier, and
+invested in the new street that was to have been, brought no return.  It
+was true that in that street the Venosta, dreaming of cent. per cent.,
+had invested all her savings.  But the Venosta, at the first announcement
+of war, had insisted on retaining in hand a small sum from the amount
+Isaura had received from her "_roman_," that might suffice for current
+expenses, and with yet more acute foresight had laid in stores of
+provisions and fuel immediately after the probability of a siege became
+apparent.  But even the provident mind of the Venosta had never foreseen
+that the siege would endure so long, or that the prices of all articles
+of necessity would rise so high.  And meanwhile all resources--money,
+fuel, provisions--had been largely drawn upon by the charity and
+benevolence of Isaura, without much remonstrance on the part of the
+Venosta, whose nature was very accessible to pity.  Unfortunately, too,
+of late money and provisions had failed to Monsieur and Madame Rameau,
+their income consisting partly of rents no longer paid, and the profits
+of a sleeping partnership in the old shop, from which custom had
+departed; so that they came to share the fireside and meals at the rooms
+of their son's fiancee with little scruple, because utterly unaware that
+the money retained and the provisions stored by the Venosta were now
+nearly exhausted.
+
+The patriotic ardour which had first induced the elder Rameau to
+volunteer his services as a National Guard had been ere this cooled if
+not suppressed, first by the hardships of the duty, and then by the
+disorderly conduct of his associates, and their ribald talk and obscene
+songs.  He was much beyond the age at which he could be registered.  His
+son was, however, compelled to become his substitute, though from his
+sickly health and delicate frame attached to that portion of the National
+Guard which took no part in actual engagements, and was supposed to do
+work on the ramparts and maintain order in the city.
+
+In that duty, so opposed to his tastes and habits, Gustave signalised
+himself as one of the loudest declaimers against the imbecility of the
+Government, and in the demand for immediate and energetic action, no
+matter at what loss of life, on the part of all--except the heroic force
+to which he himself was attached.  Still, despite his military labours,
+Gustave found leisure to contribute to Red journals, and his
+contributions paid him tolerably well.  To do him justice, his parents
+concealed from him the extent of their destitution; they, on their part,
+not aware that he was so able to assist them, rather fearing that he
+himself had nothing else for support but his scanty pay as a National
+Guard.  In fact, of late the parents and son had seen little of each
+other.  M. Rameau, though a Liberal politician, was Liberal as a
+tradesman, not as a Red Republican or a Socialist.  And, though little
+heeding his son's theories while the Empire secured him from the
+practical effect of them, he was now as sincerely frightened at the
+chance of the Communists becoming rampant as most of the Parisian
+tradesmen were.  Madame Rameau, on her side, though she had the dislike
+to aristocrats which was prevalent with her class, was a stanch Roman
+Catholic; and seeing in the disasters that had befallen her country the
+punishment justly incurred by its sins, could not but be shocked by the
+opinions of Gustave, though she little knew that he was the author of
+certain articles in certain journals, in which these opinions were
+proclaimed with a vehemence far exceeding that which they assumed in his
+conversation.  She had spoken to him with warm anger, mixed with
+passionate tears, on his irreligious principles; and from that moment
+Gustave shunned to give her another opportunity of insulting his pride
+and depreciating his wisdom.
+
+Partly to avoid meeting his parents, partly because he recoiled almost as
+much from the ennui of meeting the other visitors at her apartments--the
+Paris ladies associated with her in the ambulance, Raoul de Vandeniar,
+whom he especially hated, and the Abbe Vertpre, who had recently come
+into intimate friendship with both the Italian ladies--his visits to
+Isaura had become exceedingly rare.  He made his incessant military
+duties the pretext for absenting himself; and now, on this evening, there
+were gathered round Isaura's hearth--on which burned almost the last of
+the hoarded fuel--the Venosta, the two Rameaus, the Abbe Vertpre, who was
+attached as confessor to the society of which Isaura was so zealous a
+member.  The old priest and the young poetess had become dear friends.
+There is in the nature of a woman (and especially of a woman at once so
+gifted and so childlike as Isaura, combining an innate tendency towards
+faith with a restless inquisitiveness of intellect, which is always
+suggesting query or doubt) a craving for something afar from the sphere
+of her sorrow, which can only be obtained through that "bridal of the
+earth and sky" which we call religion.  And hence, to natures like
+Isaura's, that link between the woman and the priest, which the
+philosophy of France has never been able to dissever.
+
+"It is growing late," said Madame Rameau; "I am beginning to feel uneasy.
+Our dear Isaura is not yet returned."
+
+"You need be under no apprehension," said the Abby.  The ladies attached
+to the ambulance of which she is so tender and zealous a sister incur no
+risk.  There are always brave men related to the sick and wounded who see
+to the safe return of the women.  My poor Raoul visits that ambulance
+daily.  His kinsman, M. de Rochebriant, is there among the wounded."
+
+"Not seriously hurt, I hope," said the Venosta; "not disfigured?  He was
+so handsome; it is only the ugly warrior whom a scar on the face
+improves."
+
+"Don't be alarmed, Signora; the Prussian guns spared his face.  His
+wounds in themselves were not dangerous, but he lost a good deal of
+blood.  Raoul and the Christian brothers found him insensible among a
+heap of the slain."
+
+"M. de Vandemar seems to have very soon recovered the shock of his poor
+brother's death," said Madame Rameau.  "There is very little heart in an
+aristocrat."
+
+The Abbe's mild brow contracted.  "Have more charity, my daughter.  It is
+because Raoul's sorrow for his lost brother is so deep and so holy that
+he devotes himself more than ever to the service of the Father which is
+in heaven.  He said, a day or two after the burial, when plans for a
+monument to Enguerrand were submitted to him: 'May my prayer be
+vouchsafed, and my life be a memorial of him more acceptable to his
+gentle spirit than monuments of bronze or marble.  May I be divinely
+guided and sustained in my desire to do such good acts as he would have
+done had he been spared longer to earth.  And whenever tempted to weary,
+may my conscience whisper, Betray not the trust left to thee by thy
+brother, lest thou be not reunited to him at last."'
+
+"Pardon me, pardon!" murmured Madame Rameau humbly, while the Venosta
+burst into tears.
+
+The Abbe, though a most sincere and earnest ecclesiastic, was a cheery
+and genial man of the world; and, in order to relieve Madame Rameau from
+the painful self-reproach he had before excited, he turned the
+conversation.  "I must beware, however," he said, with his pleasant
+laugh, "as to the company in which I interfere in family questions; and
+especially in which I defend my poor Raoul from any charge brought
+against him.  For some good friend this day sent me a terrible organ of
+communistic philosophy, in which we humble priests are very roughly
+handled, and I myself am especially singled out by name as a pestilent
+intermeddler in the affairs of private households.  I am said to set the
+women against the brave men who are friends of the people, and am
+cautioned by very truculent threats to cease from such villainous
+practices."  And here, with a dry humour that turned into ridicule what
+would otherwise have excited disgust and indignation among his listeners,
+he read aloud passages replete with the sort of false eloquence which was
+then the vogue among the Red journals.  In these passages, not only the
+Abbe was pointed out for popular execration, but Raoul de Vandemar,
+though not expressly named, was clearly indicated as a pupil of the
+Abbe's, the type of a lay Jesuit.
+
+The Venosta alone did not share in the contemptuous laughter with which
+the inflated style of these diatribes inspired the Rameaus.  Her simple
+Italian mind was horror-stricken by language which the Abbe treated with
+ridicule.
+
+"Ah!"  said M. Rameau, "I guess the author--that firebrand Felix Pyat."
+
+"No," answered the Abbe; "the writer signs himself by the name of a more
+learned atheist--Diderot le jeune."  Here the door opened, and Raoul
+entered, accompanying Isaura.  A change had come over the face of the
+young Vandemar since his brother's death.  The lines about the mouth had
+deepened, the cheeks had lost their rounded contour and grown somewhat
+hollow.  But the expression was as serene as ever, perhaps even less
+pensively melancholy.  His whole aspect was that of a man who has
+sorrowed, but been supported in sorrow; perhaps it was more sweet-
+certainly it was more lofty.
+
+And, as if there were in the atmosphere of his presence something that
+communicated the likeness of his own soul to others, since Isaura had
+been brought into his companionship, her own lovely face had caught the
+expression that prevailed in his--that, too, had become more sweet--that,
+too, had become more lofty.
+
+The friendship that had grown up between these two young mourners was of
+a very rare nature.  It had in it no sentiment that could ever warm into
+the passion of human love.  Indeed, had Isaura's heart been free to give
+away, love for Raoul de Vandemar would have seemed to her a profanation.
+He was never more priestly than when he was most tender.  And the
+tenderness of Raoul towards her was that of some saint-like nature
+towards the acolyte whom it attracted upwards.  He had once, just before
+Enguerrand's death, spoken to Isaura with a touching candour as to his
+own predilection for a monastic life.  "The worldly avocations that open
+useful and honourable careers for others have no charm for me.  I care
+not for riches nor power, nor honours nor fame.  The austerities of the
+conventual life have no terror for me; on the contrary, they have a
+charm, for with them are abstraction from earth and meditation on heaven.
+In earlier years I might, like other men, have cherished dreams of human
+love, and felicity in married life, but for the sort of veneration with
+which I regarded one to whom I owe--humanly speaking--whatever of good
+there may be in me.  Just when first taking my place among the society of
+young men who banish from their life all thought of another, I came under
+the influence of a woman who taught me to see that holiness was beauty.
+She gradually associated me with her acts of benevolence, and from her I
+learned to love God too well not to be indulgent to his creatures.  I
+know not whether the attachment I felt to her could have been inspired in
+one who had not from childhood conceived a romance, not perhaps justified
+by history, for the ideal images of chivalry.  My feeling for her at
+first was that of the pure and poetic homage which a young knight was
+permitted, _sans reproche_, to render to some fair queen or chatelaine,
+whose colours he wore in the lists, whose spotless repute he would have
+perilled his life to defend.  But soon even that sentiment, pure as it
+was, became chastened from all breath of earthly love, in proportion as
+the admiration refined itself into reverence.  She has often urged me to
+marry, but I have no bride on this earth.  I do but want to see
+Enguerrand happily married, and then I quit the world for the cloister."
+
+But after Enguerrand's death, Raoul resigned all idea of the convent.
+That evening, as he attended to their homes Isaura and the other ladies
+at  to the ambulance, he said, in answer to inquiries about his mother,
+"She is resigned and calm.  I have promised her I will not, while she
+lives, bury her other son: I renounce my dreams of the monastery."
+
+Raoul did not remain many minutes at Isaura's.  The Abbe accompanied him
+on his way home.  "I have a request to make to you," said the former;
+"you know, of course, your distant cousin the Vicomte de Mauleon?"
+
+"Yes.  Not so well as I ought, for Enguerrand liked him."
+
+"Well enough, at all events, to call on him with a request which I am
+commissioned to make, but it might come better from you as a kinsman.  I
+am a stranger to him, and I know not whether a man of that sort would not
+regard as an officious intermeddling any communication made to him by a
+priest.  The matter, however, is a very simple one.  At the convent of
+------- there is a poor nun who is, I fear, dying.  She has an intense
+desire to see M. de Mauleon, whom she declares to be her uncle, and her
+only surviving relative.  The laws of the convent are not too austere
+to prevent the interview she seeks in such a case.  I should add that I
+am not acquainted with her previous history.  I am not the confessor of
+the sisterhood; he, poor man, was badly wounded by a chance ball a few
+days ago when attached to an ambulance on the ramparts.  As soon as the
+surgeon would allow him to see any one, he sent for me, and bade me go to
+the nun I speak of--Sister Ursula.  It seems that he had informed her
+that M. de Mauleon was at Paris, and had promised to ascertain his
+address.  His wound had prevented his doing so, but he trusted to me to
+procure the information.  I am well acquainted with the Superieure of the
+convent, and I flatter myself that she holds me in esteem.  I had
+therefore no difficulty to obtain her permission to see this poor nun,
+which I did this evening.  She implored me for the peace of her soul to
+lose no time in finding out M. de Mauleon's address, and entreating him
+to visit her.  Lest he should demur, I was to give him the name by which
+he had known her in the world--Louise Duval.  Of course I obeyed.  The
+address of a man who has so distinguished himself in this unhappy siege I
+very easily obtained, and repaired at once to M. de Mauleon's apartment.
+I there learned that he was from home, and it was uncertain whether he
+would not spend the night on the ramparts."
+
+"I will not fail to see him early in the morning," said Raoul, "and
+execute your commission."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+M. Mauleon was somewhat surprised by Raoul's visit the next morning.  He
+had no great liking for a kinsman whose politely distant reserve towards
+him, in contrast to poor Euguerrand's genial heartiness, had much wounded
+his sensitive self-respect; nor could he comprehend the religious
+scruples which forbade Raoul to take a soldier's share in the battle-
+field, though in seeking there to save the lives of others so fearlessly
+hazarding his own life.
+
+"Pardon," said Raoul, with his sweet mournful smile, "the unseasonable
+hour at which I disturb you.  But your duties on the ramparts and mine in
+the hospital begin early, and I have promised the Abbe Vertpre to
+communicate a message of a nature which perhaps you may deem pressing."
+He proceeded at once to repeat what the Abbe had communicated to him the
+night before relative to the illness and the request of the nun.
+
+"Louise Duval!" exclaimed the Vicomte, "discovered at last, and a
+religieuse!  Ah! I now understand why she never sought me out when I
+reappeared at Paris.  Tidings of that sort do not penetrate the walls of
+a convent.  I am greatly obliged to you, M. de Vandemar, for the trouble
+you have so kindly taken.  This poor nun is related to me, and I will at
+once obey the summons.  But this convent des ------- I am ashamed to say
+I know not where it is.  A long way off, I suppose?"
+
+"Allow me to be your guide," said Raoul; "I should take it as a favour to
+be allowed to see a little more of a man whom my lost brother held in
+such esteem."
+
+Victor was touched by this conciliatory speech, and in a few minutes more
+the two men were on their way to the convent on the other side of the
+Seine.
+
+Victor commenced the conversation by a warm and heartfelt tribute to
+Euguerrand's character and memory.  "I never," he said, "knew a nature
+more rich in the most endearing qualities of youth; so gentle, so high-
+spirited, rendering every virtue more attractive, and redeeming such few
+faults or foibles as youth so situated and so tempted cannot wholly
+escape, with an urbanity not conventional, not artificial, but reflected
+from the frankness of a genial temper and the tenderness of a generous
+heart.  Be comforted for his loss, my kinsman.  A brave death was the
+proper crown of that beautiful life."
+
+Raoul made no answer, but pressed gratefully the arm now linked within
+his own.  The companions walked on in silence; Victor's mind settling on
+the visit he was about to make to the niece so long mysteriously lost,
+and now so unexpectedly found.  Louise had inspired him with a certain
+interest from her beauty and force of character, but never with any warm
+affection.  He felt relieved to find that her life had found its close in
+the sanctuary of the convent.  He had never divested himself of a certain
+fear, inspired by Louvier's statement that she might live to bring
+scandal and disgrace on the name he had with so much difficulty, and
+after so lengthened an anguish, partially cleared in his own person.
+
+Raoul left De Mauleon at the gate of the convent, and took his way
+towards the hospitals where he visited, and the poor whom he relieved.
+
+Victor was conducted silently into the convent _parloir_; and, after
+waiting there several minutes, the door opened, and the _Superieure_
+entered.  As she advanced towards him, with stately step and solemn
+visage, De Mauleon recoiled, and uttered a half-suppressed exclamation
+that partook both of amaze and awe.  Could it be possible?  Was this
+majestic woman, with the grave impassible aspect, once the ardent girl
+whose tender letters he had cherished through stormy years, and only
+burned on the night before the most perilous of his battle-fields?  This
+the one, the sole one, whom in his younger dreams he had seen as his
+destined wife?  It was so--it was.  Doubt vanished when he heard her
+voice; and yet how different every tone, every accent, from those of the
+low, soft, thrilling music that had breathed in the voice of old!
+
+"M. de Mauleon," said the Superieure, calmly, "I grieve to sadden you by
+very mournful intelligence.  Yesterday evening, when the Abbe undertook
+to convey to you the request of our Sister Ursula, although she was
+beyond mortal hope of recovery--as otherwise you will conceive that I
+could not have relaxed the rules of this house so as to sanction your
+visit--there was no apprehension of immediate danger.  It was believed
+that her sufferings would be prolonged for some days.  I saw her late
+last night before retiring to my cell, and she seemed even stronger than
+she had been for the last week.  A sister remained at watch in her cell.
+Towards morning she fell into apparently quiet sleep, and in that sleep
+she passed away."  The Superieure here crossed herself, and murmured
+pious words in Latin.  "Dead!  my poor niece!" said Victor, feelingly,
+roused from his stun at the first sight of the Superieure by her measured
+tones, and the melancholy information she so composedly conveyed to him.
+"I cannot, then, even learn why she so wished to see me once more,--or
+what she might have requested at my hands!"
+
+"Pardon, M. le Vicomte.  Such sorrowful consolation I have resolved to
+afford you, not without scruples of conscience, but not without sanction
+of the excellent Abbe Vertpre, whom I summoned early this morning to
+decide my duties in the sacred office I hold.  As soon as Sister Ursula
+heard of your return to Paris, she obtained my permission to address to
+you a letter, subjected, when finished, to my perusal and sanction.  She
+felt that she had much on her mind which her feeble state might forbid
+her to make known to you in conversation with 'sufficient fulness; and as
+she could only have seen you in presence of one of the sisters she
+imagined that there would also be less restraint in a written
+communication.  In fine, her request was that, when you called, I might
+first place this letter in your hands, and allow you time to read it,
+before being admitted to her presence; when a few words conveying your
+promise to attend to the wishes with which you would then be acquainted,
+would suffice for an interview in her exhausted condition.  Do I make
+myself understood?"
+
+"Certainly, Madame,--and the letter?"
+
+"She had concluded last evening; and when I took leave of her later in
+the night, she placed it in my hands for approval.  M. le Vicomte, it
+pains me to say that there is much in the tone of that letter which I
+grieve for and condemn.  And it was my intention to point this out to our
+sister at morning, and tell her that passages must be altered before I
+could give to you the letter.  Her sudden decease deprived me of this
+opportunity.  I could not, of course, alter or erase a line--a word.  My
+only option was to suppress the letter altogether, or give it you intact.
+The Abbe thinks that, on the whole, my duty does not forbid the dictate
+of my own impulse--my own feelings; and I now place this letter in your
+hands."
+
+De Mauleon took a packet, unsealed, from the thin white fingers of the
+Superieure; and as he bent to receive it, lifted towards her eyes
+eloquent with sorrowful, humble pathos, in which it was impossible for
+the heart of a woman who had loved not to see a reference to the past
+which the lips did not dare to utter.
+
+A faint, scarce-perceptible blush stole over the marble cheek of the nun.
+But, with an exquisite delicacy, in which survived the woman while
+reigned the nun, she replied to the appeal.
+
+"M. Victor de Mauleon, before, having thus met, we part for ever, permit
+a poor _religieuse_ to say with what joy--a joy rendered happier because
+it was tearful--I have learned through the Abbe Vertpre that the honour
+which, as between man and man, no one who had once known you could ever
+doubt, you have lived to vindicate from calumny."
+
+"Ah; you have heard that--at last, at last!"
+
+"I repeat--of the honour thus deferred, I never doubted."  The Superieure
+hurried on.  "Greater joy it has been to me to hear from the same
+venerable source that, while found bravest among the defenders of your
+country, you are clear from all alliance with the assailants of your God.
+Continue so, continue so, Victor de Mauleon,"
+
+She retreated to the door, and then turned towards him with a look in
+which all the marble had melted away, adding, with words more formally
+nunlike, yet unmistakably womanlike, than those which had gone before,
+"That to the last you may be true to God, is a prayer never by me
+omitted."
+
+She spoke, and vanished.
+
+In a kind of dim and dreamlike bewilderment, Victor de Mauleon found
+himself without the walls of the convent.  Mechanically, as a man does
+when the routine of his life is presented to him, from the first Minister
+of State to the poor clown at a suburban theatre, doomed to appear at
+their posts, to prose on a Beer Bill, or grin through a horse-collar,
+though their hearts are bleeding at every pore with some household or
+secret affliction,--mechanically De Mauldon went his way towards the
+ramparts, at a section of which he daily drilled his raw recruits.
+Proverbial for his severity towards those who offended, for the
+cordiality of his praise of those who pleased his soldierly judgment,
+no change of his demeanour was visible that morning, save that he might
+be somewhat milder to the one, somewhat less hearty to the other.  This
+routine duty done, he passed slowly towards a more deserted because a
+more exposed part of the defences, and seated himself on the frozen sward
+alone.  The cannon thundered around him.  He heard unconsciously: from
+time to time an _obus_ hissed and splintered close at his feet;--he saw
+with abstracted eye.  His soul was with the past; and, brooding over all
+that in the past lay buried there, came over him a conviction of the
+vanity of the human earth-bounded objects for which we burn or freeze,
+far more absolute than had grown out of the worldly cynicism connected
+with his worldly ambition.  The sight of that face, associated with the
+one pure romance of his reckless youth, the face of one so estranged, so
+serenely aloft from all memories of youth, of romance, of passion, smote
+him in the midst of the new hopes of the new career, as the look on the
+skull of the woman he had so loved and so mourned, when disburied from
+her grave, smote the brilliant noble who became the stern reformer of La
+Trappe.  And while thus gloomily meditating, the letter of the poor
+Louise Duval was forgotten.  She whose existence had so troubled, and
+crossed, and partly marred the lives of others,--she, scarcely dead, and
+already forgotten by her nearest kin.  Well--had she not forgotten, put
+wholly out of her mind, all that was due to those much nearer to her than
+is an uncle to a niece?
+
+The short, bitter, sunless day was advancing towards its decline before
+Victor roused himself with a quick impatient start from his reverie, and
+took forth the letter from the dead nun.
+
+It began with expressions of gratitude, of joy at the thought that she
+should see him again before she died, thank him for his past kindness,
+and receive, she trusted, his assurance that he would attend to her last
+remorseful injunctions.  I pass over much that followed in the
+explanation of events in her life sufficiently known to the reader.  She
+stated, as the strongest reason why she had refused the hand of Louvier,
+her knowledge that she should in due time become a mother--a fact
+concealed from Victor, secure that he would then urge her not to annul
+her informal marriage, but rather insist on the ceremonies that would
+render it valid.  She touched briefly on her confidential intimacy with
+Madame Marigny, the exchange of name and papers, her confinement in the
+neighbourhood of Aix, the child left to the care of the nurse, the
+journey to Munich to find the false Louise Duval was no more.  The
+documents obtained through the agency of her easy-tempered kinsman, the
+late Marquis de Rochebriant, and her subsequent domestication in the
+house of the von Rudesheims,--all this it is needless to do more here
+than briefly recapitulate.  The letter then went on: "While thus kindly
+treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, I was on the terms
+of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, an Italian of noble birth.  He
+was the only man I ever cared for.  I loved him with frail human passion.
+I could not tell him, my true history.  I could not tell him that I had a
+child; such intelligence would have made him renounce me at once.  He had
+a daughter, still but an infant, by a former marriage, then brought up in
+France.  He wished to take her to his house, and his second wife to
+supply the place of her mother.  What was I to do with the child I had
+left near Aix?  While doubtful and distracted, I read an advertisement in
+the journals to the effect that a French lady, then staying in Coblentz,
+wished to adopt a female child not exceeding the age of six: the child to
+be wholly resigned to her by the parents, she undertaking to rear and
+provide for it as her own.  I resolved to go to Coblentz at once.  I did
+so.  I saw this lady.  She seemed in affluent circumstances, yet young,
+but a confirmed invalid, confined the greater part of the day to her sofa
+by some malady of the spine.  She told me very frankly her story.  She
+had been a professional dancer on the stage, had married respectably,
+quitted the stage, become a widow, and shortly afterwards been seized
+with the complaint that would probably for life keep her a secluded
+prisoner in her room.  Thus afflicted, and without tie, interest, or
+object in the world, she conceived the idea of adopting a child that she
+might bring up to tend and cherish her as a daughter.  In this, the
+imperative condition was that the child should never be sought by the
+parents.  She was pleased by my manner and appearance: she did not wish
+her adopted daughter to be the child of peasants.  She asked me for no
+references,--made no inquiries.  She said cordially that she wished for
+no knowledge that, through any indiscretion of her own, communicated to
+the child might lead her to seek the discovery of her real parents.  In
+fine, I left Coblentz on the understanding that I was to bring the
+infant, and if it pleased Madame Surville, the agreement was concluded.
+
+"I then repaired to Aix.  I saw the child.  Alas!  unnatural mother that
+I was, the sight only more vividly brought before me the sense of my own
+perilous position.  Yet the child was lovely! a likeness of myself, but
+lovelier far, for it was a pure, innocent, gentle loveliness.  And they
+told her to call me 'Maman.'  Oh, did I not relent when I heard that
+name?  No; it jarred on my ear as a word of reproach and shame.  In
+walking with the infant towards the railway station, imagine my dismay
+when suddenly I met the man who had been taught to believe me dead.  I
+soon discovered that his dismay was equal to my own,--that I had nothing
+to fear from his desire to claim me.  It did occur to me for a moment to
+resign his child to him.  But when he shrank reluctantly from a half
+suggestion to that effect, my pride was wounded, my conscience absolved.
+And, after all, it might be unsafe to my future to leave with him any
+motive for tracing me.  I left him hastily.  I have never seen nor heard
+of him more.  I took the child to Coblentz.  Madame Surville was charmed
+with its prettiness and prattle,--charmed still more when I rebuked the
+poor infant for calling me 'Maman,' and said, 'Thy real mother is here.'
+Freed from my trouble, I returned to the kind German roof I had quitted,
+and shortly after became the wife of Ludovico Cicogna.
+
+"My punishment soon began.  His was a light, fickle, pleasure-hunting
+nature.  He soon grew weary of me.  My very love made me unamiable to
+him.  I became irritable, jealous, exacting.  His daughter, who now came
+to live with us, was another subject of discord.  I knew that he loved
+her better than me.  I became a harsh step-mother; and Ludovico's
+reproaches, vehemently made, nursed all my angriest passions.  But a son
+of this new marriage was born to myself.  My pretty Luigi! how my heart
+became wrapt up in him!  Nursing him, I forgot resentment against his
+father.  Well, poor Cicogna fell ill and died.  I mourned him sincerely;
+but my boy was left.  Poverty then fell on me,--poverty extreme.
+Cicogna's sole income was derived from a post in the Austrian dominion in
+Italy, and ceased with it.  He received a small pension in compensation;
+that died with him.
+
+"At this time, an Englishman, with whom Ludovico had made acquaintance in
+Venice, and who visited often at our house in Verona, offered me his
+hand.  He had taken an extraordinary liking to Isaura, Cicogna's daughter
+by his first marriage.  But I think his proposal was dictated partly by
+compassion for me, and more by affection for her.  For the sake of my boy
+Luigi I married him.  He was a good man, of retired learned habits with
+which I had no sympathy.  His companionship overwhelmed me with ennui.
+But I bore it patiently for Luigi's sake.  God saw that my heart was as
+much as ever estranged from Him, and He took away my all on earth--my
+boy.  Then in my desolation I turned to our Holy Church for comfort. I
+found a friend in the priest, my confessor.  I was startled to learn from
+him how guilty I had been--was still.  Pushing to an extreme the
+doctrines of the Church, he would not allow that my first marriage,
+though null by law, was void in the eyes of Heaven.  Was not the death of
+the child I so cherished a penalty due to my sin towards the child I had
+abandoned?
+
+"These thoughts pressed on me night and day.  With the consent and
+approval of the good priest, I determined to quit the roof of M. Selby,
+and to devote myself to the discovery of my forsaken Julie.
+
+"I had a painful interview with M. Selby.  I announced my intention to
+separate from him.  I alleged as a reason my conscientious repugnance to
+live with a professed heretic--an enemy to our Holy Church.  When M.
+Selby found that he could not shake my resolution, he lent himself to it
+with the forbearance and generosity which he had always exhibited.  On
+our marriage he had settled on me five thousand pounds, to be absolutely
+mine in the event of his death.  He now proposed to concede to me the
+interest on that capital during his life, and he undertook the charge of
+my step-daughter Isaura, and secured to her all the rest he had to leave;
+such landed property as he possessed in England passing to a distant
+relative.
+
+"So we parted, not with hostility--tears were shed on both sides.  I set
+out for Coblentz.  Madame Surville had long since quitted that town,
+devoting some years to the round of various mineral spas in vain hope of
+cure.  Not without some difficulty I traced her to her last residence in
+the neighbourhood of Paris, but she was then no more--her death
+accelerated by the shock occasioned by the loss of her whole fortune,
+which she had been induced to place in one of the numerous fraudulent
+companies by which so many have been ruined.  Julie, who was with her at
+the time of her death, had disappeared shortly after it--none could tell
+me whither; but from such hints as I could gather, the poor child, thus
+left destitute, had been betrayed into sinful courses.
+
+"Probably I might yet by searching inquiry have found her out; you will
+say it was my duty at least to institute such inquiry.  No doubt; I now
+remorsefully feel that it was.  I did not think so at the time.  The
+Italian priest had given me a few letters of introduction to French
+ladies with whom, when they had sojourned at Florence, he had made
+acquaintance.  These ladies were very strict devotees, formal observers
+of those decorums by which devotion proclaims itself to the world.  They
+had received me not only with kindness but with marked respect.  They
+chose to exalt into the noblest self-sacrifice the act of my leaving M.
+Selby's house.  Exaggerating the simple cause assigned to it in the
+priest's letter, they represented me as quitting a luxurious home and an
+idolising husband rather than continue intimate intercourse with the
+enemy of my religion.  This new sort of flattery intoxicated me with its
+fumes.  I recoiled from the thought of shattering the pedestal to which I
+had found myself elevated.  What if I should discover my daughter in one
+from the touch of whose robe these holy women would recoil as from the
+rags of a leper!  No; it would be impossible for me to own her--
+impossible for me to give her the shelter of my roof.  Nay, if discovered
+to hold any commune with such an outcast, no explanation, no excuse short
+of the actual truth, would avail with these austere judges of human
+error.  And the actual truth would be yet deeper disgrace.  I reasoned
+away my conscience.  If I looked for example in the circles in which I
+had obtained reverential place, I could find no instance in which a girl
+who had fallen from virtue was not repudiated by her nearest relatives.
+Nay, when I thought of my own mother, had not her father refused to see
+her, to acknowledge her child, from no other offence than that of a
+misalliance which wounded the family pride?  That pride, alas! was in my
+blood--my sole inheritance from the family I sprang from.
+
+"Thus it went on, till I had grave symptoms of a disease which rendered
+the duration of my life uncertain.  My conscience awoke and tortured me.
+I resolved to take the veil.  Vanity and pride again!  My resolution was
+applauded by those whose opinion had so swayed my mind and my conduct.
+Before I retired into the convent from which I write, I made legal
+provision as to the bulk of the fortune which, by the death of M. Selby,
+has become absolutely at my disposal.  One thousand pounds amply sufficed
+for dotation to the convent: the other four thousand pounds are given in
+trust to the eminent notary, M. Nadaud, Rue -------.  On applying to him,
+you will find that the sum, with the accumulated interest, is bequeathed
+to you,--a tribute of gratitude for the assistance you afforded me in the
+time of your own need, and the kindness with which you acknowledged our
+relationship and commiserated my misfortunes.
+
+"But oh, my uncle, find out--a man can do so with a facility not accorded
+to a woman--what has become of this poor Julie, and devote what you may
+deem right and just of the sum thus bequeathed to place her above want
+and temptation.  In doing so, I know you will respect my name: I would
+not have it dishonour you, indeed.
+
+"I have been employed in writing this long letter since the day I heard
+you were in Paris.  It has exhausted the feeble remnants of my strength.
+It will be given to you before the interview I at once dread and long
+for, and in that interview you will not rebuke me.  Will you, my kind
+uncle?  No, you will only soothe and pity!
+
+"Would that I were worthy to pray for others, that I might add, 'May the
+Saints have you in their keeping and lead you to faith in the Holy
+Church, which has power to absolve from sins those who repent as I do.'"
+
+The letter dropped from Victor's hand.  He took it up, smoothed it
+mechanically, and with a dim, abstracted, be wildered, pitiful wonder.
+Well might the _Superieure_ have hesitated to allow confessions,
+betraying a mind so little regulated by genuine religious faith, to pass
+into other hands.  Evidently it was the paramount duty of rescuing from
+want or from sin the writer's forsaken child, that had overborne all
+other considerations in the mind of the Woman and the Priest she
+consulted.
+
+Throughout that letter, what a strange perversion of understanding!  what
+a half-unconscious confusion of wrong and right!--the duty marked out so
+obvious and so neglected; even the religious sentiment awakened by the
+conscience so dividing itself from the moral instinct! the dread of being
+thought less religious by obscure comparative strangers stronger than the
+moral obligation to discover and reclaim the child for whose errors, if
+she had erred, the mother who so selfishly forsook her was alone
+responsible! even at the last, at the approach of death, the love for a
+name she had never made a self-sacrifice to preserve unstained; and that
+concluding exhortation,--that reliance on a repentance in which there was
+so qualified a reparation!
+
+More would Victor de Mauldon have wondered had he known those points of
+similarity in character, and in the nature of their final bequests,
+between Louise Duval and the husband she had deserted.  By one of those
+singular coincidences which, if this work be judged by the ordinary rules
+presented to the ordinary novel-reader, a critic would not unjustly
+impute to defective invention in the author, the provision for this
+child, deprived of its natural parents during their lives, is left to the
+discretion and honour of trustees, accompanied on the part of the
+consecrated Louise and "the blameless King," with the injunction of
+respect to their worldly reputations--two parents so opposite in
+condition, in creed, in disposition, yet assimilating in that point of
+individual character in which it touches the wide vague circle of human
+opinion.  For this, indeed, the excuses of Richard King are strong,
+inasmuch as the secrecy he sought was for the sake, not of his own
+memory, but that of her whom the world knew only as his honoured wife.
+The conduct of Louise admits no such excuse; she dies as she had lived;
+an Egotist.  But, whatever the motives of the parents, what is the fate
+of the deserted child?  What revenge does the worldly opinion, which the
+parents would escape for themselves, inflict on the innocent infant to
+whom the bulk of their worldly possessions is to be clandestinely
+conveyed?  Would all the gold of Ophir be compensation enough for her?
+
+Slowly De Mauleon roused himself, and turned from the solitary place
+where he had been seated to a more crowded part of the ramparts.  He
+passed a group of young _Moblots_, with flowers wreathed round their gun-
+barrels.  "If," said one of them gaily, "Paris wants bread, it never
+wants flowers."  His companions laughed merrily, and burst out into a
+scurrile song in ridicule of St. Trochu.  Just then an _obus_ fell a few
+yards before the group.  The sound only for a moment drowned the song,
+but the splinters struck a man in a coarse, ragged dress, who had stopped
+to listen to the singers.  At his sharp cry, two men hastened to his
+side: one was Victor de Mauleon; the other was a surgeon, who quitted
+another group of idlers--National Guards--attracted by the shriek that
+summoned his professional aid.  The poor man was terribly wounded.  The
+surgeon, glancing at De Mauleon, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered,
+"Past help!"  The sufferer turned his haggard eyes on the Vicomte, and
+gasped out, "M. de Mauleon?"
+
+"That is my name," answered Victor, surprised, and not immediately
+recognising the sufferer.
+
+"Hist, Jean Lebeau!--look at me: you recollect me now,--Mart le Roux,
+_concierge_ to the Secret Council.  Ay, I found out who you were long ago
+--followed you home from the last meeting you broke up.  But I did not
+betray you, or you would have been murdered long since.  Beware of
+the old set--beware of--of--"  Here his voice broke off into shrill
+exclamations of pain.  Curbing his last agonies with a powerful effort,
+he faltered forth, "You owe me a service--see to the little one at home
+--she is starving."  The death-_rale_ came on; in a few moments he was no
+more.
+
+Victor gave orders for the removal of the corpse, and hurried away.  The
+surgeon, who had changed countenance when he overheard the name in which
+the dying man had addressed De Mauleon, gazed silently after De Mauleon's
+retreating form, and then, also quitting the dead, rejoined the group he
+had quitted.  Some of those who composed it acquired evil renown later in
+the war of the Communists, and came to disastrous ends: among that number
+the Pole Loubinsky and other members of the Secret Council.  The Italian
+Raselli was there too, but, subtler than his French confreres, he divined
+the fate of the Communists, and glided from it--safe now in his native
+land, destined there, no doubt, to the funereal honours and lasting
+renown which Italy bestows on the dust of her sons who have advocated
+assassination out of love for the human race.
+
+Amid this group, too, was a National Guard, strayed from his proper post,
+and stretched on the frozen ground; and, early though the hour, in the
+profound sleep of intoxication.
+
+"So," said Loubinsky, "you have found your errand in vain, Citizen le
+Noy; another victim to the imbecility of our generals."
+
+"And partly one of us," replied the Medecin des Pauvres.  "You remember
+poor le Roux, who kept the old baraque where the Council of Ten used to
+meet?  Yonder he lies."
+
+"Don't talk of the Council of Ten.  What fools and dupes we were made by
+that _vieux gredin_, Jean Lebeau!  How I wish I could meet him again!"
+
+Gaspard le Noy smiled sarcastically.  "So much the worse for you, if you
+did.  A muscular and a ruthless fellow is that Jean Lebeau!"  Therewith
+he turned to the drunken sleeper and woke him up with a shake and a kick.
+"Armand--Armand Monnier, I say, rise, rub your eyes.  What if you are
+called to your post?  What if you are shamed as a deserter and a coward?"
+
+Armand turned, rose with an effort from the recumbent to the sitting
+posture, and stared dizzily in the face of the _Medecin des Pauvres_.
+
+"I was dreaming that I had caught by the throat," said Armand, wildly,
+"the aristo who shot my brother; and lo, there were two men, Victor de
+Mauleon and Jean Lebeau."
+
+"Ah! there is something in dreams," said the surgeon.  "Once in a
+thousand times a dream comes true."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The time now came when all provision of food or of fuel failed the modest
+household of Isaura; and there was not only herself and the Venosta to
+feed and warm--there were the servants whom they had brought from Italy,
+and had not the heart now to dismiss to the 'certainty of famine.  True,
+one of the three, the man, had returned to his native land before the
+commencement of the siege; but the two women had remained.  They
+supported themselves now as they could on the meagre rations accorded by
+the Government.  Still Isaura attended the ambulance to which she was
+attached.  From the ladies associated with her she could readily have
+obtained ample supplies: but they had no conception of her real state of
+destitution; and there was a false pride generally prevalent among the
+respectable classes, which Isaura shared, that concealed distress lest
+alms should be proffered.
+
+The destitution of the household had been carefully concealed from the
+parents of Gustave Rameau, until, one day, Madame Rameau, entering at the
+hour at which she generally, and her husband sometimes, came for a place
+by the fireside and a seat at the board, found on the one only ashes, on
+the other a ration of the black nauseous compound which had become the
+substitute for bread.
+
+Isaura was absent on her duties at the ambulance hospital,--purposely
+absent, for she shrank from the bitter task of making clear to the
+friends of her betrothed the impossibility of continuing the aid to their
+support which their son had neglected to contribute; and still more from
+the comment which she knew they would make on his conduct, in absenting
+himself so wholly of late, and in the time of such trial and pressure,
+both from them and from herself.  Truly, she rejoiced at that absence so
+far as it affected herself.  Every hour of the day she silently asked her
+conscience whether she were not now absolved from a promise won from her
+only by an assurance that she had power to influence for good the life
+that now voluntarily separated itself from her own.  As she had never
+loved Gustave, so she felt no resentment at the indifference his conduct
+manifested.  On the contrary, she hailed it as a sign that the annulment
+of their betrothal would be as welcome to him as to herself.  And if so,
+she could restore to him the sort of compassionate friendship she had
+learned to cherish in the hour of his illness and repentance.  She had
+resolved to seize the first opportunity he afforded to her of speaking to
+him with frank and truthful plainness.  But, meanwhile, her gentle nature
+recoiled from the confession of her resolve to appeal to Gustave himself
+for the rupture of their engagement.
+
+Thus the Venosta alone received Madame Rameau; and while that lady was
+still gazing round her with an emotion too deep for immediate utterance,
+her husband entered with an expression of face new to him--the look of a
+man who has been stung to anger, and who has braced his mind to some
+stern determination.  This altered countenance of the good-tempered
+bourgeois was not, however, noticed by the two women.  The Venosta did
+not even raise her eyes to it, as with humbled accents she said, "Pardon,
+dear Monsieur, pardon, Madame, our want of hospitality; it is not our
+hearts that fail.  We kept our state from you as long as we could.  Now
+it speaks for itself; '_la fame e una bretta festin._'"
+
+"Oh, Madame! and oh, my poor Isaura!" cried Madame Rameau, bursting into
+tears.  "So we have been all this time a burden on you,--aided to bring
+such want on yon!  How can we ever be forgiven?  And my son--to leave us
+thus,--not even to tell us where to find him!"
+
+"Do not degrade us, my wife," said M. Rameau, with unexpected dignity,
+"by a word to imply that we would stoop to sue for support to our
+ungrateful child.  No, we will not starve!  I am strong enough still to
+find food for you.  I will apply for restoration to the National Guard.
+They have augmented the pay to married men; it is now nearly two francs
+and a half a-day to a _pere de famille_, and on that pay we all can at
+least live.  Courage, my wife!  I will go at once for employment.  Many
+men older than I am are at watch on the ramparts, and will march to the
+battle on the next sortie."
+
+"It shall not be so," exclaimed Madame Rameau, vehemently, and winding
+her arm round her husband's neck.  "I loved my son better than thee once
+--more shame to me.  Now, I would rather lose twenty such sons than peril
+thy life, my Jacques!  Madame," she continued, turning to the Venosta,
+"thou wert wiser than I.  Thou wert ever opposed to the union between thy
+young friend and my son.  I felt sore with thee for it--a mother is so
+selfish when she puts herself in the place of her child.  I thought that
+only through marriage with one so pure, so noble, so holy, Gustave could
+be saved from sin and evil.  I am deceived.  A man so heartless to his
+parents, so neglectful of his affianced, is not to be redeemed.  I
+brought about this betrothal: tell Isaura that I release her from it.
+I have watched her closely since she was entrapped into it.  I know how
+miserable the thought of it has made her, though, in her sublime devotion
+to her plighted word, she sought to conceal from me the real state of her
+heart.  If the betrothal bring such sorrow, what would the union do!
+Tell her this from me.  Come, Jacques, come away!"
+
+"Stay, Madame!" exclaimed the Venosta, her excitable nature much affected
+by this honest outburst of feeling.  "It is true that I did oppose, so
+far as I could, my poor Piccola's engagement with M. Gustave.  But I dare
+not do your bidding.  Isaura would not listen to me.  And let us be just!
+M. Gustave may be able satisfactorily to explain his seeming indifference
+and neglect.  His health is always very delicate; perhaps he may be again
+dangerously ill.  He serves in the National Guard; perhaps--" she paused,
+but the mother conjectured the word left unsaid, and, clasping her hands,
+cried out in anguish, "Perhaps dead!--and we have wronged him!  Oh,
+Jacques, Jacques! how shall we find out-how discover our boy?  Who can
+tell us where to search? at the hospital--or in the cemeteries?"  At the
+last word she dropped into a seat, and her whole frame shook with her
+sobs.
+
+Jacques approached her tenderly, and kneeling by her side, said:
+
+"No, _m'amie_, comfort thyself, if it be indeed comfort to learn that thy
+son is alive and well.  For my part, I know not if I would not rather he
+had died in his innocent childhood.  I have seen him--spoken to him.  I
+know where he is to be found."
+
+"You do, and concealed it from me?  Oh, Jacques!"
+
+"Listen to me, wife, and you, too, Madame; for what I have to say should
+be made known to Mademoiselle Cicogna.  Some time since, on the night of
+the famous sortie, when at my post on the ramparts, I was told that
+Gustave had joined himself to the most violent of the Red Republicans,
+and had uttered at the Club de la Vengeance sentiments, of which I will
+only say that I, his father and a Frenchman, hung my head with shame when
+they were repeated to me.  I resolved to go to the club myself.  I did.
+I heard him speak--heard him denounce Christianity as the instrument of
+tyrants."
+
+"Ah!" cried the two women, with a simultaneous shudder.
+
+"When the assembly broke up, I waylaid him at the door.  I spoke to him
+seriously.  I told him what anguish such announcement of blasphemous
+opinions would inflict on his pious mother.  I told him I should deem it
+my duty to inform Mademoiselle Cicogna, and warn her against the union on
+which he had told us his heart was bent.  He appeared sincerely moved by
+what I said; implored me to keep silence towards his mother and his
+betrothed; and promised, on that condition, to relinquish at once what he
+called 'his career as an orator,' and appear no more at such execrable
+clubs.  On this understanding I held my tongue.  Why, with such other
+causes of grief and suffering, should I tell thee, poor wife, of a sin
+that I hoped thy son had repented and would not repeat?  And Gustave kept
+his word.  He has never, so far as I know, attended, at least spoken, at
+the Red clubs since that evening."
+
+"Thank heaven so far," murmured Madame Rameau.
+
+"So far, yes; but hear more.  A little time after I thus met him he
+changed his lodging, and did not confide to us his new address, giving as
+a reason to us that he wished to avoid a clue to his discovery by that
+pertinacious Mademoiselle Julie."
+
+Rameau had here sunk his voice into a whisper, intended only for his
+wife, but the ear of the Venosta was fine enough to catch the sound, and
+she repeated, "Mademoiselle Julie!  Santa Maria! who is she?"
+
+"Oh!" said M. Rameau, with a shrug of his shoulders, and with true
+Parisian _sangfroid_ as to such matters of morality, "a trifle not worth
+considering.  Of course, a good-looking _garcon_ like Gustave must have
+his little affairs of the heart before he settles for life.  Unluckily,
+amongst those of Gustave was one with a violent-tempered girl who
+persecuted him when he left her, and he naturally wished to avoid all
+chance of a silly scandal, if only out of respect to the dignity of his
+fiancee.  But I found that was not the true motive, or at least the only
+one, for concealment.  Prepare yourself, my poor wife.  Thou hast heard
+of these terrible journals which the _decheance_ has let loose upon us.
+Our unhappy boy is the principal writer of one of the worst of them,
+under the name of 'Diderot le Jeune."'
+
+"What!" cried the Venosta.  "That monster!  The good Abbe Vertpre was
+telling us of the writings with that name attached to them.  The Abbe
+himself is denounced by name as one of those meddling priests who are to
+be constrained to serve as soldiers or pointed out to the vengeance of
+the _canaille_.  Isaura's _fiancee_ a blasphemer!"
+
+"Hush, hush!" said Madame Rameau, rising, very pale but self-collected.
+"How do you know this, Jacques?"
+
+"From the lips of Gustave himself.  I heard first of it yesterday from
+one of the young reprobates with whom he used to be familiar, and who
+even complimented me on the rising fame of my son, and praised the
+eloquence of his article that day.  But I would not believe him.  I
+bought the journal--here it is; saw the name and address of the printer
+--went this morning to the office--was there told that 'Diderot le Jeune'
+was within revising the press--stationed myself by the street door, and
+when Gustave came out I seized his arm, and asked him to say Yes or No if
+he was the author of this infamous article,--this, which I now hold in my
+hand.  He owned the authorship with pride; talked wildly of the great man
+he was--of the great things he was to do; said that, in hitherto
+concealing his true name, he had done all he could to defer to the
+bigoted prejudices of his parents and his fiancee; and that if genius,
+like fire, would find its way out, he could not help it; that a time was
+rapidly coming when his opinions would be uppermost; that since October
+the Communists were gaining ascendancy, and only waited the end of the
+siege to put down the present Government, and with it all hypocrisies and
+shams, religious or social.  My wife, he was rude to me, insulting!  but
+he had been drinking--that made him incautious: and he continued to walk
+by my side towards his own lodging, on reaching which he ironically
+invited me to enter, saying, 'I should meet there men who would soon
+argue me out of my obsolete notions.'  You may go to him, wife, now, if
+you please.  I will not, nor will I take from him a crust of bread.  I
+came hither, determined to tell the young lady all this, if I found her
+at home.  I should be a dishonoured man if I suffered her to be cheated
+into misery.
+
+"There, Madame Venosta, there!  Take that journal, show it to
+Mademoiselle; and report to her all I have said."
+
+M. Rameau, habitually the mildest of men, had, in talking, worked himself
+up into positive fury.
+
+His wife, calmer but more deeply affected, made a piteous sign to the
+Venosta not to say more; and without other salutation or adieu took her
+husband's arm, and led him from the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Obtaining from her husband Gustave's address, Madame Rameau hastened to
+her son's apartment alone through the darkling streets.  The house in
+which he lodged was in a different quarter from that in which Isaura had
+visited him.  Then, the street selected was still in the centre of the
+_beau monde_--now, it was within the precincts of that section of the
+many-faced capital in which the _beau monde_ was held in detestation or
+scorn; still the house had certain pretensions, boasting a courtyard and
+a porter's lodge.  Madame Rameau, instructed to mount _au second_, found
+the door ajar, and, entering, perceived on the table of the little salon
+the remains of a feast which, however untempting it might have been in
+happier times, contrasted strongly with the meagre fare of which
+Gustave's parents had deemed themselves fortunate to partake at the board
+of his betrothed; remnants of those viands which offered to the
+inquisitive epicure an experiment in food much too costly for the popular
+stomach--dainty morsels of elephant, hippopotamus, and wolf, interspersed
+with half-emptied bottles of varied and high-priced wines.  Passing these
+evidences of unseasonable extravagance with a mute sentiment of anger and
+disgust, Madame Rameau penetrated into a small cabinet, the door of which
+was also ajar, and saw her son stretched on his bed half dressed,
+breathing heavily in the sleep which follows intoxication.  She did not
+attempt to disturb him.  She placed herself quietly by his side, gazing
+mournfully on the face which she had once so proudly contemplated, now
+haggard and faded,--still strangely beautiful, though it was the beauty
+of ruin.
+
+From time to time he stirred uneasily, and muttered broken words, in
+which fragments of his own delicately-worded verse were incoherently
+mixed up with ribald slang, addressed to imaginary companions.  In his
+dreams he was evidently living over again his late revel, with episodical
+diversions into the poet-world, of which he was rather a vagrant nomad
+than a settled cultivator.  Then she would silently bathe his feverish
+temples with the perfumed water she found on his dressing-table.  And so
+she watched till, in the middle of the night, he woke up, and recovered
+the possession of his reason with a quickness that surprised Madame
+Rameau.  He was, indeed, one of those men in whom excess of drink, when
+slept off, is succeeded by extreme mildness, the effect of nervous
+exhaustion, and by a dejected repentance, which, to his mother, seemed a
+propitious lucidity of the moral sense.
+
+Certainly on seeing her he threw himself on her breast, and began to shed
+tears.  Madame Rameau had not the heart to reproach him sternly.  But by
+gentle degrees she made him comprehend the pain he had given to his
+father, and the destitution in which he had deserted his parents and his
+affianced.  In his present mood Gustave was deeply affected by these
+representations.  He excused himself feebly by dwelling on the excitement
+of the times, the preoccupation of his mind, the example of his
+companions; but with his excuses he mingled passionate expressions of
+remorse, and before daybreak mother and son were completely reconciled.
+Then he fell into a tranquil sleep; and Madame Rameau, quite worn out,
+slept also in the chair beside him, her arm around his neck.  He awoke
+before she did at a late hour in the morning; and stealing from her arm,
+went to his escritoire, and took forth what money he found there, half of
+which he poured into her lap, kissing her till she awoke.
+
+"Mother," he said, "henceforth I will work for thee and my father.  Take
+this trifle now; the rest I reserve for Isaura."
+
+"Joy!  I have found my boy again.  But Isaura, I fear that she will not
+take thy money, and all thought of her must also be abandoned."
+
+Gustave had already turned to his looking-glass, and was arranging with
+care his dark ringlets: his personal vanity--his remorse appeased by this
+pecuniary oblation--had revived.
+
+"No," he said gaily, "I don't think I shall abandon her; and it is not
+likely, when she sees and hears me, that she can wish to abandon me!  Now
+let us breakfast, and then I will go at once to her."
+
+In the mean while, Isaura, on her return to her apartment at the wintry
+nightfall, found a cart stationed at the door, and the Venosta on the
+threshold, superintending the removal of various articles of furniture--
+indeed, all such articles as were not absolutely required.
+
+"Oh, Piccola!" she said, with an attempt at cheerfulness, "I did not
+expect thee back so soon.  Hush! I have made a famous bargain.  I have
+found a broker to buy these things which we don't want just at present,
+and can replace by new and prettier things when the siege is over and we
+get our money.  The broker pays down on the nail and thou wilt not go to
+bed without supper.  There are no ills which are not more supportable
+after food."
+
+Isaura smiled faintly, kissed the Venosta's cheek, and ascended with
+weary steps to the sitting-room.  There she seated herself quietly,
+looking with abstracted eyes round the bare dismantled space by the light
+of the single candle.
+
+When the Venosta re-entered, she was followed by the servants, bringing
+in a daintier meal than they had known for days--a genuine rabbit,
+potatoes, _marrons glaces_, a bottle of wine, and a pannier of wood.  The
+fire was soon lighted, the Venosta plying the bellows.  It was not till
+this banquet, of which Isaura, faint as she was, scarcely partook, had
+been remitted to the two Italian women-servants, and another log been
+thrown on the hearth, that the Venosta opened the subject which was
+pressing on her heart.  She did this with a joyous smile, taking both
+Isaura's hands in her own, and stroking them fondly.
+
+"My child, I have such good news for thee!  Thou hast escaped--thou art
+free!" and then she related all that M. Rameau had said, and finished by
+producing the copy of Gustave's unhallowed journal.
+
+When she had read the latter, which she did with compressed lips and
+varying colour, the girl fell on her knees--not to thank Heaven that she
+would now escape a union from which her soul so recoiled--not that she
+was indeed free, but to pray, with tears rolling down her cheeks, that
+God would yet save to Himself, and to good ends, the soul that she had
+failed to bring to Him.  All previous irritation against Gustave was
+gone: all had melted into an ineffable compassion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+When, a little before noon, Gustave was admitted by the servant into
+Isaura's salon, its desolate condition, stripped of all its pretty
+feminine elegancies, struck him with a sense of discomfort to himself
+which superseded any more remorseful sentiment.  The day was intensely
+cold: the single log on the hearth did not burn; there were only two or
+three chairs in the room; even the carpet, which had been of gaily
+coloured Aubusson, was gone.  His teeth chattered; and he only replied by
+a dreary nod to the servant who informed him that Madame Venosta was gone
+out, and Mademoiselle had not yet quitted her own room.
+
+If there be a thing which a true Parisian of Rameau's stamp associates
+with love of woman, it is a certain sort of elegant surroundings, a
+pretty _boudoir_, a cheery hearth, an easy _fauteuil_.  In the absence of
+such attributes, "fuyit retro Venus."  If the Englishman invented the
+word comfort, it is the Parisian who most thoroughly comprehends the
+thing.  And he resents the loss of it in any house where he has been
+accustomed to look for it, as a personal wrong to his feelings.
+
+Left for some minutes alone, Gustave occupied himself with kindling the
+log, and muttering, "_Par tous les diables, quel chien de rhume je vais
+attraper_?"  He turned as he heard the rustle of a robe and a light slow
+step.  Isaura stood before him.  Her aspect startled him.  He had come
+prepared to expect grave displeasure and a frigid reception.  But the
+expression of Isaura's face was more kindly, more gentle, more tender,
+than he had seen it since the day she had accepted his suit.
+
+Knowing from his mother what his father had said to his prejudice, he
+thought within himself, "After all, the poor girl loves me better than I
+thought.  She is sensible and enlightened; she cannot pretend to dictate
+an opinion to a man like me."
+
+He approached with a complacent self-assured mien, and took her hand,
+which she yielded to him quietly, leading her to one of the few remaining
+chairs, and seating himself beside her.
+
+"Dear Isaura," he said, talking rapidly all the while he performed this
+ceremony, "I need not assure you of my utter ignorance of the state to
+which the imbecility of our Government, and the cowardice, or rather the
+treachery, of our generals, has reduced you.  I only heard of it late
+last night from my mother.  I hasten to claim my right to share with you
+the humble resources which I have saved by the intellectual labours that
+have absorbed all such moments as my military drudgeries left to the
+talents which, even at such a moment, paralysing minds less energetic,
+have sustained me:"--and therewith he poured several pieces of gold and
+silver on the table beside her chair.
+
+"Gustave," then said Isaura, "I am well pleased that you thus prove that
+I was not mistaken when I thought and said that, despite all appearances,
+all errors, your heart was good.  Oh, do but follow its true impulses,
+and--"
+
+"Its impulses lead me ever to thy feet," interrupted Gustave, with a
+fervour which sounded somewhat theatrical and hollow.
+
+The girl smiled, not bitterly, not mockingly; but Gustave did not like
+the smile.
+
+"Poor Gustave," she said, with a melancholy pathos in her soft voice,
+"do you not understand that the time has come when such commonplace
+compliments ill suit our altered positions to each other?  Nay, listen to
+me patiently; and let not my words in this last interview pain you to
+recall.  If either of us be to blame in the engagement hastily
+contracted, it is I.  Gustave, when you, exaggerating in your imagination
+the nature of your sentiments for me, said with such earnestness that on
+my consent to our union depended your health, your life, your career;
+that if I withheld that consent you were lost, and in despair would seek
+distraction from thought in all from which your friends, your mother, the
+duties imposed upon Genius for the good of Man to the ends of God, should
+withhold and save you--when you said all this, and I believed it, I felt
+as if Heaven commanded me not to desert the soul which appealed to me in
+the crisis of its struggle and peril.  Gustave, I repent; I was to
+blame."
+
+"How to blame?"
+
+"I overrated my power over your heart: I overrated still more, perhaps,
+my power over my own."
+
+"Ah, your own!  I understand now.  You did not love me?"
+
+"I never said that I loved you in the sense in which you use the word.
+I told you that the love which you have described in your verse, and
+which," she added, falteringly, with heightened colour and with hands
+tightly clasped, "I have conceived possible in my dreams, it was not mine
+to give.  You declared you were satisfied with such affection as I could
+bestow.  Hush! let me go on.  You said that affection would increase,
+would become love, in proportion as I knew you more.  It has not done so.
+Nay, it passed away; even before this time of trial and of grief, I
+became aware how different from the love you professed was the neglect
+which needs no excuse, for it did not pain me."
+
+"You are cruel indeed, Mademoiselle."
+
+"No, indeed, I am kind.  I wish you to feel no pang at our parting.
+Truly I had resolved, when the siege terminated, and the time to speak
+frankly of our engagement came, to tell you that I shrank from the
+thought of a union between us; and that it was for the happiness of both
+that our promises should be mutually cancelled.  The moment has come
+sooner than I thought.  Even had I loved you, Gustave, as deeply as--as
+well as the beings of Romance love, I would not dare to wed one who calls
+upon mortals to deny God, demolish His altars, treat His worship as a
+crime.  No; I would sooner die of a broken heart, that I might the sooner
+be one of those souls privileged to pray the Divine Intercessor for
+merciful light on those beloved and left dark on earth."
+
+"Isaura!" exclaimed Gustave, his mobile temperament impressed, not by the
+words of Isaura, but by the passionate earnestness with which they were
+uttered, and by the exquisite spiritual beauty which her face took from
+the combined sweetness and fervour of its devout expression,--"Isaura, I
+merit your censure, your sentence of condemnation; but do not ask me to
+give back your plighted troth.  I have not the strength to do so.  More
+than ever, more than when first pledged to me, I need the aid, the
+companionship, of my guardian angel.  You were that to me once; abandon
+me not now.  In these terrible times of revolution, excitable natures
+catch madness from each other.  A writer in the heat of his passion says
+much that he does not mean to be literally taken, which in cooler moments
+he repents and retracts.  Consider, too, the pressure of want, of hunger.
+It is the opinions that you so condemn which alone at this moment supply
+bread to the writer.  But say you will yet pardon me,--yet give me trial
+if I offend no more--if I withdraw my aid to any attacks on your views,
+your religion--if I say, 'Thy God shall be my God, and thy people shall
+be my people.'"
+
+"Alas!" said Isaura, softly, "ask thyself if those be words which I can
+believe again.  Hush!" she continued, checking his answer with a more
+kindling countenance and more impassioned voice.  "Are they, after all,
+the words that man should address to woman?  Is it on the strength of
+Woman that Man should rely?  Is it to her that he should say, 'Dictate my
+opinions on all that belongs to the Mind of man; change the doctrines
+that I have thoughtfully formed and honestly advocate; teach me how to
+act on earth, clear all my doubts as to my hopes of heaven'? No, Gustave;
+in this task man never should repose on woman.  Thou are honest at this
+moment, my poor friend; but could I believe thee to-day, thou wouldst
+laugh tomorrow at what woman can be made to believe."
+
+Stung to the quick by the truth of Isaura's accusation, Gustave exclaimed
+with vehemence: "All that thou sayest is false, and thou knowest it.  The
+influence of woman on man for good or for evil defies reasoning.  It does
+mould his deeds on earth; it does either make or mar all that future
+which lies between his life and his gravestone, and of whatsoever may lie
+beyond the grave.  Give me up now, and thou art responsible for me, for
+all I do, it may be against all that thou deemest holy.  Keep thy troth
+yet awhile, and test me.  If I come to thee showing how I could have
+injured, and how for thy dear sake I have spared, nay, aided, all that
+thou dost believe and reverence, then wilt thou dare to say, 'Go thy ways
+alone--I forsake thee!'"
+
+Isaura turned aside her face, but she held out her hand--it was as cold
+as death.  He knew that she had so far yielded, and his vanity exulted:
+he smiled in secret triumph as he pressed his kiss on that icy hand and
+was gone.
+
+"This is duty--it must be duty," said Isaura to herself.  "But where is
+the buoyant delight that belongs to a duty achieved?--where? oh where?"
+And then she stole with drooping head and heavy step into her own room,
+fell on her knees, and prayed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+In vain persons, be they male or female, there is a complacent self-
+satisfaction in any momentary personal success, however little that
+success may conduce to--nay, however much it may militate against--the
+objects to which their vanity itself devotes its more permanent desires.
+A vain woman may be very anxious to win A------, the magnificent, as a
+partner for life; and yet feel a certain triumph when a glance of her eye
+has made an evening's conquest of the pitiful B-------, although by that
+achievement she incurs the imminent hazard of losing A------ altogether.
+So, when Gustave Rameau quitted Isaura, his first feeling was that of
+triumph.  His eloquence had subdued her will; she had not finally
+discarded him.  But as he wandered abstractedly in the biting air, his
+self-complacency was succeeded by mortification and discontent.  He felt
+that he had committed himself to promises which he was by no means
+prepared to keep.  True, the promises were vague in words; but in
+substance they were perfectly clear--"to spare, nay, to aid all that
+Isaura esteemed and reverenced."  How was this possible to him?  How
+could he suddenly change the whole character of his writings?--how become
+the defender of marriage and property, of church and religion?--how
+proclaim himself so utter an apostate?  If he did, how become a leader
+of the fresh revolution? how escape being its victim?  Cease to write
+altogether?
+
+But then how live?  His pen was his sole subsistence, save 30 sous a-day
+as a National Guard--30 sous a day to him, who, in order to be Sybarite
+in tastes, was Spartan in doctrine.  Nothing better just at that moment
+than Spartan doctrine, "Live on black broth and fight the enemy."  And
+the journalists in vogue so thrived upon that patriotic sentiment, that
+they were the last persons compelled to drink the black broth or to fight
+the enemy.
+
+"Those women are such idiots when they meddle in politics," grumbled
+between his teeth the enthusiastic advocate of Woman's Rights on all
+matters of love.  "And," he continued, soliloquising, "it is not as if
+the girl had any large or decent dot; it is not as if she said, 'In
+return for the sacrifice of your popularity, your prospects, your
+opinions, I give you not only a devoted heart, but an excellent table and
+a capital fire and plenty of pocket-money.' _Sacre bleu_! when I think of
+that frozen salon, and possibly the leg of a mouse for dinner, and a
+virtuous homily by way of grace, the prospect is not alluring; and the
+girl herself is not so pretty as she was--grown very thin. _Sur mon ame_,
+I think she asks too much--far more than she is worth.  No, No; I had
+better have accepted her dismissal. _Elle n'est pas digne de moi_."
+
+Just as he arrived at that conclusion, Gustave Rameau felt the touch of a
+light, a soft, a warm, yet a firm hand, on his aria.  He turned, and
+beheld the face of the woman whom, through so many dreary weeks, he had
+sought to shun--the face of Julie Caumartin.  Julie was not, as Savarin
+had seen her, looking pinched and wan, with faded robes, nor, as when met
+in the cafe by Lemercier, in the faded robes of a theatre.  Julie never
+looked more beautiful, more radiant, than she did now; and there was a
+wonderful heartfelt fondness in her voice when she cried, "_Mon homme!
+mon homme! seul homme au monde a mon coeur, Gustave, cheri adore_!  I
+have found thee-at last--at last!"  Gustave gazed upon her, stupefied.
+Involuntarily his eye glanced from the freshness of bloom in her face
+which the intense cold of the atmosphere only seemed to heighten into
+purer health, to her dress, which was new and handsome--black--he did
+not know that it was mourning--the cloak trimmed with costly sables.
+Certainly it was no mendicant for alms who thus reminded the shivering
+Adonis of the claims of a pristine Venus.  He stammered out her naive,
+"Julie!"--and then he stopped.
+
+"_Oui, ta Julie!  Petit ingrat_!  how I have sought for thee! how I have
+hungered for the sight of thee!  That monster Savarin! he would not give
+me any news of thee.  That is ages ago.  But at least Frederic Lemercier,
+whom I saw since, promised to remind thee that I lived still.  He did not
+do so, or I should have seen thee--n'est ce, pas?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly--only--_chere amie_--you know that--that--as I
+before announced to thee, I--I--was engaged in marriage--and--and--"
+
+"But are you married?"
+
+"No, no.  Hark!  Take care--is not that the hiss of an obus?"
+
+"What then?  Let it come!  Would it might slay us both while my hand is
+in thine!"
+
+"Ah!" muttered Gustave, inwardly, "what a difference!  This is love!  No
+preaching here! _Elle est plus digne de moi que d'autre_."
+
+"No," he said, aloud, "I am not married.  Marriage is at best a pitiful
+ceremony.  But if you wished for news of me, surely you must have heard
+of my effect as an orator not despised in the Salle Favre.  Since, I have
+withdrawn from that arena.  But as a journalist I flatter myself that I
+have had a _beau succes_."
+
+"Doubtless, doubtless, my Gustave, my Poet!  Wherever thou art, thou must
+be first among men.  But, alas it is my fault--my misfortune.  I have not
+been in the midst of a world that perhaps rings of thy name."
+
+"Not my name.  Prudence compelled me to conceal that.  Still, Genius
+pierces under any name.  You might have discovered me under my nom de
+plume."
+
+"Pardon me--I was always _bete_.  But, oh!  for so many weeks I was so
+poor--so destitute.  I could go nowhere, except--don't be ashamed of me--
+except--"
+
+"Yes?  Go on."
+
+"Except where I could get some money.  At first to dance--you remember my
+bolero.  Then I got a better engagement.  Do you not remember that you
+taught me to recite verses?  Had it been for myself alone, I might have
+been contented to starve.  Without thee, what was life?  But thou wilt
+recollect Madeleine, the old _bonne_ who lived with me.  Well, she had
+attended and cherished me since I was so high-lived with my mother.
+Mother! no; it seems that Madame Surville was not my mother after all.
+But, of course, I could not let my old Madeleine starve; and therefore,
+with a heart as heavy as lead, I danced and declaimed.  My heart was not
+so heavy when I recited thy songs."
+
+"My songs! _Pauvre ange_!" exclaimed the Poet.
+
+"And then, too, I thought, 'Ah, this dreadful siege!  He, too, may be
+poor--he may know want and hunger;' and so all I could save from
+Madeleine I put into a box for thee, in case thou shouldst come back to
+me some day.  _Mon homme_, how could I go to the Salle Favre?  How could
+I read journals, Gustave?  But thou art not married, Gustave?  _Parole
+d'honneur_?"
+
+"_Parole d'honneur_!  What does that matter?"
+
+"Everything!  Ah! I am not so _mechante_, so _mauvaise tete_ as I was
+some months ago.  If thou went married, I should say, 'Blessed and sacred
+be thy wife!  Forget me.'  But as it is, one word more.  Dost thou love
+the young lady, whoever she be? or does she love thee so well that it
+would be sin in thee to talk trifles to Julie?  Speak as honestly as if
+thou wert not a poet."
+
+"Honestly, she never said she loved me.  I never thought she did.  But,
+you see, I was very ill, and my parents and friends and my physician said
+that it was right for me to arrange my life, and marry, and so forth.
+And the girl had money, and was a good match.  In short, the thing was
+settled.  But oh, Julie, she never learned my songs by heart!  She did
+not love as thou mayst, and still dost.  And--ah! well--now that we meet
+again--now that I look in thy face--now that I hear thy voice--No, I do
+not love her as I loved, and might yet love thee.  But--but--"
+
+"Well, but? oh, I guess.  Thou seest me well dressed, no longer dancing
+and declaiming at cafes: and thou thinkest that Julie has disgraced
+herself? she is unfaithful?"
+
+Gustave had not anticipated that frankness, nor was the idea which it
+expressed uppermost in his mind when he said, "but, but--"  There were
+many buts all very confused, struggling through his mind as he spoke.
+However, he answered as a Parisian sceptic, not ill-bred, naturally would
+answer:
+
+"My dear friend, my dear child" (the Parisian is very fond of the word
+child or enfant in addressing a woman), "I have never seen thee so
+beautiful as thou art now; and when thou tellest me that thou are no
+longer poor, and the proof of what thou sayest is visible in the furs,
+which, alas'.  I cannot give thee, what am I to think?"
+
+"Oh, _mon homme, mon homme_! thou art very _spirituel_, and that is why I
+loved thee.  I am very _bete_, and that is excuse enough for thee if thou
+couldst not love me.  But canst thou look me in the face and not know
+that my eyes could not meet thine as they do, if I had been faithless to
+thee even in a thought, when I so boldly touched thine arm?  _Viens chez
+moi_, come and let me explain all.  Only--only let me repeat, if another
+has rights over thee which forbid thee to come, say so kindly, and I will
+never trouble thee again."
+
+Gustave had been hitherto walking slowly by the side of Julie, amidst the
+distant boom of the besiegers' cannon, while the short day began to
+close; and along the dreary boulevards sauntered idlers turning to look
+at the young, beautiful, well-dressed woman who seemed in such contrast
+to the capital whose former luxuries the "Ondine" of imperial Paris
+represented.  He now offered his arm to Julie; and, quickening his pace,
+said, "There is no reason why I should refuse to attend thee home, and
+listen to the explanations thou dost generously condescend to volunteer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"Ah, indeed! what a difference! what a difference!" said Gustave to
+himself when he entered Julie's apartment.  In her palmier days, when he
+had first made her acquaintance, the apartment no doubt had been
+infinitely more splendid, more abundant in silks and fringes and flowers
+and nicknacks; but never had it seemed so cheery and comfortable and
+home-like as now.  What a contrast to Isaura's dismantled chilly salon!
+She drew him towards the hearth, on which, blazing though it was, she
+piled fresh billets, seated him in the easiest of easy-chairs, knelt
+beside him, and chafed his numbed hands in hers; and as her bright eyes
+fixed tenderly on his, she looked so young and so innocent!  You would
+not then have called her the "Ondine of Paris."
+
+But when, a little while after, revived by the genial warmth and moved by
+the charm of her beauty, Gustave passed his arm round her neck and sought
+to draw her on his lap, she slid from his embrace, shaking her head
+gently, and seated herself, with a pretty air of ceremonious decorum, at
+a little distance.
+
+Gustave looked at her amazed.
+
+"Causons," said she, gravely, "thou wouldst know why I am so well
+dressed, so comfortably lodged, and I am longing to explain to thee all.
+Some days ago I had just finished my performance at the cafe--, and was
+putting on my shawl, when a tall Monsieur, _fort bel homme_, with the air
+of a grand seigneur, entered the cafe, and approaching me politely, said,
+'I think I have the honour to address Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin?'
+'That is my name,' I said, surprised; and, looking at him more intently,
+I recognised his face.  He had come into the cafe a few days before with
+thine old acquaintance Frederic Lemercier, and stood by when I asked
+Frederic to give me news of thee.  'Mademoiselle,' he continued, with a
+serious melancholy smile, 'I shall startle you when I say that I am
+appointed to act as your guardian by the last request of your mother.'
+'Of Madame Surville?'  'Madame Surville adopted you, but was not your
+mother.  We cannot talk at ease here.  Allow me to request that you will
+accompany me to Monsieur  -----, the _avoue_.  It is not very far from
+this--and by the way--I will tell you some news that may sadden, and some
+news that may rejoice.'
+
+"There was an earnestness in the voice and look of this Monsieur that
+impressed me.  He did not offer me his arm; but I walked by his side in
+the direction he chose.  As we walked he told me in very few words that
+my mother had been separated from her husband, and for certain family
+reasons had found it so difficult to rear and provide for me herself,
+that she had accepted the offer of Madame Surville to adopt me as her own
+child.  While he spoke, there came dimly back to me the remembrance of a
+lady who had taken me from my first home, when I had been, as I
+understood, at nurse, and left me with poor dear Madame Surville, saying,
+'This is henceforth your mamma.'
+
+"I never again saw that lady.  It seems that many years afterwards my true
+mother desired to regain me.  Madame Surville was then dead.  She failed
+to trace me out, owing, alas! to my own faults and change of name.  She
+then entered a nunnery, but, before doing so, assigned a sum of 100,000
+francs to this gentleman, who was distantly connected with her, with full
+power to him to take it to himself, or give it to my use should he
+discover me, at his discretion.  'I ask you,' continued the Monsieur,
+'to go with me to Mons. N------'s, because the sum is still in his hands.
+He will confirm my statement.  All that I have now to say is this, If you
+accept my guardianship, if you obey implicitly my advice, I shall
+consider the interest of this sum which has accumulated since deposited
+with M.  ----- due to you; and the capital will be your dot on marriage,
+if the marriage be with my consent.'"
+
+Gustave had listened very attentively, and without interruption, until
+now; when he looked up, and said with his customary sneer, "Did your
+Monsieur, _fort bel homme_, you say, inform you of the value of the
+advice, rather of the commands, you were implicitly to obey?"
+
+"Yes," answered Julie, "not then, but later.  Let me go on.  We arrived
+at M. N-----'s, an elderly grave man.  He said that all he knew was that
+he held the money in trust for the Monsieur with me, to be given to him,
+with the accumulations of interest, on the death of the lady who had
+deposited it.  If that Monsieur had instructions how to dispose of the
+money, they were not known to him.  All he had to do was to transfer it
+absolutely to him on the proper certificate of the lady's death.  So you
+see, Gustave, that the Monsieur could have kept all from me if he had
+liked."
+
+"Your Monsieur is very generous.  Perhaps you will now tell me his name."
+
+"No; he forbids me to do it yet."
+
+"And he took this apartment for you, and gave you money to buy that smart
+dress and these furs.  Bah! _mon enfant_, why try to deceive me?  Do I
+not know my Paris?  A _fort bel homme_ does not make himself guardian to
+a _fort belle fine_ so young and fair as Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin
+without certain considerations which shall be nameless, like himself."
+
+Julie's eyes flashed.  "Ah, Gustave! ah, Monsieur!" she said, half
+angrily, half plaintively, "I see that my guardian knew you better than
+I did.  Never mind; I will not reproach.  Thou halt the right to despise
+me."
+
+"Pardon! I did not mean to offend thee," said Gustave, somewhat
+disconcerted.  "But own that thy story is strange; and this guardian, who
+knows me better than thou--does he know me at all?  Didst thou speak to
+him of me?"
+
+"How could I help it?  He says that this terrible war, in which he takes
+an active part, makes his life uncertain from day to day.  He wished to
+complete the trust bequeathed to him by seeing me safe in the love of
+some worthy man who"--she paused for a moment with an expression of
+compressed anguish, and then hurried on--"who would recognise what was
+good in me,--would never reproach me for--for--the past.  I then said
+that my heart was thine: I could never marry any one but thee."
+
+"Marry me," faltered Gustave--"marry!"
+
+"And," continued the girl, not heeding his interruption, "he said thou
+wert not the husband he would choose for me: that thou wert not--no, I
+cannot wound thee by repeating what he said unkindly, unjustly.  He bade
+me think of thee no more.  I said again, that is impossible."
+
+"But," resumed Rameau, with an affected laugh, "why think of anything so
+formidable as marriage?  Thou lovest me, and--"  He approached again,
+seeking to embrace her.  She recoiled.  "No, Gustave, no.  I have sworn
+solemnly by the memory of my lost mother--O--that I will never sin again.
+I will never be to thee other than thy friend--or thy wife."
+
+Before Gustave could reply to these words, which took him wholly by
+surprise, there was a ring at the outer door, and the old bonne ushered
+in Victor de Mauleon.  He halted at the threshold, and his brow
+contracted.
+
+"So you have already broken faith with me, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"No, Monsieur, I have not broken faith," cried Julie; passionately.
+"I told you that I would not seek to find out Monsieur Rameau.  I did not
+seek, but I met him unexpectedly.  I owed to him an explanation.  I
+invited him here to give that explanation.  Without it, what would he
+have thought of me?  Now he may go, and I will never admit him again
+without your sanction."
+
+The Vicomte turned his stern look upon Gustave, who though, as we know,
+not wanting in personal courage, felt cowed by his false position; and
+his eye fell, quailed before De Mauleon's gaze.
+
+"Leave us for a few minutes alone, Mademoiselle," said the Vicomte.
+"Nay, Julie," he added, in softened tones, "fear nothing.  I, too, owe
+explanation--friendly explanation--to M. Rameau."
+
+With his habitual courtesy towards women, he extended his hand to Julie,
+and led her from the room.  Then, closing the door, he seated himself,
+and made a sign to Gustave to do the same.
+
+"Monsieur," said De Mauleon, "excuse me if I detain you.  A very few
+words will suffice for our present interview.  I take it for granted that
+Mademoiselle has told you that she is no child of Madame Surville's: that
+her own mother bequeathed her to my protection and guardianship with a
+modest fortune which is at my disposal to give or withhold.  The little I
+have seen already of Mademoiselle impresses me with sincere interest in
+her fate.  I look with compassion on what she may have been in the past;
+I anticipate with hope what she may be in the future.  I do not ask you
+to see her in either with my eyes.  I say frankly that it is my
+intention, and I may add, my resolve, that the ward thus left to my
+charge shall be henceforth safe from the temptations that have seduced
+her poverty, her inexperience, her vanity, if you will, but have not yet
+corrupted her heart. _Bref_, I must request you to give me your word of
+honour that you will hold no further communication with her.  I can allow
+no sinister influence to stand between her fate and honour."
+
+"You speak well and nobly, M. le Vicomte," said Rameau, "and I give the
+promise you exact."  He added, feelingly: "It is true her heart has never
+been corrupted that is good, affectionate, unselfish as a child's. _J'ai
+l'honneur de vous saluer_, M. le Vicomte."
+
+He bowed with a dignity unusual to him, and tears were in his eyes as he
+passed by De Mauleon and gained the anteroom.  There a side-door suddenly
+opened, and Julie's face, anxious, eager, looked forth.
+
+Gustave paused: "Adieu, Mademoiselle!  Adieu, though we may never meet
+again,--though our fates divide us,--believe me that I shall ever cherish
+your memory--and--"
+
+The girl interrupted him, impulsively seizing his arm, and looking him in
+the face with a wild fixed stare.  "Hush! dost thou mean to say that we
+are parted,--parted forever?"
+
+"Alas!" said Gustave, "what option is before us?  Your guardian rightly
+forbids my visits; and even were I free to offer you my hand, you
+yourself say that I am not a suitor he would approve."
+
+Julie turned her eyes towards De Mauleon, who, following Gustave into the
+ante-room, stood silent and impassive, leaning against the wall.
+
+He now understood and replied to the pathetic appeal in the girl's eyes.
+
+"My young ward," he said, "M. Rameau expresses himself with propriety and
+truth.  Suffer him to depart.  He belongs to the former life; reconcile
+yourself to the new."
+
+He advanced to take her hand, making a sign to Gustave to depart.  But as
+he approached Julie, she uttered a weak piteous wail, and fell at his
+feet senseless.  De Mauleon raised and carried her into her room, where
+he left her to the care of the old bonne.  On re-entering the anteroom,
+he found Gustave still lingering by the outer door.  "You will pardon me,
+Monsieur," he said to the Vicomte, "but in fact I feel so uneasy, so
+unhappy.  Has she--?  You see, you see that there is danger to her
+health, perhaps to her reason, in so abrupt a separation, so cruel a
+rupture between us.  Let me call again, or I may not have strength to
+keep my promise."
+
+De Mauleon remained a few minutes musing.  Then he said in a whisper,
+"Come back into the salon.  Let us talk frankly."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+"M. Rameau," said De Mauleon, when the two men had reseated themselves in
+the salon, "I will honestly say that my desire is to rid myself as soon
+as I can of the trust of guardian to this young lady.  Playing as I do
+with fortune, my only stake against her favours is my life.  I feel as if
+it were my duty to see that Mademoiselle is not left alone and friendless
+in the world at my decease.  I have in my mind for her a husband that I
+think in every way suitable: a handsome and brave young fellow in my
+battalion, of respectable birth, without any living relations to consult
+as to his choice.  I have reason to believe that if Julie married him,
+she need never fear as a reproach to her antecedents.  Her dot would
+suffice to enable him to realise his own wish of a country town in
+Normandy.  And in that station, Paris and its temptations would soon pass
+from the poor child's thoughts, as an evil dream.  But I cannot dispose
+of her hand without her own consent; and if she is to be reasoned out of
+her fancy for you, I have no time to devote to the task.  I come to the
+point,  You are not the man I would choose for her husband.  But,
+evidently, you are the man she would choose.  Are you disposed to marry
+her?  You hesitate, very naturally; I have no right to demand an
+immediate answer to a question so serious.  Perhaps you will think over
+it, and let me know in a day or two?  I take it for granted that if you
+were, as I heard, engaged before the siege to marry the Signora Cicogna,
+that engagement is annulled?"
+
+"Why take it for granted?" asked Gustave, perplexed.  "Simply because I
+find you here.  Nay, spare explanations and excuses.  I quite understand
+that you were invited to come.  But a man solemnly betrothed to a
+_mademoiselle_ like the Signora Cicogna, in a time of such dire calamity
+and peril, could scarcely allow himself to be tempted to accept the
+invitation of one so beautiful, and so warmly attached to him, as is
+Mademoiselle Julie; and on witnessing the passionate strength of that
+attachment, say that he cannot keep a promise not to repeat his visits.
+But if I mistake, and you are still betrothed to the Signorina, of course
+all discussion is at an end."
+
+Gustave hung his head in some shame, and in much bewildered doubt.
+
+The practised observer of men's characters, and of shifting phases of
+mind, glanced at the, poor poet's perturbed countenance with a half-smile
+of disdain.
+
+"It is for you to judge how far the very love to you so ingenuously
+evinced by my ward--how far the reasons against marriage with one whose
+antecedents expose her to reproach--should influence one of your advanced
+opinions upon social ties.  Such reasons do not appear to have with
+artists the same weight they have with the bourgeoisie.  I have but to
+add that the husband of Julie will receive with her hand a dot of nearly
+120,000 francs; and I have reason to believe that that fortune will be
+increased--how much, I cannot guess-when the cessation of the siege will
+allow communication with England.  One word more.  I should wish to rank
+the husband of my ward in the number of my friends.  If he did not oppose
+the political opinions with which I identify my own career, I should be
+pleased to make any rise in the world achieved by me assist to the
+raising of himself.  But my opinions, as during the time we were
+brought together you were made aware, are those of a practical man
+of the world, and have nothing in common with Communists, Socialists,
+Internationalists, or whatever sect would place the aged societies of
+Europe in Medea's caldron of youth.  At a moment like the present,
+fanatics and dreamers so abound that the number of such sinners will
+necessitate a general amnesty when order is restored.  What a poet so
+young as you may have written or said at such a time will be readily
+forgotten and forgiven a year or two hence, provided he does not put his
+notions into violent action.  But if you choose to persevere in the views
+you now advocate, so be it.  They will not make poor Julie less a
+believer in your wisdom and genius.  Only they will separate you from me,
+and a day may come when I should have the painful duty of ordering you to
+be shot--_Die meliora_.  Think over all I have thus frankly said.  Give
+me your answer within forty-eight hours; and meanwhile hold no
+communication with my ward.  I have the honour to wish you good-day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The short grim day was closing when Gustave, quitting Julie's apartment,
+again found himself in the streets.  His thoughts were troubled and
+confused.  He was the more affected by Julie's impassioned love for him,
+by the contrast with Isaura's words and manner in their recent interview.
+His own ancient fancy for the "Ondine of Paris" became revived by the
+difficulties between their ancient intercourse which her unexpected
+scruples and De Mauleon's guardianship interposed.  A witty writer thus
+defines _une passion, "_une caprice inflamme par des obstacles_."  In the
+ordinary times of peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring to reputable
+position in the _beau monde_, would not have admitted any considerations
+to compromise his station by marriage with a _fagurante_.  But now the
+wild political doctrines he had embraced separated his ambition from that
+_beau monde_, and combined it with ascendancy over the revolutionists of
+the populace--a direction which he must abandon if he continued his suit
+to Isaura.  Then, too, the immediate possession of Julie's dot was not
+without temptation to a man who was so fond of his personal comforts, and
+who did not see where to turn for a dinner, if, obedient to Isaura's
+"prejudices," he abandoned his profits as a writer in the revolutionary
+press.  The inducements for withdrawal from the cause he had espoused,
+held out to him with so haughty a coldness by De Mauleon, were not wholly
+without force, though they irritated his self-esteem.  He was dimly aware
+of the Vicomte's masculine talents for public life; and the high
+reputation he had already acquired among military authorities, and even
+among experienced and thoughtful civilians, had weight upon Gustave's
+impressionable temperament.  But though De Mauleon's implied advice here
+coincided in much with the tacit compact he had made with Isaura, it
+alienated him more from Isaura herself, for Isaura did not bring to him
+the fortune which would enable him to suspend his lucubrations, watch the
+turn of events, and live at ease in the meanwhile; and the dot to be
+received with De Mauleon's ward had those advantages.
+
+While thus meditating Gustave turned into one of the cantines still open,
+to brighten his intellect with a _petit verre_, and there he found the
+two colleagues in the extinct Council of Ten, Paul Grimm and Edgar
+Ferrier.  With the last of these revolutionists Gustave had become
+intimately _lie_.  They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly
+accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in
+a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no
+exorbitant price.  At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed
+confidential.  He longed, poor youth, for an adviser.  Could he marry a
+girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected
+heritage?  "_Es-tu fou d'en douter_?" cried Edgar.  "What a sublime
+occasion to manifest thy scorn of the miserable banalities of the
+bourgeoisie!  It will but increase thy moral power over the people.  And
+then think of the money.  What an aid to the cause!  What a capital for
+the launch!--journal all thine own!  Besides, when our principles
+triumph--as triumph they must--what would be marriage but a brief and
+futile ceremony, to be broken the moment thou hast cause to complain of
+thy wife or chafe at the bond?  Only get the dot into thine own hands.
+_L'amour passe--reste la cassette_."
+
+Though there was enough of good in the son of Madame Rameau to revolt at
+the precise words in which the counsel was given, still, as the fumes of
+the punch yet more addled his brains, the counsel itself was acceptable;
+and in that sort of maddened fury which intoxication produces in some
+excitable temperaments, as Gustave reeled home that night leaning on the
+arm of stouter Edgar Ferrier, he insisted on going out of his way to pass
+the house in which Isaura lived, and, pausing under her window, gasped
+out some verses of a wild song, then much in vogue among the votaries of
+Felix Pyat, in which everything that existent society deems sacred was
+reviled in the grossest ribaldry.  Happily Isaura's ear heard it not.
+The girl was kneeling by her bedside absorbed in prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Three days after the evening thus spent by Gustave Rameau, Isaura was
+startled by a visit from M. de Mauleon.  She had not seen him since the
+commencement of the siege, and she did not recognise him at first glance
+in his military uniform.
+
+"I trust you will pardon my intrusion, Mademoiselle," he said, in the low
+sweet voice habitual to him in his gentler moods, "but I thought it
+became me to announce to you the decease of one who, I fear, did not
+discharge with much kindness the duties her connection with you imposed.
+Your father's second wife, afterwards Madame Selby, is no more.  She died
+some days since in a convent to which she had retired."
+
+Isaura had no cause to mourn the dead, but she felt a shock in the
+suddenness of this information; and in that sweet spirit of womanly
+compassion which entered so largely into her character, and made a part
+of her genius itself, she murmured tearfully, "The poor Signora!  Why
+could I not have been with her in illness?  She might then have learned
+to love me.  And she died in a convent, you say?  Ah, her religion was
+then sincere!  Her end was peaceful?"
+
+"Let us not doubt that, Mademoiselle.  Certainly she lived to regret any
+former errors, and her last thought was directed towards such atonement
+as might be in her power.  And it is that desire of atonement which now
+strangely mixes me up, Mademoiselle, in your destinies.  In that desire
+for atonement, she left to my charge, as a kinsman distant indeed, but
+still, perhaps, the nearest with whom she was personally acquainted--a
+young ward.  In accepting that trust, I find myself strangely compelled
+to hazard the risk of offending you."
+
+"Offending me?  How?  Pray speak openly."
+
+"In so doing, I must utter the name of Gustave Rameau."
+
+Isaura turned pale and recoiled, but she did not speak.  "Did he inform
+me rightly that, in the last interview with him three days ago, you
+expressed a strong desire that the engagement between him and yourself
+should cease; and that you only, and with reluctance, suspended your
+rejection of the suit he had pressed on you, in consequence of his
+entreaties, and of certain assurances as to the changed direction of the
+talents of which we will assume that he is possessed?"
+
+"Well, well, Monsieur," exclaimed Isaura, her whole face brightening;
+"and you come on the part of Gustave Rameau to say that on reflection he
+does not hold me to our engagement--that in honour and in conscience I am
+free?"
+
+"I see," answered De Mauleon, smiling, "that I am pardoned already.  It
+would not pain you if such were my instructions in the embassy I
+undertake?"
+
+"Pain me?  No.  But--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Must he persist in a course which will break his mother's heart, and
+make his father deplore the hour that he was born?  Have you influence
+over him, M. de Mauleon?  If so, will you not exert it for his good?"
+
+"You interest yourself still in his fate, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"How can I do otherwise?  Did I not consent to share it when my heart
+shrank from the thought of our union?  And now when, if I understand you
+rightly, I am free, I cannot but think of what was best in him."
+
+"Alas!  Mademoiselle, he is but one of many--a spoilt child of that
+Circe, imperial Paris.  Everywhere I look around, I see but corruption.
+It was hidden by the halo which corruption itself engenders.  The halo
+is gone, the corruption is visible.  Where is the old French manhood?
+Banished from the heart, it comes out only at the tongue.  Were our
+deeds like our words, Prussia would beg on her knee to be a province of
+France. Gustave is the fit poet for this generation.  Vanity--desire to
+be known for something, no matter what, no matter by whom--that is the
+Parisian's leading motive power;--orator, soldier, poet, all alike.
+Utterers of fine phrases; despising knowledge, and toil, and discipline;
+railing against the Germans as barbarians, against their generals as
+traitors; against God for not taking their part.  What can be done to
+weld this mass of hollow bubbles into the solid form of a nation--the
+nation it affects to be?  What generation can be born out of the unmanly
+race, inebriate with brag and absinthe?  Forgive me this tirade; I have
+been reviewing the battalion I command.  As for Gustave Rameau,--if we
+survive the siege, and see once more a Government that can enforce
+order, and a public that will refuse renown for balderdash,--I should
+not be surprised if Gustave Rameau were among the prettiest imitators of
+Lamartine's early Meditations.  Had he been born under Louis XIV. how
+loyal he would have been!  What sacred tragedies in the style of Athalie
+he would have written, in the hope of an audience at Versailles!  But I
+detain you from the letter I was charged to deliver you.  I have done so
+purposely, that I might convince myself that you welcome that release
+which your too delicate sense of honour shrank too long from demanding."
+
+Here he took forth and placed a letter in Isaura's hand; and, as if to
+allow her to read it unobserved, retired to the window recess.
+
+Isaura glanced over the letter.  It ran thus:
+
+"I feel that it was only to your compassion that I owed your consent to
+my suit.  Could I have doubted that before, your words when we last met
+sufficed to convince me.  In my selfish pain at the moment, I committed a
+great wrong.  I would have held you bound to a promise from which you
+desired to be free.  Grant me pardon for that; and for all the faults by
+which I have offended you.  In cancelling our engagement, let me hope
+that I may rejoice in your friendship, your remembrance of me, some
+gentle and kindly thought.  My life may henceforth pass out of contact
+with yours; but you will ever dwell in my heart, an image pure and holy
+as the saints in whom you may well believe-they are of your own kindred."
+
+"May I convey to Gustave Rameau any verbal reply to his letter?" asked De
+Mauleon, turning as she replaced the letter on the table.
+
+"Only my wishes for his welfare.  It might wound him if I added, my
+gratitude for the generous manner in which he has interpreted my heart,
+and acceded to its desires."
+
+"Mademoiselle, accept my congratulations.  My condolences are for the
+poor girl left to my guardianship.  Unhappily she loves this man; and
+there are reasons why I cannot withhold my consent to her union with him,
+should he demand it, now that, in the letter remitted to you, he has
+accepted your dismissal.  If I can keep him out of all the follies and
+all the evils into which he suffers his vanity to mislead his reason,
+I will do so;--would I might say, only in compliance with your
+compassionate injunctions.  But henceforth the infatuation of my ward
+compels me to take some interest in his career.  Adieu, Mademoiselle!
+I have no fear for your happiness now."
+
+Left alone, Isaura stood as one transfigured.  All the bloom of her youth
+seemed suddenly restored.  Round her red lips the dimples opened,
+countless mirrors of one happy smile.  "I am free, I am free," she
+murmured--"joy, joy!" and she passed from the room to seek the Venosta,
+singing clear, singing loud, as a bird that escapes from the cage and
+warbles to the heaven it regains the blissful tale of its release.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+In proportion to the nearer roar of the besiegers' cannon, and the
+sharper gripe of famine within the walls, the Parisians seemed to
+increase their scorn for the skill of the enemy, and their faith in the
+sanctity of the capital.  All false news was believed as truth; all
+truthful news abhorred as falsehood.  Listen to the groups round the
+cafes.  "The Prussian funds have fallen three per cent. at Berlin," says
+a threadbare ghost of the Bourse (he had been a clerk of Louvier's).
+"Ay," cries a National Guard, "read extracts from La Liberte.  The
+barbarians are in despair.  Nancy is threatened, Belfort is freed.
+Bourbaki is invading Baden.  Our fleets are pointing their cannon upon
+Hamburg.  Their country endangered, their retreat cut off, the sole hope
+of Bismarck and his trembling legions is to find a refuge in Paris.  The
+increasing fury of the bombardment is a proof of their despair."
+
+"In that case," whispered Savarin to De Breze, "suppose we send a flag of
+truce to Versailles with a message from Trochu that, on disgorging their
+conquests, ceding the left bank of the Rhine, and paying the expenses of
+the war, Paris, ever magnanimous to the vanquished; will allow the
+Prussians to retire."
+
+"The Prussians!  Retire!" cried Edgar Ferrier, catching the last word and
+glancing fiercely at Savarin.  "What Prussian spy have we among us?  Not
+one of the barbarians shall escape.  We have but to dismiss the traitors
+who have usurped the government, proclaim the Commune and the rights of
+labour, and we give birth to a Hercules that even in its cradle can
+strangle the vipers."
+
+Edgar Ferrier was the sole member of his political party among the group
+which he thus addressed; but such was the terror which the Communists
+already began to inspire among the bourgeoisie that no one volunteered a
+reply.
+
+Savarin linked his arm in De Breze's, and prudently drew him off.
+
+"I suspect," said the former, "that we shall soon have worse calamities
+to endure than the Prussian obus and the black loaf.  The Communists will
+have their day."
+
+"I shall be in my grave before then," said De Breze, in hollow accents.
+"It is twenty-four hours since I spent my last fifty sous on the purchase
+of a rat, and I burnt the legs of my bedstead for the fuel by which that
+quadruped was roasted."
+
+"Entre nous, my poor friend, I am much in the same condition," said
+Savarin, with a ghastly attempt at his old pleasant laugh.  "See how I am
+shrunken!  My wife would be unfaithful to the Savarin of her dreams if
+she accepted a kiss from the slender gallant you behold in me.  But I
+thought you were in the National Guard, and therefore had not to vanish
+into air."
+
+"I was a National Guard, but I could not stand the hardships, and being
+above the age, I obtained my exemption.  As to pay, I was then too proud
+to claim my wage of 1 franc 25 centimes.  I should not be too proud now.
+Ah, blessed be Heaven! here comes Lemercier; he owes me a dinner--he
+shall pay it."
+
+"Bon jour, my dear Frederic! How handsome you look in your kepi!  Your
+uniform is brilliantly fresh from the soil of powder. What a contrast to
+the tatterdemalions of the Line!"
+
+"I fear," said Lemercier, ruefully, "that my costume will not look so
+well a day or two hence.  I have just had news that will no doubt seem
+very glorious--in the news papers.  But then newspapers are not subjected
+to cannonballs."
+
+"What do you mean?" answered De Breze.
+
+"I met, as I emerged from my apartment a few minutes ago, that fire-
+eater, Victor de Mauleon, who always contrives to know what passes at
+headquarters.  He told me that preparations are being made for a great
+sortie.  Most probably the announcement will appear in a proclamation
+tomorrow, and our troops march forth to-morrow night.  The National Guard
+(fools and asses who have been yelling out for decisive action) are to
+have their wish, and to be placed in the van of battle,--amongst the
+foremost, the battalion in which I am enrolled.  Should this be our last
+meeting on earth, say that Frederic Lemercier has finished his part in
+life with eclat."
+
+"Gallant friend," said De Breze, feebly seizing him by the arm, "if it be
+true that thy mortal career is menaced, die as thou hast lived.  An
+honest man leaves no debt unpaid.  Thou owest me a dinner."
+
+"Alas! ask of me what is possible.  I will give thee three, however, if I
+survive and regain my _rentes_.  But today I have not even a mouse to
+share with Fox."
+
+"Fox lives then?" cried De Breze, with sparkling hungry eyes.
+
+"Yes.  At present he is making the experiment how long an animal can live
+without food."
+
+"Have mercy upon him, poor beast!  Terminate his pangs by a noble death.
+Let him save thy friends and thyself from starving.  For myself alone I
+do not plead; I am but an amateur in polite literature.  But Savarin, the
+illustrious Savarin,--in criticism the French Longinus--in poetry the
+Parisian Horace--in social life the genius of gaiety in pantaloons,--
+contemplate his attenuated frame!  Shall he perish for want of food while
+thou hast such superfluity in thy larder?  I appeal to thy heart, thy
+conscience, thy patriotism.  What, in the eyes of France, are a thousand
+Foxes compared to a single Savarin?"
+
+"At this moment," sighed Savarin, "I could swallow anything, however
+nauseous, even thy flattery, De Breze.  But, my friend Frederic, thou
+goest into battle--what will become of Fox if thou fall?  Will he not be
+devoured by strangers?  Surely it were a sweeter thought to his faithful
+heart to furnish a repast to thy friends?--his virtues acknowledged, his
+memory blest!"
+
+"Thou dost look very lean, my poor Savarin!  And how hospitable thou wert
+when yet plump!" said Frederic, pathetically.  "And certainly, if I live,
+Fox will starve; if I am slain, Fox will be eaten.  Yet, poor Fox, dear
+Fox, who lay on my breast when I was frostbitten.  No; I have not the
+heart to order him to the spit for you.  Urge it not."
+
+"I will save thee that pang," cried De Breze.  "We are close by thy
+rooms.  Excuse me for a moment: I will run in and instruct thy bonne."
+
+So saying, he sprang forward with an elasticity of step which no one
+could have anticipated from his previous languor.  Frederic would have
+followed, but Savarin clung to him, whimpering: "Stay; I shall fall like
+an empty sack, without the support of thine arm, young hero.  Pooh! of
+course De Breze is only joking--a pleasant joke.  Hist! a secret: he has
+moneys, and means to give us once more a dinner at his own cost,
+pretending that we dine on thy dog.  He was planning this when thou
+camest up.  Let him have his joke, and we shall have a _festin de
+Balthazar_."
+
+"Hein!" said Frederic, doubtfully; "thou art sure he has no designs upon
+Fox?"
+
+"Certainly not, except in regaling us.  Donkey is not bad, but it is 14
+francs a pound.  A pullet is excellent, but it is 30 francs.  Trust to De
+Breze; we shall have donkey and pullet, and Fox shall feast upon the
+remains."
+
+Before Frederic could reply, the two men were jostled and swept on by a
+sudden rush of a noisy crowd in their rear.  They could but distinguish
+the words--Glorious news--victory--Faidherbe--Chanzy.  But these words
+were sufficient to induce them to join willingly in the rush.  They
+forgot their hunger; they forget Fox.  As they were hurried on, they
+learned that there was a report of a complete defeat of the Prussians by
+Faidherbe near Amiens, of a still more decided one on the Loire by
+Chanzy.  These generals, with armies flushed with triumph, were pressing
+on towards Paris to accelerate the destruction of the hated Germans.  How
+the report arose no one exactly knew.
+
+All believed it, and were making their way to the Hotel de Ville to hear
+it formally confirmed.
+
+Alas! before, they got there they were met by another crowd returning,
+dejected but angry.  No such news had reached the Government.  Chanzy and
+Faidherbe were no doubt fighting bravely,--with every probability of
+success; but--
+
+The Parisian imagination required no more.  "We should always be
+defeating the enemy," said Savarin, "if there were not always a but;" and
+his audience, who, had he so expressed himself ten minutes before, would
+have torn him to pieces, now applauded the epigram; and with execrations
+on Trochu, mingled with many a peal of painful sarcastic laughter,
+vociferated and dispersed.
+
+As the two friends sauntered back towards the part of the Boulevards on
+which De Breze had parted company with them, Savarin quitted Lemercier
+suddenly, and crossed the street to accost a small party of two ladies
+and two men who were on their way to the Madeleine.  While he was
+exchanging a few words with them, a young couple, arm in arm, passed by
+Lemercier,--the man in the uniform of the National Guard-uniform as
+unsullied as Frederic's, but with as little of a military air as can well
+be conceived.  His gait was slouching; his head bent downwards.  He did
+not seem to listen to his companion, who was talking with quickness and
+vivacity, her fair face radiant with smiles.  Lemercier looked at them as
+they passed by.  "Sur mon ame," muttered Frederic to himself, "surely
+that is la belle Julie; and she has got back her truant poet at last."
+
+While Lemercier thus soliloquised, Gustave, still looking down, was led
+across the street by his fair companion, and into the midst of the little
+group with whom Savarin had paused to speak.  Accidentally brushing
+against Savarin himself, he raised his eyes with a start, about to mutter
+some conventional apology, when Julie felt the arm on which she leant
+tremble nervously.  Before him stood Isaura, the Countess de Vandemar by
+her side; her two other companions, Raoul and the Abbe Vertpre, a step or
+two behind.
+
+Gustave uncovered, bowed low, and stood mute and still for a moment,
+paralysed by surprise and the chill of a painful shame.
+
+Julie's watchful eyes, following his, fixed themselves on the same face.
+On the instant she divined the truth.  She beheld her to whom she had
+owed months of jealous agony, and over whom, poor child, she thought she
+had achieved a triumph.  But the girl's heart was so instinctively good
+that the sense of triumph was merged in a sense of compassion.  Her rival
+had lost Gustave.  To Julie the loss of Gustave was the loss of all that
+makes life worth having.  On her part, Isaura was moved not only by the
+beauty of Julie's countenance, but still more by the childlike
+ingenuousness of its expression.
+
+So, for the first time in their lives, met the child and the stepchild of
+Louise Duval.  Each so deserted, each so left alone and inexperienced
+amid the perils of the world, with fates so different, typifying orders
+of womanhood so opposed.  Isaura was naturally the first to break the
+silence that weighed like a sensible load on all present.
+
+She advanced towards Rameau, with sincere kindness in her look and tone.
+
+"Accept my congratulations," she said, with a grave smile.  "Your mother
+informed me last evening of your nuptials.  Without doubt I see Madame
+Gustave Rameau;"--and she extended her hand towards Julie.  The poor
+Ondine shrank back for a moment, blushing up to her temples.  It was the
+first hand which a woman of spotless character had extended to her since
+she had lost the protection of Madame Surville.  She touched it timidly,
+humbly, then drew her bridegroom on; and with head more downcast than
+Gustave, passed through the group without a word.
+
+She did not speak to Gustave till they were out of sight and hearing of
+those they had left.  Then, pressing his arm passionately, she said: "And
+that is the demoiselle thou halt resigned for me!  Do not deny it.  I am
+so glad to have seen her; it has done me so much good.  How it has
+deepened, purified, my love for thee!  I have but one return to make; but
+that is my whole life.  Thou shalt never have cause to blame me--never--
+never!"
+
+Savarin looked very grave and thoughtful when he rejoined Lemercier.
+
+"Can I believe my eyes?" said Frederic.  "Surely that was Julie Caumartin
+leaning on Gustave Rameau's arm!  And had he the assurance, so
+accompanied, to salute Madame de Vandemar, and Mademoiselle Cicogna, to
+whom I understood he was affianced?  Nay, did I not see Mademoiselle
+shake hands with the Ondine? or am I under one of the illusions which
+famine is said to engender in the brain?"
+
+"I have not strength now to answer all these interrogatives.  I have a
+story to tell; but I keep it for dinner.  Let us hasten to thy apartment.
+De Breze is doubtless there waiting us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Unprescient of the perils that awaited him, absorbed in the sense of
+existing discomfort, cold, and hunger, Fox lifted his mournful visage
+from his master's dressing-gown, in which he had encoiled his shivering
+frame, on the entrance of De Breze and the concierge of the house in
+which Lemercier had his apartment.  Recognising the Vicomte as one of his
+master's acquaintances, he checked the first impulse that prompted him to
+essay a feeble bark, and permitted himself, with a petulant whine, to be
+extracted from his covering, and held in the arms of the murderous
+visitor.
+
+"_Dieu des dieux_!" ejaculated De Breze, "how light the poor beast has
+become!"  Here he pinched the sides and thighs of the victim.  "Still,"
+he said, "there is some flesh yet on these bones.  You may grill the
+paws, _fricassee_ the shoulders, and roast the rest.  The _rognons_ and
+the head accept for yourself as a perquisite."  Here he transferred Fox
+to the arms of the concierge, adding, "_Vite au besogne, mon ami_."
+
+"Yes, Monsieur.  I must be quick about it while my wife is absent.  She
+has a _faiblesse_ for the brute.  He must be on the spit before she
+returns."
+
+"Be it so; and on the table in an hour--five o'clock precisely--I am
+famished."
+
+The concierge disappeared with Fox.  De Breze then amused himself by
+searching into Frederic's cupboards and buffets, from which he produced a
+cloth and utensils necessary for the repast.  These he arranged with
+great neatness, and awaited in patience the moment of participation in
+the feast.
+
+The hour of five had struck before Savarin and Frederio entered the
+salon; and at their sight De Breze dashed to the staircase and called out
+to the concierge to serve the dinner.
+
+Frederic, though unconscious of the Thyestean nature of the banquet,
+still looked round for the dog; and, not perceiving him, began to call
+out, "Fox! Fox! where hast thou hidden thyself?"
+
+"Tranquillise yourself," said De Breze.  "Do not suppose that I have not
+.  .  .  ."
+
+NOTE BY THE AUTHOR'S SON.--[See also Prefatory Note]--The hand that wrote
+thus far has left unwritten the last scene of the tragedy of poor Fox.
+In the deep where Prospero has dropped his wand are now irrevocably
+buried the humour and the pathos of this cynophagous banquet.  One detail
+of it, however, which the author imparted to his son, may here be faintly
+indicated.  Let the sympathising reader recognise all that is dramatic in
+the conflict between hunger and affection; let him recall to mind the
+lachrymose loving-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions after
+blissfully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolonged, we will hope,
+than that of these besieged banqueters, and then, though unaided by the
+fancy which conceived so quaint a situation, he may perhaps imagine what
+tearful tenderness would fill the eyes of the kind-hearted Frederic, as
+they contemplate the well-picked bones of his sacrificed favourite on the
+plate before him; which he pushes away, sighing, "Ah, poor Fox!  how he
+would have enjoyed those bones!"
+
+The chapter immediately following this one also remains unfinished.  It
+was not intended to close the narrative thus left uncompleted; but of
+those many and so various works which have not unworthily associated with
+almost every department of literature the name of a single English
+writer, it is CHAPTER THE LAST.  Had the author lived to finish it, he
+would doubtless have added to his Iliad of the Siege of Paris its most
+epic episode, by here describing the mighty combat between those two
+princes of the Parisian Bourse, the magnanimous Duplessis and the
+redoubtable Louvier.  Amongst the few other pages of the book which have
+been left unwritten, we must also reckon with regret some pages
+descriptive of the reconciliation between Graham Vane and Isaura Cicogna;
+but, fortunately for the satisfaction of every reader who may have
+followed thus far the fortunes of Die Parisians, all that our curiosity
+is chiefly interested to learn has been recorded in the Envoi, which was
+written before the completion of the novel.
+
+We know not, indeed, what has become of these two Parisian types of a
+Beauty not of Holiness, the poor vain Poet of the Pave, and the good-
+hearted Ondine of the Gutter.  It is obvious, from the absence of all
+allusion to them in Lemercier's letter to Vane, that they had passed out
+of the narrative before that letter was written.  We must suppose the
+catastrophe of their fates to have been described, in some preceding
+chapter, by the author himself; who would assuredly not have left 141.
+Gustave Rameau in permanent pos session of his ill-merited and ill-
+ministered fortune.  That French representative of the appropriately
+popular poetry of modern ideas, which prefers "the roses and raptures of
+vice" to "the lilies and languors of virtue," cannot have been
+irredeemably reconciled by the sweet savours of the domestic pot-au jeu,
+even when spiced with pungent whiffs of repudiated disreputability, to
+any selfish betrayal of the cause of universal social emancipation from
+the personal proprieties.  If poor Julie Caumartin has perished in the
+siege of Paris, with all the grace of a self-wrought redemption still
+upon her, we shall doubtless deem her fate a happier one than any she
+could have found in prolonged existence as Madame Rameau;  and a certain
+modicum of this world's good things will, in that case, have been rescued
+for worthier employment by Graham Vane.  To that assurance nothing but
+Lemercier's description of the fate of Victor de Mauleon (which will be
+found in the Envoi) need be added for the satisfaction of our sense of
+poetic justice and if on the mimic stage, from which they now
+disappear, all these puppets have rightly played their parts in the drama
+of an empire's fall, each will have helped to "point a moral" as well as
+to "adorn a tale." _Valete et plaudite_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+Among the refugees which the _convoi_ from Versailles disgorged on the
+Paris station were two men, who, in pushing through the crowd, came
+suddenly face to face with each other.
+
+"Aha!  Bon jour, M. Duplessis," said a burly voice.  "Bon jour, M.
+Louvier," replied Duplessis.
+
+"How long have you left Bretagne?"
+
+"On the day that the news of the armistice reached it, in order to be
+able to enter Paris the first day its gates were open.  And you--where
+have you been?"
+
+"In London."
+
+"Ah! in London!" said Duplessis, paling.  "I knew I had an enemy
+there."
+
+"Enemy! I?  Bah! my dear Monsieur.  What makes you think me your enemy?"
+
+"I remember your threats."
+
+"_A propos_ of Rochebriant.  By the way, when would it be convenient to
+you and the dear Marquis to let me into prompt possession of that
+property?  You can no longer pretend to buy it as a _dot_ for
+Mademoiselle Valerie."
+
+"I know not that yet.  It is true that all the financial operations
+attempted by my agent in London have failed.  But I may recover myself
+yet, now that I re-enter Paris.  In the mean time, we have still six
+months before us; for, as you will find--if you know it not already--the
+interest due to you has been lodged with Messrs. ---- of ------, and you
+cannot foreclose, even if the, law did not take into consideration the
+national calamities as between debtor and creditor."
+
+"Quite true.  But if you cannot buy the property it must pass into my
+hands in a very short time.  And you and the Marquis had better come to
+an amicable arrangement with me.  Apropos, I read in the Times newspaper
+that Alain was among the wounded in the sortie of December."
+
+"Yes; we learnt that through a pigeon-post.  We were afraid .  .  .  ."
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOI.
+
+The intelligent reader will perceive that the story I relate is virtually
+closed with the preceding chapter; though I rejoice to think that what
+may be called its plot does not find its _dinoument_ amidst the crimes
+and the frenzy of the _Guerre des Communeaux_.  Fit subjects these,
+indeed, for the social annalist in times to come.  When crimes that
+outrage humanity have their motive or their excuse in principles that
+demand the demolition of all upon which the civilisation of Europe has
+its basis-worship, property, and marriage--in order to reconstruct a new
+civilisation adapted to a new humanity, it is scarcely possible for the
+serenest contemporary to keep his mind in that state of abstract
+reasoning with which Philosophy deduces from some past evil some existent
+good.  For my part, I believe that throughout the whole known history of
+mankind, even in epochs when reason is most misled and conscience most
+perverted, there runs visible, though fine and threadlike, the chain of
+destiny, which has its roots in the throne of an All-wise and an All-
+good; that in the wildest illusions by which muititudes are frenzied,
+there may be detected gleams of prophetic truths; that in the fiercest
+crimes which, like the disease of an epidemic, characterise a peculiar
+epoch under abnormal circumstances, there might be found instincts or
+aspirations towards some social virtues to be realised ages afterwards by
+happier generations, all tending to save man from despair of the future,
+were the whole society to unite for the joyless hour of his race in the
+abjuration of soul and the denial of God, because all irresistibly
+establishing that yearning towards an unseen future which is the leading
+attribute of soul, evincing the government of a divine Thought which
+evolves out of the discords of one age the harmonies of another, and, in
+the world within us as in the world without, enforces upon every
+unclouded reason the distinction between Providence and chance.
+
+The account subjoined may suffice to say all that rests to be said of
+those individuals in whose fate, apart from the events or personages that
+belong to graver history, the reader of this work may have conceived an
+interest.  It is translated from the letter of Frederic Lemercier to
+Graham Vane, dated June ----, a month after the defeat of the Communists.
+
+"Dear and distinguished Englishman, whose name I honour but fail to
+pronounce, accept my cordial thanks for your interests in such remains
+of Frederic Lemercier as yet survive the ravages of Famine, Equality,
+Brotherhood, Petroleum, and the Rights of Labour.  I did not desert my
+Paris when M. Thiers, '_parmula non bene relicta_,' led his sagacious
+friends and his valiant troops to the groves of Versailles, and confided
+to us unarmed citizens the preservation of order and property from the
+insurgents whom he left in possession of our forts and cannon.  I felt
+spellbound by the interest of the _sinistoe melodrame_, with its quick
+succession of scenic effects and the metropolis of the world for its
+stage.  Taught by experience, I did not aspire to be an actor; and even
+as a spectator, I took care neither to hiss nor applaud.  Imitating your
+happy England, I observed a strict neutrality; and, safe myself from
+danger, left my best friends to the care of the gods.
+
+"As to political questions, I dare not commit myself to a conjecture.  At
+this _rouge et noir_ table, all I can say is, that whichever card turns
+up, it is either a red or a black one.  One gamester gains for the moment
+by the loss of the other; the table eventually ruins both.
+
+"No one believes that the present form of government can last; every one
+differs as to that which can.  Raoul de Vandemar is immovably convinced
+of the restoration of the Bourbons.  Savarin is meditating a new journal
+devoted to the cause of the Count of Paris.  De Brew and the old Count de
+Passy, having in turn espoused and opposed every previous form of
+government, naturally go in for a perfectly novel experiment, and are for
+constitutional dictatorship under the Duc d'Aumale, which he is to hold
+at his own pleasure, and ultimately resign to his nephew the Count, under
+the mild title of a constitutional king;--that is, if it ever suits the
+pleasure of a dictator to depose himself.  To me this seems the wildest
+of notions.  If the Duc's administration were successful, the French
+would insist on keeping it; and if the uncle were unsuccessful, the
+nephew would not have a chance.  Duplessis retains his faith in the
+Imperial dynasty; and that Imperialist party is much stronger than it
+appears on the surface.  So many of the bourgeoisie recall with a sigh
+eighteen years of prosperous trade; so many of the military officers, so
+many of the civil officials, identify their career with the Napoleonic
+favour; and so many of the Priesthood, abhorring the Republic, always
+liable to pass into the hands of those who assail religion,--unwilling to
+admit the claim of the Orleanists, are at heart for the Empire.
+
+"But I will tell you one secret.  I and all the quiet folks like me (we
+are more numerous than any one violent faction) are willing to accept any
+form of government by which we have the best chance of keeping our coats
+on our backs.  _Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity_, are gone quite out of
+fashion; and Mademoiselle--has abandoned her great chant of the
+Marseillaise, and is drawing tears from enlightened audiences by her
+pathetic  delivery of '_O Richard!  O mon roi_!'"
+
+"Now about the other friends of whom you ask for news.
+
+"Wonders will never cease.  Louvier and Duplessis are no longer deadly
+rivals.  They have become sworn friends, and are meditating a great
+speculation in common, to commence as soon as the Prussian debt is paid
+off.  Victor de Mauleon brought about this reconciliation in a single
+interview during the brief interregnum between the Peace and the _Guerre
+des Communeaux_.  You know how sternly Louvier was bent upon seizing
+Alain de Rochebriant's estates.  Can you conceive the true cause?  Can
+you imagine it possible that a hardened money-maker like Louvier should
+ever allow himself to be actuated, one way or the other, by the romance
+of a sentimental wrong?  Yet so it was.  It seems that many years ago he
+was desperately in love with a girl who disappeared from his life, and
+whom he believed to have been seduced by the late Marquis de Rochebriant.
+It was in revenge for this supposed crime that he had made himself the
+principal mortgagee of the late Marquis; and, visiting the sins of the
+father on the son, had, under the infernal disguise of friendly interest,
+made himself sole mortgagee to Alain, upon terms apparently the most
+generous.  The demon soon showed his _griffe_, and was about to
+foreclose, when Duplessis came to Alain's relief; and Rochebriant was to
+be Valerie's dot on her marriage with Alain.  The Prussian war, of
+course, suspended all such plans, pecuniary and matrimonial.  Duplessis,
+whose resources were terribly crippled by the war, attempted operations
+in London with a view of raising the sum necessary to pay off the
+mortgage;--found himself strangely frustrated and baffled.  Louvier was
+in London, and defeated his rival's agent in every speculation.  It
+became impossible for Duplessis to redeem the mortgage.  The two men came
+to Paris with the peace.  Louvier determined both to seize the Breton
+lands and to complete the ruin of Duplessis, when he learned from De
+Mauleon that he had spent half his life in a baseless illusion; that
+Alain's father was innocent of the crime for which his son was to
+suffer;--and Victor, with that strange power over men's minds which was
+so peculiar to him, talked Louvier into mercy if not into repentance.  In
+short, the mortgage is to be paid off by instalments at the convenience
+of Duplessis.  Alain's marriage with Valerie is to take place in a few
+weeks.  The _fournisseurs_ are already gone to fit up the old chateau for
+the bride, and Louvier is invited to the wedding.
+
+"I have all this story from Alain, and from Duplessis himself.  I tell
+the tale as 'twas told to me, with all the gloss of sentiment upon its
+woof.  But between ourselves, I am too Parisian not to be sceptical as to
+the unalloyed amiability of sudden conversions.  And I suspect that
+Louvier was no longer in a condition to indulge in the unprofitable whim
+of turning rural seigneur.  He had sunk large sums and incurred great
+liabilities in the new street to be called after his name; and that
+street has been twice ravaged, first by the Prussian siege, and next by
+the _Guerre des Communeaux_; and I can detect many reasons why Louvier
+should deem it prudent not only to withdraw from the Rochebriant seizure,
+and make sure of peacefully recovering the capital lent on it, but
+establishing joint interest and quasi partnership with a financier so
+brilliant and successful as Armand Duplessis has hitherto been.
+
+"Alain himself is not quite recovered from his wound, and is now at
+Rochebriant, nursed by his aunt and Valerie.  I have promised to visit
+him next week.  Raoul de Vandemar is still at Paris with his mother,
+saying, there is no place where one Christian man can be of such service.
+The old Count declines to come back, saying there is no place where a
+philosopher can be in such danger.
+
+"I reserve as my last communication, in reply to your questions, that
+which is the gravest.  You say that you saw in the public journals brief
+notice of the assassination of Victor de Mauleon; and you ask for such
+authentic particulars as I can give of that event, and of the motives of
+the assassin.
+
+"I need not, of course, tell you how bravely the poor Vicomte behaved
+throughout the siege; but he made many enemies among the worst members of
+the National Guard by the severity of his discipline; and had he been
+caught by the mob the same day as Clement Thomas, who committed the same
+offence, would have certainly shared the fate of that general.  Though
+elected a _depute_, he remained at Paris a few days after Thiers & Co.
+left it, in the hope of persuading the party of Order, including then no
+small portion of the National Guards, to take prompt and vigorous
+measures to defend the city against the Communists.  Indignant at their
+pusillanimity, he then escaped to Versailles.  There he more than
+confirmed the high reputation he had acquired during the siege, and
+impressed the ablest public men with the belief that he was destined to
+take a very leading part in the strife of party.  When the Versailles
+troops entered Paris, he was, of course, among them in command of a
+battalion.
+
+"He escaped safe through that horrible war of barricades, though no man
+more courted danger.  He inspired his men with his own courage.  It was
+not till the revolt was quenched on the evening of the 28th May that he
+met his death.  The Versailles soldiers, naturally exasperated, were very
+prompt in seizing and shooting at once every passenger who looked like a
+foe.  Some men under De Mauleon had seized upon one of these victims, and
+were hurrying him into the next street for execution, when, catching
+sight of the Vicomte, he screamed out, 'Lebeau, save me!'
+
+"At that cry De Mauleon rushed forward, arrested his soldiers, cried,
+'This man is innocent--a harmless physician.  I answer for him.'  As he
+thus spoke, a wounded Communist, lying in the gutter amidst a heap of the
+slain, dragged himself up, reeled towards De Mauleon, plunged a knife
+between his shoulders, and dropped down dead.
+
+"The Vicomte was carried into a neighbouring house, from all the windows
+of which the tricolour was suspended; and the Medecin whom he had just
+saved from summary execution examined and dressed his wound.  The Vicomte
+lingered for more than an hour, but expired in the effort to utter some
+words, the sense of which those about him endeavoured in vain to seize.
+
+"It was from the Medecin that the name of the assassin and the motive for
+the crime were ascertained.  The _miscreant_ was a Red Republican and
+Socialist named Armand Monnier.  He had been a very skilful workman, and
+earning, as such, high wages.  But he thought fit to become an active
+revolutionary politician, first led into schemes for upsetting the world
+by the existing laws of marriage, which had inflicted on him one woman
+who ran away from him, but being still legally his wife, forbade him to
+marry another woman with whom he lived, and to whom he seems to have been
+passionately attached.
+
+"These schemes, however, he did not put into any positive practice till
+he fell in with a certain Jean Lebeau, who exercised great influence over
+him, and by whom he was admitted into one of the secret revolutionary
+societies which had for their object the overthrow of the Empire.  After
+that time his head became turned.  The fall of the Empire put an end to
+the society he had joined: Lebeau dissolved it.  During the siege Monnier
+was a sort of leader among the _ouvriers_; but as it advanced and famine
+commenced, he contracted the habit of intoxication.  His children died of
+cold and hunger.  The woman he lived with followed them to the grave.
+Then he seems to have become a ferocious madman, and to have been
+implicated in the worst crimes of the Communists.  He cherished a wild
+desire of revenge against this Jean Lebeau, to whom he attributed all his
+calamities, and by whom, he said, his brother had been shot in the sortie
+of December.
+
+"Here comes the strange part of the story.  This Jean Lebeau is alleged
+to have been one and the same person with Victor de Mauleon.  The Medecin
+I have named, and who is well known in Belleville and Montmartre as the
+Medecin des Pauvres, confesses that he belonged to the secret society
+organised by Lebeau; that the disguise the Vicomte assumed was so
+complete, that he should not have recognised his identity with the
+conspirator but for an accident.  During the latter time of the
+bombardment, he, the __Medecin des Pauvres_, was on the eastern ramparts,
+and his attention was suddenly called to a man mortally wounded by the
+splinter of a shell.  While examining the nature of the wound; De
+Mauleon, who was also on the ramparts, came to the spot.  The dying man
+said, 'M. le Vicomte, you owe me a service.  My name is Marc le Roux.
+I was on the police before the war.  When M. de. Mauleon reassumed his
+station, and was making himself obnoxious to the Emperor, I might have
+denounced him as Jean Lebeau the conspirator.  I did not.  The siege has
+reduced me to want.  I have a child at home--a pet.  Don't let her
+starve.'  'I will see to her,' said the Vicomte.  Before we could get the
+man into the ambulance cart he expired.
+
+"The Medecin who told this story I had the curiosity to see myself, and
+cross-question.  I own I believe his statement.  Whether De Mauleon did
+or did not conspire against a fallen dynasty, to which he owed no
+allegiance, can little, if at all, injure the reputation he has left
+behind of a very remarkable man--of great courage and great ability--who
+might have had a splendid career if he had survived.  But, as Savarin
+says truly, the first bodies which the car of revolution crushes down are
+those which first harness themselves to it.
+
+"Among De Mauleon's papers is the programme of a constitution fitted for
+France.  How it got into Savarin's hands I know not.  De Mauleon left no
+will, and no relations came forward to claim his papers.  I asked Savarin
+to give me the heads of the plan, which he did.  They are as follows:
+
+"The American republic is the sole one worth studying, for it has lasted.
+The causes of its duration are in the checks to democratic fickleness and
+disorder.  1st.  No law affecting the Constitution can be altered without
+the consent of two-thirds of Congress.  2nd.  To counteract the impulses
+natural to a popular Assembly chosen by universal suffrage, the greater
+legislative powers, especially in foreign affairs, are vested in the
+Senate, which has even executive as well as legislative functions.  3rd.
+The Chief of the State, having elected his government, can maintain it
+independent of hostile majorities in either Assembly.
+
+"'These three principles of safety to form the basis of any new
+constitution for France.
+
+"'For France it is essential that the chief magistrate, under whatever
+title he assume, should be as irresponsible as an English sovereign.
+Therefore he should not preside at his councils; he should not lead his
+armies.  The day for personal government is gone, even in Prussia.  The
+safety for order in a State is that, when things go wrong, the Ministry
+changes, the State remains the same.  In Europe, Republican institutions
+are safer where the chief magistrate is hereditary than where elective.'
+
+"Savarin says these axioms are carried out at length, and argued with
+great ability.
+
+"I am very grateful for your proffered hospitalities in England.  Some
+day I shall accept them-viz., whenever I decide on domestic life, and the
+calm of the conjugal foyer.  I have a penchant for an English Mees, and
+am not exacting as to the dot.  Thirty thousand livres sterling would
+satisfy me--a trifle, I believe, to you rich islanders.
+
+"Meanwhile I am naturally compelled to make up for the miseries of that
+horrible siege.  Certain moralising journals tell us that, sobered by
+misfortunes, the Parisians are going to turn over a new leaf, become
+studious and reflective, despise pleasure and luxury, and live like
+German professors.  Don't believe a word of it.  My conviction is that,
+whatever may be said as to our frivolity, extravagance, &c., under the
+Empire, we shall be just the same under any form of government--the
+bravest, the most timid, the most ferocious, the kindest-hearted, the
+most irrational, the most intelligent, the most contradictory, the most
+consistent people whom Jove, taking counsel of Venus and the Graces, Mars
+and the Furies, ever created for the delight and terror of the world;--in
+a word, the Parisians.--Votre tout divoue, 'FREDERIC LEMERCIER.'"
+
+
+It is a lovely noon on the bay of Sorrento, towards the close of the
+autumn of 1871.  Upon the part of the craggy shore, to the left of the
+town, on which her first perusal of the loveliest poem in which the
+romance of Christian heroism has ever combined elevation of thought with
+silvery delicacies of speech, had charmed her childhood, reclined the
+young bride of Graham Vane.  They were in the first month of their
+marriage.  Isaura had not yet recovered from the effects of all that had
+preyed upon her life, from the hour in which she had deemed that in her
+pursuit of fame she had lost the love that had coloured her genius and
+inspired her dreams, to that in which .  .  .  .
+
+The physicians consulted agreed in insisting on her passing the winter in
+a southern climate; and after their wedding, which took place in
+Florence, they thus came to Sorrento.
+
+As Isaura is seated on the small smoothed rock, Graham reclines at her
+feet, his face upturned to hers with an inexpressible wistful anxiety in
+his impassioned tenderness.  "You are sure you feel better and stronger
+since we have been here?"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, COMPLETE ***
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