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 Frontispiece
 
 THE PARISIANS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. 
 
 CHICAGO AND NEW YORK : 
 
 BELFOPtD, CLARKE & COMPANY, 
 Publishers.
 
 TROWa 
 PRINTING AND GOOKBrNOlNQ COMPANY, 
 
 NEW YORK.
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 Cby 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 
 woiks of their author. 
 
 The satire of his earliest novels is a protest against false 
 social respectabilities ; the humor 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 char- 
 acter ; by the last, to encourage mutual charity and sympathy 
 among all classes on whose inter-relation depends the character 
 of society itself. But in these three books, his latest fictions, 
 the moral purpose is more d-efinite and exclusive. Each of 
 them is an expostulation against what seemed to him the peril- 
 ous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a warn- 
 ing 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 humor and pathos of " Chil- 
 ingly " are of a kind incompatible with the design of " The 
 Parisians," which is a work of dramatic observation. * Chil 
 lingly" is a Romance ; "The Parisians " is a Novel. The sub- 
 ject of " Chillingly " is psychological ; that of " The Parisians " 
 is social. The author's object in " Chillingly " being to illus-
 
 4 PRE FA TOR V NO TE. 
 
 trate the effect of " modern " ideas upon an individual char- 
 acter, he has contined his narrative to the biography of that one 
 character. Hence the simphcity of plot and the small number 
 of dramaiis pcrsojice ; 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 pano- 
 ramic 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 colored with 
 an equal care, but by means of the bold broad touches neces- 
 sary 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 Paris- 
 ian Society of Imperial and Democratic France ; a character 
 everywhere present and busy throughout the story, of which \^ 
 is the real hero or heroine, This society was doubtless selectetl 
 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, senti- 
 timent, and observation, assisted by humor 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 charac- 
 ter ; 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 
 
 * See also Note by the Author's Son, p. 174, vol. iii.
 
 PREFA rOK Y NO TE. 5 
 
 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 com- 
 munications 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 penetra- 
 tion of his occasional comments on the circumstances and sen- 
 timents he describes. 
 
 It only remains to discharge a debt of gratitude to Messrs. 
 Blackwood by thus publicly acknowledging the careful and 
 scrupulous attention they have given to the printing of this 
 book, and the efforts made by them, under exceptionally dif- 
 ficult conditions, to present to their readers in the best possi 
 ble form, this, the last of that long list of well-known fictions, 
 which throughout every region of Europe and America have now 
 for so many years associated their name with that of its author.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 per- 
 ceptible notice of its encroachments, might, in the opinion of 
 my medical attendant, prove suddenly fatal, 
 
 1 had brought my little book to its somewhat melancholy close 
 a few years before the date of its publication, and, in the mean- 
 while, I was induced to transfer my residence to Paris, in order 
 to place myself under the care of an English physician, re- 
 nowned 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 em- 
 inent 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
 
 g THE PARISIANS. 
 
 and unalloyed veracity which, I flatter mj'self, 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 nattiralibus 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 veriie 
 to the bienseances of the polished society in which la LibeiU 
 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,* 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 ceil du vi07ide ! — 
 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 cin- 
 ders for the sake of the common good ! 
 
 TiSH. 
 
 Paris, August 28, 1872. 
 
 * 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 pop- 
 ular ignorance into the popular ferocity which precedes its decease, tha 
 name for that state of things is Glek-Nas — viz., the universal strife-rot.
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was a bright day in the eariy spring of 1869. 
 
 All Paris sedmed 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 mil- 
 lionaire from the London Exchange, as he looked round on the 
 magnsins, the equipages, the dresses of the women ; as he in- 
 quired 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 crowd- 
 ed 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 pre- 
 vailing mode : to a practised eye it betrayed the taste and the 
 cut of a provincial tailor. His gait was not that of the Paris- 
 ian — 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 dis- 
 tinction 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
 
 lO 
 
 THE PAKIS/AA'S. 
 
 himself was endowed with a considerable share of that nobility 
 whicli Nature capriciously distributes among her favorites, 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 in- 
 clined 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 moustache a shade darker, clipped short, 
 not disgviising the outline of lips, which were now compressed, 
 as if smiles had of late been unfamiliar to them ; yet sucb com- 
 pression did not seem in harmony with the physiognomical 
 character of their formation, which was that assigned by Lav- 
 ater to temperaments easily moved to gayety and pleasure. 
 
 Another man, about his own age, coming quickly out of one 
 of the streets of the Chaussee d'Antin, brushed close by the 
 stately pedestrian above described, caught sight of his counte- 
 nance, 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 im- 
 plied, " Sir, you are mistaken ; I have not the honor to know 
 you," continued his slow indifferent way. The would-be ac- 
 quaintance was not so easily rebuffed. " Feste,"" said he, be- 
 t\veen his teeth, " I am certainly right. He is not much al 
 tered — of course 7 am ; ten years of Paris would improve ai: 
 orang-outang." Quickening his step, and regaining the sid^ 
 of the man he had called " Alain," he said, with a well-bred 
 mixture of boldness and courtesy in his tone and counte 
 ance — 
 
 " Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong. But 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 possible ? " cried Alain, cordially, and with an ani 
 mation which changed the whole character of his countenance. 
 "My dear Frederic, my dear friend, this is indeed good for- 
 tune ! 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 here a fortnight," replied Alain.
 
 THE PARISIANS. II 
 
 " Hem ! I suppose you lodge in the old Hotel de Roche- 
 briant. I passed it yesterday, admiring its \z.%t facade, WwX^ 
 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 
 graft d seigneur 1 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. Hena ! 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' end. Dear 
 — but a genius." 
 
 The young Marquis smiled — for since he had found a col- 
 lege 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 marr}'. Parkz- 
 tnoi 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 Fau- 
 bourg," 
 
 " No," answered Alain, simply — " I am not engaged ; my 
 range of acquaintance is more circumscribed than you suppose,'
 
 12 
 
 FAKISIANS. 
 
 " So much the better for me. I am luckily disengaged to- 
 day, which is not often the case, for 1 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 ex- 
 cept a very ignoble one, close by my lodging." 
 
 " A propos, where do you lodge .? " 
 
 " Rue de I'Uniyersite, Numero ." 
 
 " A fine street, but triste. If you have no longer your family 
 hotel, you have no excuse to linger in that museum of mum- 
 mies, 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. A propos f 
 horses! You must have English ones. How many.' — three 
 for the saddle, two for your coupe? I'll find them for )'ou. 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 Mar- 
 quis 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, w^ith 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 believe that I have reasons you will 
 a]iprove 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 con- 
 .science — is certainly not the Paris of former times, but that 
 Palis which M. Buonaparte — I beg pardon, which the Emperor 
 — has called up around him and identified forever with his
 
 THE PARISFANS. 13 
 
 reign. It is what is new in Paris that strikes and enthrall? 
 me. Here I see the life of France, and I belong to hei 
 tombs ! " 
 
 " I don't quite understand you," said Lemercier, " If you 
 think that because your father and grandfather were Legiti- 
 mists, you have not the fair field of living ambition open to you 
 under the Empire, you never were more mistaken. Moyvi age. 
 and even tococo, are all the rage. You have no idea how \-m\\ 
 able your name would be either at the Imperial Court or in a 
 Commercial Company. But with your fortune you aie nde- 
 pendent of all but fashion and the Jockey Club. And a propos 
 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 at 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 genfilhonimc% 
 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 encoun- 
 tered 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 its all the same ; in ont 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 IL 
 
 The salons of the Trois Freres were crowded — our friends 
 found a table with some difficulty. Lemercier proposed a 
 private cabinet, which, for some reason known to himself, the 
 Marquis declined.
 
 ,4 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Lemercier, spontaneously and unrequested, ordered the 
 dinner and the wines. 
 
 While waiting for their oysters, with which, wh^n in season, 
 French bo?i-vivants usually commence their dinner, Lemercier 
 looked round the saloft with that air of inimitable, scrutinizing, 
 superb impertinence which distinguishes the Parisian dandy. 
 Some of the ladies returned his glance coquettishly, for Lemer- 
 cier was beau garcon ; others turned aside indignantly and mut- 
 tered 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 its socket — noticing the 
 hardihood of his countenance and the squareness of his shoul- 
 ders — 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 7non 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 favorably known at the Trois Fieres. 
 The waiters had flocked round him, and were pointing to a 
 table by the window, which a saturnine Englishman, who had 
 dined off a beef-steak and potatoes, was about to vacate. 
 
 Mons. Duplessis, having first assured himself, like a prudent 
 man, that his table was secure, having ordered his oysters, his 
 chablis, and \\\'?, 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 li]Ds, a nose 
 somewhat turned up, but not small, very fine large dark eyes, a 
 bold, oj^en, somewhat impertinent expression of countenance — • 
 withal decidedly handsome, thanks to coloring, youth, and viva- 
 city 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 concentratinirhis 
 attention on Frederic Lemercier, who sits square with his hands
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 '5 
 
 clasped — Lucien Duplessis is somewhere between forty and 
 fifty, rather below the middle height, slender but not slight — 
 what in Engish phrase is called " wiry." He is dressed with 
 extreme simplicity : black frock-coat buttoned up ; black cravat 
 worn higher than men who follow the fashions wear their neck- 
 cloths 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 moustache and impe- 
 rial, plagiarized from those of his sovereign, and, like all plag- 
 iarisms, carrying the borrowed beauty to extremes, so that the 
 points of moustache 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. Obser\'ed 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 reserv^e, 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 for you half an hour ; 
 you never came." 
 
 " No ; I went first to the Bourse. The shares in that Com- 
 pany we spoke of have fallen ; tncy 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 appoint- 
 ment. 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 honor 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 Londan I met him, at the house of the Russian 
 Princess C " 
 
 The marquis colored 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
 
 ,6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 squeezed the lemon over liis oysters, " and very much to be 
 admired." 
 
 " How so ? I see nothhig at least to admire in his face," 
 said the Marquis, with thebluntness 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, surelv." 
 
 " 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'm 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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 he has read much himself. Might have taken to 
 literature or to 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, an quatricme, near the Luxembourg. He has 
 now a hotel, not large, but charming, in the Champs Elysees, 
 worth at least 600,000 francs. Nor has he made his own for- 
 tune alone, but that of many others ; some of birth as high as 
 your own. He has the genius of riches, and knocks off a mil- 
 lion as a poet does an ode, by the force of inspiration. He is 
 hand-in-glove with the Ministers, and has been invited to Com- 
 piegne by the Emperor. You will fmd him very useful." 
 
 Alain made a slight movement of incredulous dissent, and 
 changed the conversation to reminiscences of old schoolboy 
 days. 
 
 The dinner at length came to a close. Frederic rang for the 
 bill — glanced over it. " Fift)'-nine francs," said he, carelessly 
 flinging down his napoleon and a half. The Marquis silently 
 drew foith his purse and extracted the same sum. 
 
 W^hen 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 Span- 
 iard attached to the Embassy here. Such cigars are not to be
 
 THE PARISIANS. 17 
 
 had at Paris for money, not 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 
 upon 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 
 Fauburgio assist — at least until you have made good your posi- 
 tion. Let me see, is not the Duchesse de Tarascon a relation 
 of yours ? " 
 
 " Yes ; my poor mother's first-cousin." 
 
 " I congratulate you. Ires-grande dame. She will launch 
 you 171 picro coelo, as Juno might have launched one of her young 
 peacocks." 
 
 "There has been no acquaintance between our houses," re- 
 turned the Marquis, dryly, " since the mesalliance of her second 
 nuptials." 
 
 '^Mesalliance! second nuptials! Her second husband 
 was the Duke de Tarascon." 
 
 " A duke of the First Empire — the grandson of a butcher." 
 
 ^'- Diable ! you are a severe genealogist, Monsieur le Mar- 
 quis. How can you consent to walk arm in arm with me, whose 
 great-grandfather supplied bread to the same army to which the 
 Duke 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 an usurper. 
 She abandoned the faith of her house and the cause of her 
 sovereign. Therefore her marriage is a blot on our scutch- 
 eon." 
 
 Frederic raised his eyebrows, but had the tact to pursue the 
 subject no further. He who interferes in the quarrels of rela- 
 tions must pass through life without a friend. 
 
 The young men now arrived at Lemercier's apartment, an 
 entresol looking on the Boulevarde des Italiens, consisting of 
 more room than a bachelor generally requires ; and, though 
 low-pitched, of good dimensions, decorated and furnished with 
 a luxury which really astonished the provincial, though, with
 
 l8 ThK FARISIANS. 
 
 the high-bred pride of an Oriental, he suppiessed 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-a'oeil very favorable to that respect which the 
 human mind pays to the evidences of money. Nor was com- 
 fort less studied than splendor. Thick carpets covered the 
 floors, doubled and quilted /(?r//^;rj- excluded all draughts from 
 chinks in the doors. Having allowed his friend a few minutes 
 to contemplate and admire the salle a mafiger 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 East- 
 ern 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 vain- 
 ly pressing one of his matchless cigars on his friend, indulged 
 in his own Regalia. 
 
 " They are ten years old," said Frederic, Avith 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 ex- 
 pected you back in vain. Have you been at Paris ever 
 since ? " 
 
 " P>er since ; my poor father died of that illness. His for- 
 tune proved much larger than was suspected ; my share 
 amounted to an income, from investments in stocks, houses 
 etc., to upwards of 60,000 francs a year ; and as I wanted six 
 years of my majority, of course the capital on attaining my ma 
 jority, would be increased by accumulation. My mother de 
 sired to keep me near her ; my uncle, who was joint guardian 
 with her, looked with disdain on our poor little provincial col 
 tage ; so promising an heir should acquire his finishing educa- 
 tion under masters at Paris. Long before I was of age, I was 
 initiated into politer mysteries of our capital thar those cele- 
 brated by Eugene Sue. When I took possession of niy fc 
 tune, five years ago, I was considered a Croesus; and ieally tor 
 that patriarchal time I was wealthy. Now, alas! rny rccumu- 
 lations have vanished in my outfit ; and 60,000 irrincs a year is 
 the least a Parisian can live upon. It is not only that, all prices
 
 THE PARISIAA^S. ig 
 
 have fabulously increased, but that the dearer things become, 
 the better people live. When I first came out the world spec- 
 ulated upon me, now, in order to keep my standing, I am forced 
 to speculate on the world. Hitherto I have not lost ; Duplessis 
 ,et me into a few good things this year, worth 100,000 francs or 
 so. Croesus consulted the Delphic Oracle. Duplessis was not 
 alive in the tinie 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 some- 
 where about the age of thirty, of prepossessing countenance, 
 and with the indefinable air of good-breeding and usage du 
 tnonde. 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 Le- 
 mercier," 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 
 Grarra 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. 
 I 
 
 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 ap- 
 pellation. 
 
 " ' 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 la Mar- 
 quis, 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. 
 
 fc>
 
 20 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 If our friend Lemercier does not mangle your name as he does 
 mine, I understand him to say that you are the Marquis de 
 Kochebriant." 
 
 " 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 honor 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 Mar- 
 quis's heart warmed to him at once. 
 
 " The first loyal gentilhomme 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 every- 
 thing 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 bear- 
 ings, punctually at the hour of three. She wears always the 
 same dress, a kind of gray pearl-colored silk, with a cache^nire 
 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-ron." 
 
 " I have not seen the lady you describe," answered Lemer- 
 cier, 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 jealons temperament," replied the 
 Englishman; " but jealousy comes after love, and not before 
 it. i am not in love ; I am only haunted. To-morrow even« 
 ing, then, shall wc dine at Philippe's, seven o'clock?"
 
 THE rARISIANS. 2i 
 
 "With all my heart," said Lemercier ; "and you, loo, 
 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 or delicacy, thought that he had made himself dt 
 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 en- 
 gagement which presses, and only looked into 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 [ 
 may have the honor 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 \yhose 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 ? Diablel She answered your de- 
 scription 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. 
 ' Ago.,^ says a wit in the Figaro, ' is a river which the women 
 compel to reascend to its source when it has flowed onward 
 more than twenty years.' Never mind — soyez tranquille — 1 
 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 Le- 
 mercier, pr?y continue to look out for a Louise Duval who was
 
 ,j THE PARTSTANS. 
 
 young and pretty twenty-one years ago — this search ought to 
 interest me more than that which I intrusted to you to-night 
 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. 
 V'ou, so perfect a Frenchman, know the difference ; honor is 
 •engaged to the first. Be sure you let me know if you find any 
 ^ther Madame or Mademoiselle Duval ; and of course you re- 
 nember 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 coun- 
 tenance and manner! " 
 
 Lemercier returned to the Marquis. " Such a pity you don'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 to-morrow. 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 man- 
 fully— 
 
 " Mv dear Frederic, your world and mine are not and can- 
 .lot 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 extra\'agance ? 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 5000 francs a year : my for- 
 tunes 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 re- 
 mained for some moments silent, eyes and mouth both wide 
 open : at length he sprang up, embraced his friend, wellnigh 
 sobbing, and exclaimed," Tant niieux pour moi I You must 
 take your lodging with me. I have a charming bedroom to 
 spare. Don't say no. It will raise my own postiton 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 7nillionave 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 3'ou will see what you propose is im- 
 possible. Poor I may be without dishonor ; live at another 
 man's cost I caimot do without baseness. It does not require 
 to be gentil/uW'me to feel that : it is enough to be a Frenchman. 
 Come and iCc me when you can spare the time. Tlicre is my
 
 THE PARIS Li, VS. 23 
 
 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 ceil 
 ings painted by Le Brun, with walls on which the thick silks still 
 seemed fresh. These rooms were occupied by z. 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, nevei 
 lighted, dark as Erebus, led to the room occupied by the Mar- 
 quis, 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 attended the lodger on 
 the fourth story. The porter and his wife were Bretons ; they 
 liame 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 light- 
 ing him upstairs and seeing to his fire, for after a warm day 
 the night had turned to that sharp biting cold which is more try- 
 ing in Paris than even in London. 
 
 The old woman, running up the stairs before him, opened 
 the door of his loom, and busied herself at the fire. " Gently, 
 my good Martha," 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, Martha ; 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.'"
 
 24 yffR PARIS TANS. 
 
 " A dot suitable to the ruins of Rochebriant -would not suf- 
 fice to repair them, Martha : give me my dressing-gown, and 
 good-night." 
 
 " Bon repos, M. le Margin's ! beaux rei'es, ei bd avcim .''' 
 
 " Bd avcnir /" 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 
 is age. How lightly I should endure poverty if it brought 
 poverty's ennobling companion, labor — 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 expecta- 
 tion of poverty. The only son of a father whose estates were 
 large beyond those of most nobles in nijodern France, his des- 
 tined heritaije 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 
 lonelilv 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 brillant sdgneur visited France but rarely, for very brief 
 intervals, residing wholly abroad. To him went all the reve- 
 nues of Rochebriant, save what sufficed for the nienageoi 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 'MsJIeur 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 aver}' proud, 
 a very polished, a very luxurious, and, though not without the 
 kindliness and generosity which were common attributes of the 
 old French tioblesse, a very selfish grand seigtieur. 
 
 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 the 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 Lon-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 25 
 
 don to N'aples, Naples to Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Seville, Carls- 
 bad, 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 enfaiit gate. 
 1 suspect that, cat-like, his attachment was rather to the house 
 ihan 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 ac 
 cepted without scruple his sister's fortune — he borrowed with 
 equal sangfroid 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 reck- 
 lessly took from them. He was engaged to be married to his 
 Princess so soon as her own husband died. She had been sep- 
 arated 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 
 Ikittany 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 cJhivalry, condemning him- 
 self to voluntary exile rather than do homage to usurpers. But 
 from their grief they were soon roused by the terrible doubt
 
 26 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 whether Rochebriant could still be retained in the family. Be- 
 sides the mortgages, creditors from half the capitals in Eurojoe 
 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 charac- 
 ter by the calmness with which he met the danger, and the' in- 
 telligence with which he calculated and reduced it. 
 
 By the help of the family notary in the neighboring 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 ;i^i 0,000 a year yielded not more than ;^4oo. Not 
 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 de- 
 clared 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 
 ;^96oo a year regularly out of ;^i 0,000, with the penalty of for- 
 feiting the whole if not paid, whether crops may fail, farmers pro- 
 crastinate, 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 vigor ; 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 undimin- 
 ished. 
 
 "There is but one way, Monsieur le Marquis," said the fam- 
 ily notar}', 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 27 
 
 mortgagee, M. Louvier, who, I shrewdly suspect, is bent upon 
 becoming the proprietor of Rochcbriant. Unfortunately, those 
 few portions of j'our 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 ; 1 ut 
 these lands are covered by Monsieur Louvier's general mort- 
 gage, and he has refused to release them unless the whole debt 
 be paid. Were that debt, therefore, transferred to another 
 mortgage, 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 liqui 
 dation of the charges on the estate. For with a little capital. 
 Monsieur le Marquis, your rent-roll might be very greatly in- 
 creased, the forests and orchards improved, those meadows 
 
 round S drained and irrigated. Agriculture is beginning 
 
 to be understood in Bretagne, and 3'our estate would soon 
 double its value in the hands of a spirited capitalist. My ad- 
 vice to you, therefore, is to go to Paris, employ a good avoue, 
 practiced 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 ofif the charge by in- 
 stallments 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 re- 
 enter on your estate with a rental so improved that the mort- 
 gages, 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 sendees 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
 
 25 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 which disqualified the man for the age he lived in, and, if not 
 greatly modified, would cut him off from the hopes and aspira- 
 tions of his eager generation. He thought, plausibly enough, 
 that the air of the grand metropolis was necessary to the men- 
 tal 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 honor and to for- 
 time, for which he took facilities from his high birth, an histori- 
 cal 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 endan- 
 gered 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 suggested 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 him- 
 self, and had come to Paris resolutely determined to live within 
 the i^2oo a year which remained to his share. He felt the 
 revolution in his whole being which 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 con- 
 nected with the immemorial legends of the province. 
 
 The very bustle of a railway, with its crowd and quickness 
 Aid unceremonious democracy of travel served to pain and con- 
 found and humiliate that sense of individual dignity in which 
 he had been nurtured. He felt that, once away from Roche- 
 briant, 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.
 
 THE FARIS/ANS. 29 
 
 For the first few days he had wandered over Paris without call- 
 ing even on the avoiie to whom M. Hebert liad 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 atmos- 
 phere of the place, seize on those general ideas which in grea< 
 capitals are so contagious that they are often more accuratel}! 
 caught by the first impressions than by subsequent habit, be- 
 fore he brought his mind into contact with those of the individ- 
 uals he had practically to deal with. 
 
 At last he repaired to the avoue, M. Gandrin, Rue St. Flor- 
 entin. He had mechanically formed his idea of the abode and 
 person of an avo7ie 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-tochere, and was directed by the concierge to mount an 
 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 loung- 
 ing in an easy chair before a magnificent bureau of marqueferie, 
 genre Louts 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 introductoiT 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 
 honor 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, " T 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 nowackiys like quick returns and large profits.
 
 30 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 thanks to the magnificent system of Credit MohUier, 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 condition 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 tiaive simplicity, as if his words 
 were quite suiBcient to set that part of tlie question at rest. 
 
 M. Gandrin smiled politely, and said, ^^ Eh bien, M. le Mar- 
 quis, favor me with the abstract ; in a week's time you shall 
 have my opinion. You enjoy Paris .'' Greatly improved under 
 the Emperor; the salons, indeed, are hardly open yet. A pro- 
 pose Madame Gandrin receives to-morrow 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 thai 
 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-fash- 
 ioned, obselete, not of his race, nor of his day. His rank itself 
 seemed to him a waste-paper title-deed to a heritage long 
 hipsed. 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 vohmtary exile in 
 manhood, had been in childhood a king's page, and throughout 
 life remained the associate of princes ; and here, in an avou^s
 
 TITE PAIUSIAXS. 31 
 
 soiree, unknown, unregarded, an expectant on an avoue^s pat- 
 ronage, stood the last loid of Rochebriant. 
 
 It is easy to conceive that Alain did not stay long. But he 
 stayed long enough to convince him that on ;^2oo 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 Roche- 
 briant whether in a garret or a palace. The Vandemars, in fact, 
 though for many generations before the First Revolution a puis- 
 sant and brilliant family, had always recognized the Roche- 
 briants 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 him with M. 
 Gandrin. The Hotel de 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 jjunctilious care of person which is not fop- 
 pery in men of birth, but seems part of the self-respect that ap- 
 pertains to the old chivalric point of honor. 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 cour- 
 tesy of ancient high-breeding, but still with condescension as to 
 an inferior. This little incident, and the slighting kind of no- 
 tice 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 comprehenil. He had even half 
 a mind to give up his visit and turn back. However, his native 
 manhood prevailed over that morbid sens tiveness which, born 
 out of the union of pride and poverty, has all the effects of van- 
 ity, and yet is not vanity itself.
 
 32 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 The Count was at home, a thin spare man with a narrow but 
 high forehead, and an expression of countenance keen, severe, 
 and uii pen moqueuse. 
 
 He received the marquis, however, at first with great cordi- 
 ality,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 ex- 
 tent of his liabilities, and the penury of his means, the smile 
 vanished from the Count's face ; he somewhat drew back his 
 faiiteiiil 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 at the carpet, 
 at length he said, " My dear young friend, your father behaved 
 extremely ill to you — dis'honorably, fraudulently." 
 
 " Hold ! " said the marquis, coloring high. " Those are 
 words no man can apply to my father in my presence." 
 
 The count stared, shrugged his shoulders, and replied with 
 sangfroid — 
 
 " 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 1 " 
 
 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. 
 
 " I St. 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 permanent privation, severe struggle ; and the proba- 
 bility 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 soit. 
 
 "Course the 2d. Rochebriant, though so heavily incum- 
 bered as to yield you some such income as your father gave 
 to his c/iif de cuisine, is still one of those superb tares which
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 33 
 
 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 con- 
 siderable 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 sniLe 
 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 con- 
 ceded, if all Judea 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 a'-^- 
 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 of 
 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 resigns his right to the throne of St. 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 mesalilance. 1 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 tegime. Marquis, Though 
 I still retain the title of Yandemar, my property comes from
 
 24 THE PAKJS/AA'S. 
 
 the Fariner-Oeneral's daughter whom my great-grandfather, 
 happily for us, married in the days of Louis Quinze. Mar- 
 riages with people of sense and rank have always been manages 
 de convetiatice 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 happier for it. On the contrary, the quarrels de 
 vie?iage leading to frightful crimes appear by the " Gazette de 
 Iribunaux " 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 reroir, 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 Com- 
 tesse 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 scare- 
 crows of priests and bishops. But if you accept my invitation 
 and my olTer, 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 candor ; and I now acknowl 
 ed"e that 1 have fomid a relation and a guide," answered the 
 Marquis, with a nobility of mien that was not without a pathos 
 which touched the hard heart of the old man.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 35 
 
 " Come at least whenever you want a sincere i( a rude 
 friend;" and though he did not kiss his cousin's cheek this 
 time, he gave laim, 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 in- 
 terview, 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 ascend- 
 ed to so high an eminence, burst into Alain's chamber. 
 
 " Frr ! mofi cher ; what superb exercise for the health — • 
 how it must strengthen the muscles and expand the chest ! af- 
 ter this, who should shrink from scaling Mount 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 col- 
 lege 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 
 Elys^es. As briefly as he could, Alain described the state of 
 his affairs, the nature of his mortgages, and the result of his in- 
 terview 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 con- 
 fide it to me. Gandrin ought to help you ; he transacts affairs 
 in a large way. Belle clientele among the millionaires. But 
 his clients expect fabulous profits, and so does he. As for
 
 36 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 your principal mortgagee, Louvier, you know of course who 
 he is." 
 
 " No, except that M. Hebert told me that he was very ricli." 
 
 " Rich — I should think so ; one of the Kings of F' nance 
 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 Vandeniar. 
 
 " Those beaux gar cons 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 allow- 
 ances 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 demi-gods 
 are nevertheless 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 contrar}^ 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 1 "
 
 37 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " Bah ! when a minister himself, like the late M. de M , 
 
 kept a shop, and added the profits of bonbons 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 Boiirse." 
 
 " The fact is," resumed Frederic, " that gambling is one of 
 the wants of civilized men. The ro//g^e 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 vvaxlights 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 clamor ! 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 him- 
 self in some stormy scene of the First Revolution. An English 
 contested election in the marketplace 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 bewil- 
 dered, 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
 
 38 THE PAKISTAN'S. 
 
 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 our idlers and sporting-men would make their 
 books there every day, instead of waiting long months in ennui 
 tor the Doncaster and the Derby. At present we have but few 
 men on the turf ; we should then have few men not on ex- 
 change, 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 famil- 
 iarly 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 of Paris soci- 
 ety to which the subdivision of property gave birth — viz., the 
 crowd of well-born, daring young men without fortune and with- 
 out 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 because 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 yourself away without a dash, 
 (oute que 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 tourna- 
 ment, and paladins smile on you, and ladies give you their 
 scarves, or, what is much the same, they allow you to buy their 
 cachanire. Win at the Bourse — what follows ? the Chamber, 
 the Senate, the Cross, the Minister's porte-feuille. I might re- 
 joice in all this for the sake of Europe — could it last, and did it 
 not bring the consequences that follow the demoralization which 
 attend it. The Bourse T^wdi the Credit Mobiller keep Paris quiet 
 at least as quiet as it can be. These are the secrets of this
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 39 
 
 reign of splendor ; 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 Gra- 
 ham 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-colored robe ? " 
 
 " I have not forgotten ; it is not half-past two yet ; you said 
 three, Soyez tranqicille ; 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 
 veiy 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 77ionde, with 
 whom he was conferring. Duplessis thus seen \vas 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, mas- 
 sive 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 
 th(^ great orator whom you deemed insignificant in a drawing- 
 ro(;m, when you see his crest rise above a reverential audience ; 
 or the great soldier, who was not distinguishable from the sub- 
 altern in a peaceful club, could you see him issuing the order to 
 his aides-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,
 
 40 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Philosophy — Eloquence — audacious Romance, — all Literature 
 now is swallowed up in the sublime epic of Agiotage, and Du- 
 plessis 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 M'ell ? " 
 
 '■^Mafot/" returned Graham, quietly, "I am studying to 
 tk'.nk at Paris, in order some day or other to know how to act 
 in Eondon. Time for the Bois. Lemercier, we meet at seven 
 —Philippe's." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " What do you think of the Bourse 1 " 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 1 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 indi- 
 vidual 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 ne- 
 cessary 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 GLdipus if QLdipus 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 Par's, resolved to venture a
 
 THE PARISIANS. 41 
 
 small capital in the hope of a large one ; they live on that caph 
 ital, not on their income, as gamesters do. There is an idea 
 among us that it is necessary to s&em rich in order to become 
 rich. Thus there is a general extravagance and profusion. 
 English tnilords marvel at our splendor. Those who, while 
 spending their capital as their income, fail in their schemes of 
 fortune, after one, two, three, or four years — vanish. Wiiat 
 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 for- 
 tunes, which are magnificently expended. They set an example 
 of show and pomp, which is of course the more contagious be- 
 cause so many men say, 'The other day those millionaires were 
 as poor as we are ; they never economized ; why should we ? ' 
 Paris is thus doubly enriched — by tlie -fortunes it swallows up, 
 and by the fortunes it casts up ; the last being always reproduc- 
 tive, and the first never lost except to the individuals." 
 
 " I imderstand : 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, evi- 
 dently, 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 seems 
 to me a new combination, which Moliere never divined in his 
 'Avarer' 
 
 " 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 gaming- 
 tables 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 gam- 
 mg whether at rouge et noir or the Bourse 1 " 
 
 Main 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 Parisia^'^i fluent 
 talk
 
 42 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 He sighed witli a melancholy and yet with a generous envy. 
 He had too fine a natural preception not to acknowledge that 
 there is a rank of mind as well as 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 hideoui 
 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 gov- 
 ern 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 the theatres — even their 
 museum 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 ? "
 
 THE FARISTAh S, 43 
 
 " 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 — dan- 
 cing quadrilles and waltzes, and regaling themselves on sau- 
 sages — 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 sec some one whom 
 I have promised the Englishman to— But heed me, Alain ; 
 don't fall iu love with her." 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 The lady in the pearl colored dress ! Certainly it was a 
 face that might well arrest the eye and linger long on the re- 
 membrance. 
 
 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 in- 
 terest ; they lack some expression, whether of mind, or of soul, 
 or of heart, without which the most beautiful face is but a beau- 
 tiful 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 coloring. But the countenance 
 aroused and impressed the imagination with a belief that there 
 was some history attached to it which you longed to learn, 
 llie 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. 
 
 Tlieir 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 reverie. Her complexion was clear and 
 pale, and apparently betokened delicate health. 
 
 Lemercier seated himself on a bench beside the path, and
 
 44 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 
 Farisienne excels all the descendants of Eve — if it were not for 
 her eyes. I never saw a Frenchwoman with eyes of that pecu- 
 liar shade of blue ; and if a Frenchwoman had such eyes, I 
 flatter myself she would have scarcely allowed us to pass with- 
 out 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 /ant, 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 : cofti7ne ilfaiU 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 
 Leinercier noticed that her lips moved as if she were murmur- 
 ing in audibly 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 waitiiv^ 
 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 
 inslruclions 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 
 al 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 
 thcdoor of the house, and the tw^o gentlemen could not catch 
 even a glimpse of the lady's robe as she descended from the 
 carriage and disappeared within the house.
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 
 
 45 
 
 " I see a cofe j^onder," said Lemercier ; " let us learn all we 
 can as to the fair unknown, over a sorbet or ?l petit icrre,'^ 
 
 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 neighborhood knew 
 of the inhabitants of the villa. 
 
 It had been hired and furnished about two months pre 
 viously 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 accom- 
 panied the younger in any evening visits to the theatre or the 
 houses of friends. 
 
 It \\as 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 con- 
 sisted of three servants, all Italians, and speaking but imper- 
 fect 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 visitor the 
 eminent author M. Savarin and his wife, and, still more fre- 
 quently, 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 ac- 
 count 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 "
 
 46 THE PARISlAArS, 
 
 " Ah ! I remember now. What do you know of this Eng- 
 lishman ? 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 
 v^ery often, and I have known him some time. Indeed, he has 
 intrusted to me a difficult and delicate commission. The Eng- 
 lish tell me that his father was one of the most eminent mem- 
 bers 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 distinguish- 
 ed 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 good-by, 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 some- 
 :hing that comforts, something that sustains, but also a some- 
 thing that troubles and disquiets me. I suppose Goethe is 
 right, " that it is the jKoperty of true genius to disturb all 
 sellled 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 \ou 
 forgive me when I add that the interest is not without terror 1 
 I do not find myself able to comprehend how, amid those 
 lovely scenes of nature, your mind voluntarily surrounds itself
 
 THE PARISIANS. 47 
 
 with images of pain and discord. I stand in awe of the calm 
 with which you subject to your analysis the infirmities of rea- 
 son 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 un- 
 der 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 con- 
 fused and struggling. The great Maestro has been most gra- 
 cious. 
 
 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 Mephisto- 
 pheles. 
 
 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 jDress. 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 air, relieved from the sense of earth. 
 I knew not that I had succeeded until 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
 
 48 THE PARISIAN'S. 
 
 were quivering, and it was only with a great effort tl:at she 
 muttered out some faint words intended for applause. I com- 
 prehended 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 com- 
 pliments 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 in- 
 flicted 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 color." 
 
 He patted my bended head as he spoke, with that kind of 
 fatherly king-like fondness with which he honors me ; and I 
 took his hand in mine, and kissed it gratefully. " Neverthe- 
 less," 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 contest 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 attend- 
 ing 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 your- 
 self. But there were others whom I should never have ex- 
 pected 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 4g 
 
 effeminate lisp, and harangued on them with a small feeble 
 gesticulation of pale dainty fingers covered with rings. 
 
 I asked him if there were many in France who 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 is 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 civil- 
 ized 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 inter- 
 ests me most, on which I most need your counsel. I will try 
 to approach it in my next. 
 
 ISAURA. 
 
 Front 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 as- 
 pirations. But what can justify such ambition in me ? Noth- 
 ing but this one unintellectual perishable gift of a voice that 
 does but please in utter ng 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 by-path, 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 the earth ; you 
 opened to my sight the fair}'-land of poetry and art ; you took 
 me by the hand and said, "Courage ! there is at each step some
 
 5° 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 green gap in the hedgerows some soft escape from the stony 
 thoroughfare. Beside the real Hfe expands the ideal life to 
 those that 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 notes 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 queenlike wave of 
 your hand as if beckoning to the 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 how sweet to me then were 
 words of praise 1 " 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 im- 
 bue yourself with the spirit, in which passions have been ex- 
 pressed and character delineated by great writers, the more 
 completely you will accomjilish 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 1 My knowledge of French and Italian, 
 and my rearing in childhood, which had made English famiUar 
 to me gave me the keys to the treasure-houses of three lan- 
 guages. Naturally enough I began with that in which your 
 masterpieces are composed. Till then I had not even read your 
 works. '^I'hey were the first I chose. How they impressed, how
 
 THE PARISIANS. 51 
 
 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 the 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 un- 
 changed by the systems which exist." And the next day you 
 brought me Tasso's great poem, the Gerusalemme Libcraia, 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 among 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 a 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 ao 
 knowledge 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 con- 
 tented. I shrink from violent contrasts, and can discover noth 
 ing tame and insipid in a continuance of sweetness and serenity. 
 But it was not till aftei I had read Le 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 pro- 
 claims its affinity with hope by its faith in some future good 
 more perfect than it has realized in the past.
 
 ^2 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Be this as it may, it was in this poem so pre-eminently Chris- 
 tian that I found the something which I missed and craved for 
 in modern French masterpieces, even yours — a something spir- 
 itual, 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 1 
 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 I felt in 
 Tasso ? Dante in your eyes, as in those of most judges, is in- 
 finitely the greater genius ; but reflected on- the dark stream of 
 that genius the stars are so troubled, the heavens so threaten- 
 
 to^ 
 
 mg. 
 
 J ust as my year of holiday was expiring, I turned to Eng- 
 lish 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 disap- 
 pointment. It was not only that, despite my familiarity with 
 English (thanks chiefly to the care of him whom I call my sec- 
 ond father), there is much in the metaphorical diction of Shak- 
 speare 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 " Polyeiicte" 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 Eng- 
 lish 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 
 en our memory do not make us happier and holier ; they sug- 
 gest 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 patriot- 
 ism. How much of all that has been grandest in the life of 
 France, redeeming even its worst crimes of revolution in the 
 love of countr)', has had its origin in the " Horaces "of Cor
 
 THE PARISIAN'S. 
 
 S3 
 
 neille ! But I doubt if the fates of Coriolanus, and Caesar, and 
 Brutus, and Antony, in the giant tragedies of Shakspeare have 
 made Englishmen more ready to die for England. In fine, it 
 was long before — I will not say I understood or rightly appre- 
 ciated Shakspeare, for no Englishman would admit that I o- 
 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 
 ardor I had put into study, and the wear and tear of the emo- 
 tions 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 centered my hopes before . Yes, 
 
 Eulalie, you had bid me accomplish myself for the arts of utter- 
 ance by the study of arts in which thoughts originate the words 
 they emplo3',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 of the ac- 
 tress is. How completely I must surrender myself to it, and 
 live among books, or among dreams, no more. Can I be any- 
 thing else but a 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 upon my accuracy in the 
 mechanical laws ot composition ; he even said that my favorite 
 airs were totichants et gracieiix." 
 
 And so he would have left me, but I stopped him timidly, 
 and said, " Tell me frankly, do you think that with time and
 
 24. THh PARISIANS. 
 
 study I could compose music such as singers equal to myself 
 could sing to ? " 
 
 " You mean as a professional composer ? " 
 
 " Well, yes." 
 
 " And to the abandonment of your profession as a singer ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " My dear child, I should be your worst enemy if I encour- 
 aged such a notion ; cling to the career in which you can 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 it will be sung in 
 drawing-rooms with the fame a little more or less that generally 
 attends the compositions of female amateurs. Aim at some- 
 thing 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 Grant- 
 mesnil can beat most men ; but the genius of musical composi- 
 tion is ho7?ime, and accept it as a compliment when I say that 
 you are essentially y^;«w^." 
 
 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. 
 
 Frovi 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 artisfe^s fame, would 
 revive. 
 
 In my heart I wished that his expectations might be real- 
 ized. Well for me if I could once more concentre all my aspi- 
 rauons on a prize within my reach ! 
 
 Wo went first to see a comedy greatly in vogue, and the
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 55 
 
 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 in- 
 tellectual 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 wit- 
 nessed 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 Bias is great, not so much in 
 the poetry of form as in the elevation of thought ; but the de- 
 scent from Ruy Bias 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 man- 
 agement 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
 
 56 
 
 THE P ARISTA MS. 
 
 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 jeal- 
 ous 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 sum- 
 mer 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 utter- 
 ance of sentiments, learned by rote and practised before the 
 looking glass till every gesture has its drill ! " 
 
 I'hen 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 ? 1 know you are not ill ; for if 
 you were, all Paris would know of it. All Europe has an in^ 
 terest 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 Bou- 
 logne : 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 ro- 
 mances ; and partly because it was there that, catching, alas ! 
 not inspiration but enthusiasm from the genius that had hallow- 
 ed the place, and dreaming I might orginate music I nursed my 
 own aspiration and murmured my own airs. And though so 
 close to that world of Paris to which all artists must appeal for
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 57 
 
 judgment or audience, the spot was so undisturbed, so seques- 
 tered. 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 reverie, 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 ilfaut to walk alone even in the 
 most sequestered paths of the Bois. 
 
 I began 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 trans- 
 lations, 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-humored 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 angles. 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 in 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 Englishwomen. 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
 
 58 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 especially since my rambles in the Bois were forbidden ; and as 
 long as she declaimed on the hard fate of the women who, feel- 
 ing within them powers that struggle for air and light beyond 
 the close precincts of household duties, find themselves re- 
 stricted from fair rivalry with men in such fields of knowledge 
 and toil and glory as men since the world began have appro- 
 priated to themselves, I need not say that I went with her cor- 
 dially : 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 elo- 
 quence, smiled at me with a kind of saturnine mirth. " Made- 
 moiselle, 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 plat- 
 form 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 se^x which would improve our condi- 
 tion. The inequalities we suft'er 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 him 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 con- 
 sole him when he failed than to triumph with him when he won. 
 Tel. 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 Gratimesnil to Isaura Cicogna. 
 
 Chere enfa?it, — All your four letters have reached me the
 
 THE PAKISTANS. 
 
 59 
 
 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 MiUin. 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 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 diffi- 
 dent 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 o' 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 ab- 
 sorbed 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 phi- 
 losophy 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 nu- 
 triment 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."
 
 6o THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 r^^/z^;/(rz>/' is most poetic, most 
 romantic, when he is striving, struggling, laboring, 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 me- 
 chanism of composing ; the best part of that delight is in the 
 sym]:)athies 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 lan- 
 guage. The poet is but the interpreter. What of } — Trutlis 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 woids. 
 That is the peculiar distinction of music. No genuine musi- 
 cian 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 in- 
 terpreting the soul of the musician which enchains 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 giiess what griefs 
 the singer may have comforted .'' what hard hearts he may have 
 softened ; what high thoughts he may have awakened .''
 
 THE PARISIANS. 6i 
 
 You say, " Out on the vamped-up hypocrite ! Out on the 
 stage-iobes 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 an- 
 swer 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 profit 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.
 
 6a THE PARISIANS 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 E— G— . 
 
 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-fioor in 
 the quiet locality of the Rue d'Ajou, 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 Honor." 
 
 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 1 describe has been already introduced to the 
 leader as Graham Vane. But perhaps this is the fit occasion 
 to enter 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 invest- 
 ments, inherited on the female side. Both land and money 
 were absolutely at his disposal, unincumbered 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
 
 THE rARxSIANS. ^t^ 
 
 he WHS of age he began to build, converthig 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 ulti- 
 mately 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, nor 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 a 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 in- 
 vested 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 chil- 
 dren 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 for- 
 tune 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 usur- 
 ers. These arguments might not have prevailed over the 
 bride's father a year or two later, when, by the death of inter- 
 vening kinsmen, he became the Duke of Alton ; but in his then
 
 64 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 circumstances the marriage itself was so much beyond the ex- 
 pectations 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 set- 
 tled ; 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 im.pressionable, ardent, and powerful nature. Then for a 
 while he sought distraction to his sorrow by throwing himself 
 into public life with a devoted energy he had not previously dis- 
 played. 
 
 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 re- 
 leased from the old man on his back, when, a year or two after- 
 wards, 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 gentlenian — 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 mv coun- 
 try." 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 orator}' ; en- 
 gaged 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-humored and joyous, he 
 was not more a favorite with the masters in the schoolroom 
 than with the boys in the playground. Leaving Eton at seven- 
 teen, 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 re- 
 tain much of the sterner ambition to which he had befor?
 
 THE PARISIANS. 65 
 
 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 an 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 Vice-royalty 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 re- 
 deemed, 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 beneficence — on public-spirited aid of political ob- 
 jects ; and even in mere selfish enjoyments there was a certain 
 grandeur in his princely hospitalities, in his munificent generos- 
 ity, in his warm-hearted carelessness for money. No indulg- 
 ence in petty folies or degrading vices aggravated the offense 
 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 expe- 
 rience 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
 
 66 THE PARISIANS 
 
 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 mar- 
 led 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 ancestr)', nor was 
 he 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 very en- 
 lightened benevolence. She guided his ambition aside from 
 mere party politics into subjects of social and religious inter- 
 est, 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 so high in the religous 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 an office, but for different 
 reasons, all of which need not now be detailed. Among 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 philan- 
 thropy. He writhed under every newspaper article that made 
 '•'the blameless King" responsible for the iniquities of the Gov- 
 ernment 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 greatly increased. He 
 devoted himself strenuously to the object of saving to Graham 
 some wrecks of his paternal fortunes, and, having a clear head
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 67 
 
 and great experience in the transaction of business, he suc- 
 ceeded 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 man- 
 sion, which the estate alone could never have sufficed to main- 
 tain with suitable establishments. 
 
 So that when all debts were paid, Graham found himself 
 in possession of a clear income of ^500 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 re- 
 luctantly. 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 Trentham-like palace by the last owner. 
 
 But Mr. King's argument reconciled him to the sacrifice. 
 " I can manage," said the prudent adviser. " to retain that rem- 
 nant of hereditary estate which you are so loth to part with. 
 But how ? by mortgaging to an extent that will scarcely leave 
 you ^50 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 one of retaining a few family acres ; you will be con- 
 stantly 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 
 laborer's delapidated cottage. Give up an idea that might be 
 very welF 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 equal." 
 
 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 conciousness of change of fortune when a 
 yeai 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 loved his father, perhaps 
 even courted more. 
 
 He resigned the diplomatic career, not merely because the 
 rise in the profession is slow, and in the intermediate steps the 
 chances of distinction are slight and few, but more because he
 
 68 THE FAKISTAJVS. 
 
 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, 
 ;^5oo a year amply supplied his wants. But he had by his 
 pen gained distinction, 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 
 dav," and detractors reply, " Some day seems a long way 
 off> 
 
 The same fastidiousness which had operated against that en- 
 trance into Parliament to which his ambition not the less 
 steadily adapted itself, had kept him free from the peiils 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 con- 
 nections, and his repute, he might have made many an advan- 
 tageous marriage. But somehow or other the charm vanished 
 from a fair face if the shadow of a money-bag fell on it ; on the 
 otliQr hand, his ambition occupied so large a share in his thoughts
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 69 
 
 that he would have fled in tmie from the temptation of a mar- 
 riage 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 alight- 
 ed on the earth. His grief was intense ; but what was her 
 husband's i* — 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 him- 
 self up, and refused to see even Graham. But after some 
 weeks had passed, he admitted the clergyman in whom, on spirit- 
 ual matters, he habitually confided, and seemed consoled by 
 the visits ; then he sent for his lawyer, and made his will ; af- 
 ter which he allowed Graham to call on him daily, on the con- 
 dition that there should be no reference to his lost. 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 in- 
 to 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 leav- 
 ing 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 con- 
 sciousness, and even for some days rallied strength. He might 
 liave 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 hun- 
 dred and twenty thousand pounds. 
 
 With such a fortune, opening indeed was made for an ambi-
 
 7° 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 tion so long obstructed. But Graham affected no change \\\ 
 his mode of life : he still retained his modest bachelor's apart- 
 ments — engaged no servants — bought no horses — in no way ex- 
 ceeded the income he had possessed before. He seemed, in- 
 deed, 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 tlie 
 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 near 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 irre- 
 mediable 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 1 is reverence for the 
 memory of her whom he had nor only loved as a mother, but 
 honored 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, jDerhaps, some earnest purpose 
 amidst his participation in its holiday enjoyments. 
 
 He is now, as I have said, seated before his writing-table in
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 71 
 
 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 honors — 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 ofhce for himself ; too 
 sincere a patriot not to desire office for those to whose hands 
 he thought the country might be most safely intrusted — an inti- 
 mate friend of Graham's. The contents of the letter are 
 these : — 
 
 My dear Graham, — I trust that you will welcome the bril- 
 liant 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 lit to suc- 
 ceed him as yourself, he suggests the keeping his intention se- 
 cret 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 trium- 
 phantly returned. 
 
 The expenses for this county, where there are so many out- 
 voters to bring up, and so many agents to retain, are always 
 .arge in comparison with some other counties ; but that consid- 
 eration is all in your favor, for it deters Squire Hunston, the 
 only man who could beat you, from starting; and to your re- 
 sources a thousand pounds more or less are a tritie not worth dis- 
 cussing. 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 repre- 
 sentative 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 thai 
 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 man- 
 ufacturer gripes them too firmly to loosen his hold ; and, after 
 all, even were your income double what it is, you would be
 
 72 
 
 THE PAKISIAXS. 
 
 overhoused in the vast pile in which your father buried so large 
 a share of his fortune. But that beautiful old hunting lodge, 
 the Stamvi 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 ;^5ooo 
 
 more than he gave : well worth the difference, as he has im- 
 proved the farm-buildings and raised the rental. I think, in 
 addition to the sum you have on mortgage, ^^23,000 will be ac- 
 cepted, and as a mere investment pay you nearly three percent. 
 But to you it is v^^orth more than double the money ; it once niore 
 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 impa- 
 tient sigh. 
 
 " The old Stanim 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 
 m 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 o\'er as too insigniticanl to notice ; if at
 
 THE PARISIANS. 73 
 
 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 fresh- 
 ness 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 devafit 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 satisfv Monsieur. I have certainly 
 hunted out, since I had last the honor 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 instruction." 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 Ruede S at Paris for some years, but afterwards 
 
 moved to a different quartier of the town, and died, 1848, in 
 
 Rue L , No. 39. Shortly after his death, his daughter 
 
 Louise left that lodging, and could not be traced. Li 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. Deinande 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 1" 
 
 " Quite right." 
 
 " And this is the whole information given to me. Monsieur 
 im 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
 
 y^ THE PARISIANS. 
 
 especially, Monsieur, if she has the beauty which you assign to 
 this lady. I therefore suggested that our inquiries should com 
 mence '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 im 
 patient 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, th(; 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 honor to tell Monsieur, no record of such investiga- 
 tions is preserved in the Rue Jerusalem. 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. Honor, Monsieur, honor for- 
 bids 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 75 
 
 difficulty of tracing a person with a name so much the revetse 
 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. Senti- 
 ment 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 sufKicienl 
 value to justify the profound bow he received in return. 
 
 When M. Renard had gone, Graham heaved another im- 
 patient 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 cherisii 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 impor- 
 tant that it excites me more than I like to own, believe me, 
 Your affectionate friend and cousin, 
 
 Graham.
 
 y6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 At about the same hour on the same clay 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 
 definitive 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," siad 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 fear- 
 fully 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 real- 
 ized the amount of the liabilities nor the nature of the property. 
 It will be difficult — nay, I fear, impossible — to find any cai> 
 italist to advance a sum that will cover the mortgages at an in- 
 terest 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 
 your heirs free enjoyment of an estate thus improved, we must 
 dismiss that prospect as a wild dream of my good friend M 
 Hebert's. People in the provinces do dream ; in Paris every- 
 body is wide awake." 
 
 " Monsieur," said the Marquis, with that inborn impertur- 
 bable 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 77 
 
 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 diginty of voice and manner 
 which touched and softened his listener. 
 
 " You make me your debtor for more than I pretend to 
 repay," replied Alain. " Heaven knows I want a frieiid ; and 
 1 will heed with gratitude and respect all your counsels in that 
 character." 
 
 " Plainly and briefly, my advice is this : Monsieur Louvier 
 is the principal mortgagee. He is among the richest ne- 
 gotiators of Paris. He does not, therefore, want money ; but, 
 like most self-make men, he is very accessible to social vani- 
 ties. 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. He'bert'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 a Frenchman ? " 
 
 " It does not strike me so in the least ; at all events, I could 
 make the proposal on your behalf, without compromising your- 
 self, 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 faili:/g 
 tenants the interest was not punctually paid." 
 
 ," It could so pass to him now." 
 
 " No ; for there have been years in which the other mort- 
 gagees, who are Bretons and would be loath to ruin a Roche- 
 briant, 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
 
 78 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 tasked his endurance. Come, suppose we manage to break the 
 ice easily. Do me the honor to dine here to meet him ; you 
 will find that he is not an unpleasant man." 
 
 The Marquis hestitated, 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 Pari? 
 unsuccessful in his errand overmastered his pride. He felt as 
 it 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 credi- 
 tor," said he, smiling somewhat sadly, " and I accept the pro- 
 posal 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, 7non 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 noi fniiscadin, Monsieur Louvier," re- 
 plied 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 Monsieur Louvier, with a sort 
 of careless rollicking pomposity. " Thursday with Pereira — 
 Saturday I entertain at home. Say Friday. Your hour t " 
 
 " 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 arm-chair 
 by the fireplace, stretched out his legs, and read at his ease, 
 l)ut with a very rapid eye, as a practised lawyer skims through 
 iJie technical forms of a case to fasten upon the marrow of 
 it. 
 
 " Ah ! as I thought. The farms could not pay even the in- 
 terest 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."
 
 THE PARISIANS. - 79 
 
 " Of course the chance occurs, and then I foreclose* — 1 
 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 pa 
 pers back on the bureau, nodded a royal nod, and strode forth 
 imperiously as he had strided in. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 Meanwhile the young Marquis pursued his way thought- 
 fully through the street, and entered the Champs _ Elysees. 
 Since we first, nay, since we last saw him, he is strikingly im- 
 proved 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 Elyse'es 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 admir- 
 ingly or coquettishly. But he was still so little the true Paris- 
 ian that they got no smile, no look in return. He was wrapt m 
 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. 
 
 " Bonjoiir, 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 
 
 * For the sake of the general reader, English technical words are hero 
 as elsewhere, substituted as much asposiblefor Fieuch.
 
 8o • THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 ot 
 me in the Rue de Rivoli, stopped his cotipe 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 J 
 you are going back to Paris I relinquish the Bois and offer my- 
 self 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 charge 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 1" cried Frederic/ '■' qoxvlQ. frajic jeu — cards on the 
 table — M. Grarm. Varn was going into the Bois at my 'iugges- 
 tion on the chance of having another look at the pearl-colored 
 angel ; and you, Rochebriant, can't deny that you were going 
 into the Bois for the same object." 
 
 " One may pardon an enfant terribk?' 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, 
 Flven were the lady once more visible, we have no chance of 
 being observed by the side of a Lovelace so accomiDlished and 
 so audacious." 
 
 " Adieu, then, recreant — 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 hasfor several weeks relinquished 
 her walk's in the Bois, and the probability is, theretore, that he 
 will not have the opportunity to accost her. In the next place,
 
 THE PARISIAN-^. 8 1 
 
 it appears that when she did take her soUtary 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 admir- 
 able one, and if he ever do anything that he ought to be a- 
 shamed of,'twill be from the pride of showmg 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 spo'. for 
 her promenade, I am ignorant of it ; nor have I even 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 favorite 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 
 mspired, 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 describe d 
 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 awa}', 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 
 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
 
 52 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 %he was ; he only ascerfained where she lived, and that she and 
 an elder companion were Italians, — wliom he suspected, 
 without sufficient ground to be professional singers. 
 
 " True ; but since then I ascertained more detailed particu- 
 lars 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 honor of ranking among her 
 friends. As Savarin's villa is at A — , I asked him incidentally 
 if he knew the fair neighbor 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 membet 
 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 gentle- 
 man, also dead, beqiieaihed the Signorina a small but sufiticient 
 competence. She is now an orphan, and residing with a com- 
 panion, a Stgnora Venosta, who was once a singer of some re- 
 pute at the Neapolitan Theatre, in the orchestra of which her 
 husband was principal peformer ; 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 extraordi- 
 nary excellence as a signer, 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. M , the great composer, who knows 
 
 her, says that in expression and feeling she has no living su- 
 perior, 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, Alademoi
 
 THE PARISIANS. 83 
 
 selle 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 Ues apart from 
 mine," 
 
 " Yet," said Alain, in a tone of voice that implied doubt, 
 " 'f I understand Lemercier aright, you were going with him to 
 the Eois on the chance of seeing again the lady in whom your 
 interest has ceased." 
 
 " Lemercier's account was not strictly accurate. He stop- 
 ped 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 1 was to that chance when I preferred turning 
 back with you to going on with him. Between you and me, Mar- 
 quis, 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 court- 
 ship, 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 propo- 
 sition, 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 
 o: 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 busi- 
 ness necessitates commerce with mankind. A propos, I was 
 the other evening at the Duchesse de Tarascon's — a brilliant 
 assembly, filled with ministers, senators, and courtiers. I heard 
 your name mentioned."
 
 54 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 "Mine?" 
 
 " Yes ; Duplessis, the rising financier — who, ralher to my 
 surprise, was not only present among these official and decora- 
 ted celebrities, but apparently quite at home among them— 
 asked the Duchesse 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 to tell you that you were a moiistrc 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 re- 
 flects the stars, with all their mythical intiuences on fortune, 
 iiows through her salonsT 
 
 " 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 nie 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 for the ultimate victory of their principles if they 
 made iheir 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 sub- 
 jected, they would find themselves able to turn the scale of 
 undecided counsels and conflicting jealousies." 
 
 " Monsieur, we hope for the day when the Divine Disposer 
 of events will strike into the hearts of our fickle and errin2: 
 countrymen the conviction that there will be no settled repose 
 for P'rance 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 con- 
 dition that the minorities shall not be hopeless.'' It is almost 
 the other day that the Bonajiartists were in a minority that 
 their adversaries called hopeless; and the majority for the 
 Kmpcror is now so preponclerant that I tremble for his safety,
 
 THE PARISIANS. g^ 
 
 Wlien a majority becomes so vast that intellect disappears in 
 the crowd, the dat,e 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 wants is hope ; because with- 
 out hope there is no energy, I remember hearing my fathei 
 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 hand- 
 some 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 inexperi- 
 enced or unwise politician, in repeating the royal words, re- 
 marked, ' 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 con- 
 sidered himself a human being like themselves, and risked his 
 own life in a boat, even though it were a cockle-shell, 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 Inter- 
 nationalists ; 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 politi- 
 cal 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 scarely judge of it 
 even in imagination."
 
 S6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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 :urious 
 similarity between us in circumstances that made me wish for 
 your friendship when that similarity was made known to me by 
 Lcmercier, 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 re- 
 alized : 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 Rcchebriant ; " I 
 feel as if you had given me so rough a shake when I was in the 
 midst of a dull dream, that I do not yet know^ wlrether 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 in- 
 clined to corpulence, with a very striking countenance, wa? 
 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 ex- 
 changed some words witli 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 clever- 
 ness, the Prince has in any way decided what he means to do 
 or to be." 
 
 " The Prince ! " said Rochebriant, rousing himself from 
 reverie ; " what Prince ? " 
 
 " Do you not recognize him by his wonderful likeness to the
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 87 
 
 first Napoleon — him on horseback talking to Louvier, the great 
 financier ?■ " 
 
 " Is that stout bourgeois in the carriage Louvier ? " 
 
 "Your mortgagee, my dear Marquis? Well, he is lich 
 enough to be a very lenient one upon pay-day." 
 
 " Heifi I — I doubt his leniency," said Alain. " I have ptoni- 
 ised my avoue to meet him at dinner. Do you think I did 
 wrong t " 
 
 •' 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, poli- 
 ticians, especially those who call themselves Republicans. He 
 and the Prince agree in one thing — viz, 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 eouJ>e stopped beside the footpath. " What ti- 
 dings of the J?e//e Inconnue 1 " asked the Englishman. 
 
 •' None ; she was not there. But I am rewarded — such an 
 adventure — a dame of the /laufe 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 : feinnie superbe, middle-aged. I prefer women of forty. 
 Alt revoir ; I am due at the club." 
 
 Alain felt a sensation of relief that Lemercier had not seen 
 the lady in tlie pearl-colored dress, and quitted the Englishman 
 with a lightened heart. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ^'Piaola, 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 — eld- 
 erly, 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
 
 gg THE PARISIANS. 
 
 person to whom she addressed herself was a young lady with 
 dark liair, which, despite its evident redundance, 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 
 •n the pearl-colored 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 dig- 
 nity 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 sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 Perhaps many of my readers may have known friends en- 
 gaged 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 diffi- 
 cult 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 mas- 
 tered 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 us- 
 ually find them ver^' 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, observ^- 
 ing this girl as she now bends over the flowers, it would be 
 difficult to believe her to be the Isaura Cicogna whose letters 
 to Madam de Grantmesnil exhibit the doubts and struggles of 
 an unquiet, discontented, aspiring mind. Only in one or two 
 passages in these 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 bar-
 
 THE PARISTAiVS, 89 
 
 mony, and her repugnance to contest — those were cliaracte?- 
 istics 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 
 luiticed ; 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 not see 
 in girls reared in southern climates, and in her perhaps be- 
 tokening 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 im- 
 pulsive of the Plantagenets, his contemporary chronicler tells 
 us that rather than imprison those active hands of his even in 
 hawking gloves he would sufifer his falcon to fix its sharp claws 
 into his wrist. No doubt there is a difference as to what is be- 
 fitting 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 femi- 
 nine for slight heed of artificial prettinesses. Isaura had no need 
 of pale bloodless hands to seem one of Nature's highest grade 
 of gentlewomen even to the most fastidious ej'cs. About her 
 there was a charm apart from her mere beauty, and often dis- 
 turbed instead of heightened by her mere intellect : it consisted 
 in a combination of exquisite artistic refinement, and of a gen- 
 erosity of character by which refinement was animated into 
 vigor 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 mahogan)
 
 f)0 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 chairs covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, a tall secretaire in 
 a dark corner, an oval buhl table set in tawdry olmolu, 
 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 dreaiy 
 mantelpiece. Some of this garniture had been removed 
 others softened into cheeriness and comfort. The room some 
 how 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 name- 
 less skill in rearrangement, and the disposal of the slight nick- 
 nacks and well-bound volumes which, even in travelling, women 
 who have cultivated the pleasures of taste carry about with 
 them — had been coaxed into that quiet harmony, that tone of 
 consistent subdued color, which corresponded with the charac- 
 teristics 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 light 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 digres 
 sion ; 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 Howers with the dimpled smile we have 
 noticed. " But I think, Mndre, that we should do well to 
 stay nt home on Saturday — not peacefully, for I owe you your 
 re\enge at ci/c/ire.'"
 
 THE FARISIANS. 
 
 9' 
 
 "You can't mean \t, Ficcola /'^ 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 ! 
 — ] adore light. And the ladies so beautifully dressed — one 
 sees tlte fashions. Stay at home — play at euchre indeed ! 
 Ficcola, 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 mor. 
 tified 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. Lou- 
 vier's will it not look " 
 
 " Splendid ! " interrupted the Signora. 
 
 " But smgolarey 
 
 '^ So much the better ; did not that great English lady wear 
 such a jacket, and did not every one admire her — piu tosto 
 ifividia che compass ione ? " 
 
 Isaura sighed. Now, the jacket of the Signora was the sub- 
 ject of disquietude to her friend. It so happened that a young 
 English lady of the highest rank and the rarest beaut}^ had ap- 
 peared at M. Louvier's, and indeed generally in the beau monde 
 of Paris, in a Greek jacket that became her very much. That 
 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 
 mcsquin appearance of her own old-fashioned Italian habiliments 
 compared with the brilliant toilet of the gay Parisiennes ; and
 
 g, THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 in- 
 stinct 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 ex- 
 jjerienced 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 
 chaperoii's hand a billet de banque sufficient to re-equip her cap- 
 d-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 * magasin that she had seen advertised in the Fetites Afficha 
 as supplying superb costumes for fancy balls and amateur per- 
 formers in private theatricals. She returned home triumphant, 
 with a jacket still more dazzling to the e3-e 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 distingue, was certainly an audacious- 
 challenge of ridicule in the elderly ci-devant music teacher. 
 
 But how could Isaura, how can any one of common 
 Immanity, say to a woman resolved upon wearing a certa'n 
 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 seat(;d herself submissively, and began to 
 cry. 
 
 On this Isaura sprang up, wound her anns around the 
 Signora's neck, soothed her with coaxing, kissed and petted 
 her, and ended by saying, " Of course wc will go ;" and, " but
 
 THE PARISIANS. 93 
 
 let me choose 3'ou 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 J/art'/'^," 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'» salon. On this occasion Madame Gandrin did not 
 appear. Her husband was accustomed to gwt diners d' homfnes. 
 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 favor, and he is certainly flattered by being per- 
 mitted to make your personal acquainlance." 
 
 The avoue had scarcely finished this speech, when M, 
 Louvier was announced. He entered with a beaming smile, 
 which did not detract from his imposing presence. His flat- 
 terers 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 elabor- 
 ately 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 liis 
 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 ac- 
 quaintance, Marquis — still more charmed if you will let me be
 
 fj4 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 useful during your sejoiir ar Paris. Mafoi^ excuse my blunt- 
 ness, but you are 2ifori beau gar con. 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 ik 
 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 re- 
 nunciation 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 a precious vintage. 
 That vin de luadere which accompanied the potage a la bisqm 
 would have contented an American. And how radiant became 
 Louvier's face when among the entrees he came upon laitances 
 decarpes! "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 i* — blanc 
 depoulet — flavorless trash. After all, Gandrin, when we lose 
 the love-letters, it is some consolation that laitances de carpes 
 ^nd 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 declin- 
 ing 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 noth- 
 ing for nothing, dear man ! Droll people the English. You 
 have never visited England, I presume, cher Rochebriant ? " 
 
 The alTable financier had already made vast progress in 
 familiarity with his silent fellow-s;uest. 
 
 ^^1^en the dinner was over and the three men had re-entered 
 \hii 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 jxitting the Mar-
 
 THE PARTS/A XS. 
 
 !»5 
 
 quis on the shoulder, said, with what the French call effusion^ 
 "My dear Rochebriant, your father and I did not quite under- 
 stand each other, lie took a tone of grand seigneur that some 
 times wounded me ; and 1 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 ofTence when none is meant. We two, my 
 dear boy, should be superior to such national foibles. BreJ 
 — 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 iheir career any little obstacle in its 
 way. Gandrin tells me you wish to consolidate all the charges 
 on your estate into one on lower rate of interest. Is it so ,'' " 
 
 " 1 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 re- 
 spects — as doulitless 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 fuiancier 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 the young man 
 was no muscadin i Jifuscadin — aristocrat — offensive from top 
 
 to toe." 
 
 " You amaze me, you seemed to take to him so cordia!!y." 
 •' And pray were you too blind to remark with what cold re- 
 serve he responded to my condescensions i* — how he winced 
 when I called him Rochebriant ? how he colored when I called 
 him ' dear boy ' "i These aristocrats think we ought to thank
 
 o6 TflE PARISIANS. 
 
 them on our knees when the)^ take our money and ," here Lou- 
 vier's face darkened, " seduce our women." 
 
 " Monsieur Louvier, in all France I do not know a greater 
 aristocrat than yourself." 
 
 1 don't know whether M. Gandrin meant that speech as a 
 compliment, but M. Louvier took it as such, laughed com- 
 placently and rubbed his hands. " Ay, ay, millionaires 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 ; 1 would not shock so pure a Legitimist by 
 contact with Uie 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 haui ton, who will play into my hands 
 by leaching him how to ruin himself in the quickest manner 
 and in the genre Louis XV. 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 mel- 
 ancholy 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 
 monte, for the absence of a presiding lady ; very much the 
 contrary ; it was noticeable how much he had increased his 
 Btatus 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 tri- 
 umphal 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 cdat. He might not have attained this
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 97 
 
 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 ? 
 \ery 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 re.vived, but his wife sadly in- 
 terfered 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 au- 
 thors and artists ; and by the ladies of the beau monde was 
 pronounced connnon 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 u l- 
 vantages of wealth which he especially coveted. He was em- 
 inently 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 noble- 
 ness 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 effected 
 the patriot. But each of those pictures was a gem ; such Wat- 
 teaus ! such Greuzes ! such landscapes by Patel ! and, above 
 all, such masterpieces by Ingres, Horace Verdet, and Dela- 
 roche, were worth all the doubtful originals of Flemish and 
 Italian art which make the ordinary boast of private collections. 
 
 These pictures occupied two rooms of modern size, built 
 for their reception and lighted from abov^e. 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 ex- 
 quisite designs of the renaissance were car\'ed in ebony ; colos- 
 sal vases of Russian malachite, bur. wrought by French artists
 
 gg THE PARISJAAS, 
 
 The very lucknacks scattered carelessly about the room might 
 have been admired in the cabinets of the Palazzo Pitti. Be- 
 yond 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 din- 
 ing-room, on the same Hoor, 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 spec- 
 imens of Sevres and Limoges, and medieval varieties of 
 Venetian glass. On the ground-floor, which opened on the 
 lawn of a large garden, Louvier had his suite of private apart- 
 ments, furnished, as he said, " simply, according to English 
 notions of comfort." Englishmen would have said " according 
 to French notions of luxur)\" Enough of these details, which 
 a writer cannot give without feeling himself somewhat vulgar- 
 ized 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, 
 
 I'he evidence of wealth was everyAvhere 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 palatial 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 splendor 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 
 truolorto 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 Mon- 
 sieur Vane ? " asked a Frenchman with a handsome intelligent 
 countenance, very carefully dressed, though in a somewhat by-
 
 THE PARISIANS. gg 
 
 gone fashion, and carrying off his tenth lustrum with an air 
 too sprightly to evince any sense of the weight. 
 
 This gentleman, the Vicomte de Brdzd, was of good birth, 
 and had a legitimate right to his title of Vicomre, 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 embel- 
 lished?" 
 
 " 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 fright- 
 fully the way lengthens before one's eyes ! In the twists and 
 curves of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain of see- 
 ing 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 I 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 bay- 
 onets and muskets. This maiidit 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 honor 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 \\)&nfete as one of the most prom- 
 ising writers among the young men of the day, especially 
 favored by the princes of the reigning family. I shall never 
 forget the impression made on me by your brilliant appearance 
 ancl your no less brilliant talk."
 
 loo THE PARISIANS. 
 
 '^ Ah ! CCS beaux Jours ! ce bon Louis Philippe^ ce cher petit 
 £oinviUe I " sighed the Vicomte. 
 
 " But at that day you compared /<? bon Louis Philippe to 
 Robert Macaire. You described all his sons, including, no 
 douljt, ce chcr petit Joinville, in terms of resentful contempt 
 as so many plausible gamins whom Robert Macaire was train 
 '\ng 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 honors, than that of the Orleans dynasty ; you, 
 M. de Breze, do but imitate your elders in seeking to destroy 
 the dynasty under which you flourish ; should you succeed, 
 you homines deplume will be the first sufferers and the loudest 
 complainers.'" 
 
 '' Cher Monsieur Vane" said the Vicomte, smiling com- 
 placently, " your father did me great honor 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 Sa^-arin, who, being an Orleanist, had listened 
 to Graham's speech with an approving smile — " and if I re- 
 member right, my dear De Bre'ze', no one was more brilliantly 
 severe than yourself on poor De Lamartine and the Republic 
 that succeeded Louis Philippe ; no one more emphatically ex- 
 pressed 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 Brdze, 
 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 favor- 
 able type of their political character." 
 
 " Ah^ nuvi cher, vous etes trap 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 de- 
 vise, it would not be two years — I doubt if it would be six 
 months — before out of this Paris, which you call the Foyer 
 dcs Idees, would emerge a powerful party, adorned by yourself 
 and other //^wwd'i" deplume, in favor of a revolution for the 
 benefit of ce bon Satan and ce cher petit Beelzebub."
 
 THE PARISIANS. loi 
 
 '*What a pretty vein of satire you have, tnon cher 1^'' said the 
 Vicomte, good-humoredly ; " 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 ren 
 contrent. The fault of us French is impatience — desire of change ; 
 but then it is that desire which keeps the world going and re> 
 tains 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, who had remained beside 
 De Breze listening in silent attention to this colloquy, inter- 
 posed, speaking in the slow voice of one accustomed to measure 
 his words, and with a slight but unmistakable German accent — 
 " There is that, M. de Bre'ze, 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 has made a prodi- 
 gious advance wherever it has allowed room for capitalists and 
 escaped from the curse of petty allotments and peasant-pro- 
 prietors — a curse which would have ruined any country less 
 blessed by Nature ; turbulent factions have been quelled ; in- 
 ternal 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 a7nour-propre ; and her 
 advance in civilization has been manifested by the rapid crea- 
 tion 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 .wo 
 causes 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 them- 
 selves, as it were, in one individual. They cannot comprehend
 
 ,32 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 prefect 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 igno- 
 rance of its normal revolutionary bias, the rural peasants are in- 
 doctrinated with the conservatism that comes from the fear which 
 appertains to property. They have their roods 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 imbedded 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. P^ach 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 
 th- 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 man 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 iatellect in every department. He has rallied round him 
 ■ not one great statesman ; his praises are hymned by not one 
 great poet. The celchritcs of a former days stand aloof, or, 
 preferring exile to constrained allegiance, assail him with un- 
 remitting missiles from their asylum in foreign shores. His 
 reign is sterile of new celebrites. The few that arise enlist them- 
 selves against him. Whenever he shall venture to give full
 
 THE PARISIANS, 103 
 
 freedom to the press and to the legislature, the intellect thus 
 suppresed 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 w'ithout definite object. The directors of 
 emancipated opinion may thus be terrible enemies to the Im- 
 perial Government, but they will be very unsafe counsellors 
 to France. Concurrently with this divorce between the Im- 
 perial system and the national intellect — a divorce so complete 
 that even yowx salons have lost their wit, and even your caricatures 
 their point — a corruption of manners which the Empire, I own, 
 did not orginate, but inherit, has become so common that 
 every one owns and nobody blames it. The gorgeous ostentation 
 of the Court has perv'erted the habits of the people. The intelli- 
 gence obstructed 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 favorite 
 who profits by a job ; and I fear you will find that jobbing per- 
 vades all your administrative departrrients." 
 
 " All very true," said De Breze, with a shrug of the shoul- 
 ders and in a tone of levity that seemed to ridicule the asser- 
 tion he volunteered ; " Virtue and Honor, banished from courts 
 and salons and the cabinets of authors, ascend to fairer heights 
 in the attics of ouvriers.'^ 
 
 "The ouvriers, ouvriers of Paris ! " cried this terrible Ger- 
 man. 
 
 " Ay, Monsieur le Comte : what can you say against our 
 ouvriers 1 A German count cannot condescend to learn any- 
 thing about ces petit gens r 
 
 "Monsieur," replied the German, "in the eyes of a states- 
 man there are no petit gens, and in those of a philosopher no 
 petit 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 ani 
 mate 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, indepen-
 
 f04 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 dent of the natural laws that regulate the markets of labor. Ac 
 customed ihus to consider the State bound to maintain them, 
 the moment the State fails that impossible task they will ac- 
 commodate 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, c'est le voP ? 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 ac- 
 knowledged to be dangerous in the United States of America ; 
 ihey are, I am told on good authority, making themselves visi- 
 ble 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 in- 
 sure 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 of a mass of crumbled 
 powder." 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte," said the Vicomte, " 3-ou 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 bet'ise. As 
 to Germany being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a 
 saving of Goethe's — but has M. le Comte 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, M. le Comte ! Gennans transfonned the world ! 
 What revolutions do you speak of .-* "
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 
 
 105 
 
 "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 intro- 
 duce him to Vane, which De Bre'zt^ 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 authori- 
 tative among German thinkers. This compliment to his tie- 
 ceased father immensely gratified, but at the same time con- 
 siderably 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 Eng- 
 lish, 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 ad- 
 mired him. At the present day we don't so much care to study 
 English speeches. They may be insular, — ^they are not Euro- 
 pean. I honor England ; Heaven grant tli^at 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 Ger- 
 man count. Que voulez-vous de plus ? "
 
 ,o5 'I'Hl^ PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A LITTLE later Graham found himself alone among 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 recogTiized no familiar counte- 
 nance. A lady was playing the piano-forte — playing remark- 
 ably 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 per- 
 formance, the glance he directed towards her would have suf- 
 ficed 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 an- 
 tagonistic 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 
 reverie. 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 per- 
 suade your charming young countrywoman to gratify us even with 
 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 sar- 
 casm in the words it was lost in the softness of pathos, answered 
 " Nay, M. Louvier, he rather overtasks the words at my com- 
 mand in thankfulness to those who, like yourself, so kindly re« 
 gard me as something else than a singer."
 
 THE PARISIAKS. 107 
 
 It was not the mountebank who thus spoke. Graham 
 rose and looked around 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 coun- 
 tenance of the young lady in the pearl-colored robe. Graham 
 did not hear Louvier's reply though no doubt it was loud 
 enough for him to hear. He sank into a reverie. Other 
 guests now came into the room, among them Frank Morley, 
 styled Colonel (eminent military titles in the 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 deportment and grave in speech, but by no 
 means without a vein of dry humor. By the French he was 
 esteemed a high bred specimen of the kind of grand seigneur 
 which domestic 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 in- 
 troduced " sir" with redundant ceremony when addressing En- 
 glishmen, 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 gentle- 
 man by every P^nglishman 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 immediately 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 be- 
 tween persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of 
 changing its honest character into morbid sentimentality or un-
 
 Io8 THE PARISfA.yS. 
 
 lawful passion. The Morleys stopped to accost Graham, bu*; 
 the lady had scarcely said three words to him, before catching 
 sight of the haunting face, she daited towards it. Her hus- 
 band, less emotional, bowed at the distance, and said, "To my 
 taste, sir, the Signorina Cicogna is the loveliest girl in the present 
 bee* ancl full of mmd, sir." 
 
 " Singing mind," said Graham, sarcastically, and in the ill 
 natured impulse of a man striving to check his inclination to 
 admire. 
 
 " 1 have not heard her sing," replied the American, dryly; 
 " and the words ' singing mind' are doubtless accurately Eng- 
 lish, since you employ them, but at l^oston 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 be- 
 fore 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. 
 
 * A common expression in " the West " for a meeting or gathering ot 
 poople.
 
 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 109 
 
 " 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 straight- 
 forward 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 man- 
 ner : 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 ran-ely 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 opiniona." 
 
 " I scarcely know what her opinions are, bu t 
 
 " Yes— but .? " 
 
 " There is a — what shall I call it ? — a persuasion — a senti- 
 ment — out of which the opinions probably spring that I do 
 share." 
 
 " Indeed 1 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 modem
 
 ,io THE TAKISIANS. 
 
 civilization has been to raise women more and more to an in- 
 tellectual 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 develop- 
 ment 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 re- 
 proach to be talked of, that women are plants to be kept in a 
 hot-house and forbidden the frank liberty of growth in the 
 natural air and sunshine of heaven ? This at least, is a senti- 
 ment 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 
 these 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 1 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 for- 
 getting the object for which Mrs. Morley had introduced them 
 to each other, they had mechanically 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 ac- 
 quaintance so new. But in truth Isaura was very little con- 
 scious 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 compre- 
 hend }our sentiment much better than I do Mrs. Morley's 
 opinions; but permit me one observation. You say, truly, 
 that the course ot modern civilization has more or less affected 
 the relative position of woman cultivated beyond that level on
 
 THE PARISIANS. xtl 
 
 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 com- 
 pose 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, writh- 
 Ings and struggles against the received order of things ? In 
 this sentiment of discontent here is a certain truthfulness, be- 
 cause 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 im- 
 proved because they may be defaced. Ascend from the work- 
 ing-classes to all others in which civilized culture prevails, and 
 you will find that same restless feeling — the fluttering of un- 
 tried wings against the bar between wider space and their 
 lodgings. 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, 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 absorb- 
 ing 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 conven- 
 tional shackles on your sex. Are they not equally common to 
 the youth of ours ? — common to all who seek in art, in letters, 
 t:ay, in the stormier field of active life, to clasp as a reality 
 some image yet seen but as a dream ? "
 
 1,2 THE rAKISJANS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 No further conversation in the way of sustained dialogue 
 took place that evening between Graham and Isaura. 
 
 The Americans and Savarians ckistered around Isaura 
 7\'hen they quitted the refreshrr.ent-room. The party was break- 
 ing up. Vane would have ofifered 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 connois- 
 seur, and the Frenchwoman accepting the safeguard of the 
 Vicomte de Br^zd. 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 sterotyped answer to all such ques- 
 tions, 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 ex])ressions than its 
 grandmamma ; but I am rather at a loss to know by what 
 novelty of phrase an American would ha\'e answered your ques- 
 tion." 
 
 "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 im 
 pression 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 ex- 
 ])ected 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 arc in the shawl-room. I must take an-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 113 
 
 Other opportunity of attacking you. Pray dine with us to-mor- 
 row ; you will meet our Minister and a few othe-^ 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 daresay — selfish mon- 
 ster ! Go and hand her to her carriage — quick, it is an 
 nounced ! " 
 
 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 parte cochere — " I am afraid that I did not 
 make a good effect to-night. I was nervous ; did not you per- 
 ceive it ?" 
 
 " No, indeed ; you enchanted us all," replied the dissimu- 
 lator. ''. 
 
 " 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 w'ine, 
 and an old woman lives all the longer for too much praise — 
 hiiona 7iottc." 
 
 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, " Ma- 
 dame 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 
 "io-morrow .-' You will meet a select few of my coiifreres^ 
 
 " 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 dis- 
 tinction." 
 
 " Such compliments reconcile an author to his trade. You 
 deserve the best return I can make you. Vou will meet la helh 
 Isaura. I have just engaged her and her chaperon. She is a 
 girl of true genius ; and genius is like those objects of vertu 
 which belong to a former age, and become every day more scarce 
 and more precious." 
 
 Here they encountered Colonel Morley and his wife hurry- 
 ing to their carriage. The American stopped Vane, and whis-
 
 ^,^ THK PARISIANS. 
 
 pered, " I am glnd, sir, to hear from my wife (hat you dine with 
 us to-morrow. Sir, you will meet Mademoiselle Cicogua, and 
 I am not without a kinkle* 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 confliciing 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 1 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 colored by that which seems to us the 
 most trivial accident, the merest chance ! Suppose that Alain 
 de Rochebriant had been invited to i\\dX reunion at M. Louvier's 
 and Graham Vane had accepted some other invitation and 
 passed the 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 fascina- 
 ting romance. 
 
 However, the history of events that do not come to pass is 
 not in the chronicle of the Fates. 
 
 • A notion.
 
 THE PAKISIANS. , j ^ 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The next day the guests at the Morley's 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 the character of the En- 
 glish is always to be a little behindhand." 
 
 s^She then proceeded to introduce him to the American 
 Minister, to a distinguished American poet, with a countenance 
 striking for its 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 colored, and turning to Graham, asked him in a low 
 voice if he were fond of music. 
 
 *' 1 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
 
 , , 6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 verv deeply; in other moods, not at all. And I cannot bear 
 much at a' lime, 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 ad- 
 mitted 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 ? " 
 
 " Oil the contrary — I sometimes doubt, especially of late, if 
 I am fond of music myself." 
 
 " Signorina — pardon m-e — 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 sad- 
 ness. 
 
 Graham was touched and startled ; but before he could an- 
 swer, 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 w-as struck by 
 what seemed to her a nobleness of sentiment which elevated 
 liis theme above the level of commonplace polemics. She was 
 ]ileased to notice, in the attentive silence of his intelligent 
 listeners, that they shared the effect prochiced 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 became unconsciously adorned. In such mo- 
 ments 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; 
 ati ' I fliink, too, that I now understand v.hat eifocts the human
 
 THE PARISIANS. 1x7 
 
 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 compU- 
 ment, and, above all, do not disparage your own art by suppos- 
 ing that any prose effect of voice in its utterance of mind can 
 interpret that which music alone can express, even to listeners 
 so uncultivated 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 untrans- 
 latable 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 conc<ialed 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 tliajr I 
 did till this moment ! " 
 
 Here Mrs. Morley, joined by the American poet, came to
 
 ,i8 THE TAKISTANS. 
 
 the corner in which the Englishman and the singer had niclied 
 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 wo- 
 man's voice that is sweetest at home." 
 
 Graham bowed, and said he would call on the morrow. 
 
 Isaura mused in silent delight over the w-ords 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 tntelledual con- 
 science^ which impelled him to acknowledge the benignant influ 
 ences of song, and to set before the young singer the noblest 
 incentives to the profession to which he deemed her assuredl) 
 destined. But in so doing he must have felt that he was wid- 
 ening 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 overleaped. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 On the morrow Graham called at the villa at A . The 
 
 two ladies received him in Isaura's chosen sittintr-room. 
 
 Somehow or other, conversation at first languished. Gra- 
 ham was teserved and distant, Isaura shy and embarrassed. 
 
 The Venosta had \\\^frais of making talk to herself. Prob- 
 ably at another time Graham would have been amused and in- 
 terested in the observation of a character new to him, and thor- 
 oughly southern — lovable not more from its 7iaive 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 mofuie, she had
 
 THE PARISIANS. iig 
 
 that indescribable grace which rarely deserts a Florentine, so 
 that you might call her odd, but not vulgar ; while, though un- 
 educated, 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 
 humor, lighting up terse fragments of the old Italian wisdom 
 which had mysteriously imbedded themselves in the ground- 
 work 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 anx- 
 iety and compassionate tenderness, at a companionship which 
 seemed to him derogatory to the position he would have as- 
 signed to a creature so gifted, and unsafe as a guide amidst the 
 perils and trials to which the youth, the beauty, and the des- 
 tined profession of Isaura were exposed. Like most English- 
 men — 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 pro- 
 prieties and conventions the Venosta naturally appeared to him 
 a very unsatisfactory guardian and representative. 
 
 Happily unconscious of those 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 a77tour-proprt 
 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 a-eme de marascliino 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 del ! Paris was pleasant, but how ab- 
 surd to call it " le Paradis des Femmes " — as if les Fcmmes could 
 find Paradise in a brouillard I 
 
 " But," she exclaimed, with vivacity of voice and gesticula- 
 tion, " 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 con-
 
 ,,o THE PARISIANS. 
 
 versation I cannot well conceive. However, the metaphoT 
 aj^art, 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 honest- 
 ly 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 accom- 
 paniment. 
 
 " 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 morved 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 spellbound : in it- 
 self, 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 Ve- 
 rona. 
 
 When her voice died away, no applause came — not even a 
 murmur. Fsaura 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. i _. i 
 
 averted face. Then, after a short pause, he approached Isaura, 
 and said, with a melancholy half-smile — 
 
 " I do not think, Mademoiselle, that 1 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 nmst journey cannot indulge frequent excursions into fairy- 
 land." 
 
 " 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 thoroughfare — 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 con- 
 sciousness 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 ex- 
 clusively the stony one ? It is not from necessity — it cannot 
 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 fairy-land 
 — I said that I could not do so often. My vocation is not that 
 of a poet or artist." 
 
 )>
 
 122 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 "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 English- 
 man who wishes to influence his countrj-men by force of words 
 spoken must mix with them in their beaten thoroughfare — must 
 make himself master of their practical views and interests — 
 must be conversant with their prosaic occupation 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 
 orator}' in France, and which has helped to make the French 
 the worst politicians in Europe. Also, 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 } " 
 
 "'i'o 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 vv'hat 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. I3ut the unfinished exclamation, " Were it 
 not," troubled her more than the preceding words had flat- 
 tered — 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."
 
 THE PARISTAh^S. 123 
 
 " 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 
 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 child- 
 like frankness, and said softly, " I am not offended." Graham 
 did not trust himself to continue the same strain of conversa- 
 tion. Breaking into a new subject, he said, after a constrained 
 pause, "Will you think it very impertinent in so new an ac- 
 quaintance 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'. 
 
 Graham did not feel unmixed pleasure at that thought: 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 
 reverie, but she felt a strange and new sort of happiness. In 
 dressing for M. Savarin's dinner, and twining the classic ivy 
 wreath into her dark locks, her Italian servant exclaimed, 
 " How beautiful the Signorina looks to-night 1"
 
 , _, ^ THE PA R IS JANS. 
 
 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 pro- 
 duced 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 pretense. 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. I'lace 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
 
 TlfR FAKISJANS. 125 
 
 ihe feet of M. Thiers, and went into the historico-polilical line. 
 She had written a remarkable book upon the modern Carthage 
 (meaning England), and more recently a work that had ex- 
 cited 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 margravate. 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 among our guests let me place the 
 Count de Passy and Madame son epoiise : 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 under- 
 stand ? Let me try by analogy. Suppose a man of great birth 
 and fortune, who in his youth has 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 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 — ca- 
 prices belonging to the splendid ignorance of their nation in 
 general, and their order in particular. Speaking without re- 
 gard to partial exceptions, the Yr&nch. gentilhomme is essentially 
 a Parisian ; a Parisian is essentially impressionable to the 
 impulse or fashion of the moment. It is 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 enthu' 
 siastic 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 
 
 fc>
 
 ,20 rilE PARISIANS. 
 
 German Coiirt 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 ihe 
 Republic. The fashion of the inoment suddenly became 
 Napoleonic, and with the coup d'etat the Republic was meta- 
 morphosed into an Empire. The Count wept on the bosoms 
 of all the Vicilles 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 tiie fair sex. 
 When he had reached the age of sixty-eight he was still fori 
 bel honnne — unmarried, with a grand presence and charming 
 manner. At that age he said, " ye 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, whom Vane had met at M. Louvier's, a 
 c6lebrated 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 
 Giistave 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 Alphouse de Valcour, 
 was about twenty-four, and might have passed at the first glance 
 for younger; but, looking at him closely, tlie 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 re- 
 deemed 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 features were very 
 regular, his eyes singularly bright ; but the expression of the 
 face spoke of fatigue and exhaustion — the sificy .ocks were 
 already thin, and interspersed with threads of silver — the bright 
 eyes shone out from sunken orbits — the lines round the mouth
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 127 
 
 were marked as they are in the middle age of cTie who has 
 lived too fast. 
 
 It was a countenance that might have excited a compas- 
 sionate 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 cuuld 
 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 American's 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-dits 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 outshone 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 
 Tvot unmingled with scorn, that the author's talk appeared to 
 mterest Isaura. She listened with evident attention ; and when 
 she spoke in return, though Graharft did not hear her words, he 
 could observe on her expressive countenance an inci eased 
 gentleness of aspect, 
 
 " I hope," said the physician, joining Graham, as most of 
 the other guests gathered around Savarin, who was iii his live- 
 liest 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.
 
 ,28 THE PAKISIANS. 
 
 " Probably enough. He has the reputation of being verj- 
 clever and vcr}- wicked, and that is a sort of character which 
 has the serpent's fascination for the daughter 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 ' Vox et pr(Bterea nihir — no man really in 
 love would use them. He writes prose about the wrongs of hu- 
 manity. 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 verses and prose Gustave 
 Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste of the day, and there- 
 fore 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, Mons. 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 Frenchman. To the predilection for absinthe young Rameau 
 and the writers of his set add the imitation of Heine, after, in- 
 deed, the manner of caricaturists, who effect a likeness strik- 
 ing in proportion as it is ugl^'. It is not easy to imitate the 
 pathos and the wit of Heine but it is easy to imitate his defi- 
 ance of the Deity, his mockery of right and wrong, his relent.ess 
 war on that heroic standard of thought and action which the 
 writers who exalt their nation intuitively preserve. Rameau can- 
 not be a Heine, but he can be to Heine what a misshapen snarl- 
 ing dwarf is to a mangled blaspheming Titan. Yet he interests 
 the women in general, and he evidently interests the fair Sig- 
 norina In especial."
 
 THE PARTSTANS. 129 
 
 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 candor which made 
 half the charm of their bright 3-et soft intelligence. But she 
 dropped them suddenly with a half-start and a change of color, 
 for the expression of Graham's face was unlike that which she 
 had hitlierto seen on it — it was hard, stern, somewhat disdain- 
 ful. 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 "i " 
 
 Her question and her movement were evidently in concilia- 
 tion. Was the conciliation prompted by coquetry, or by a sen- 
 timent 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 ' Gerusalemme,'" The 
 last words were said in Italian, with a low measured tone, in- 
 wardly and dreamily. 
 
 A somewhat sharp and incisive voice speaking in French 
 here struck in and prevented Graham's rejoinder : " Quel Jolt 
 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 ques- 
 tion from a professed homme de lettres, " Eleonora did not live 
 at Sorrento." 
 
 '■'' I'ant pis pour Sorrente,^'' said the homme de lettres, care
 
 i-^O ^^^-^ FARISIAA'S. 
 
 lessly. " 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 Englishinan superciliously. 
 " Pardon, Alonsieiir — in every age a love-story keeps its ."n- 
 teresl ; but who cares nowadays for le cliquant du Tasse ? " 
 
 " Le cliquant du Tasse / " exclaimed Isaura, indignantly. 
 
 " The expression is Boileau's, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of 
 the * Sot de qualite,^ who prefers 
 
 ' Le clinquant du Tasse h tout For de Virgile, ' 
 
 But for my part I have as httle 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 con- 
 strue it as a compliment. A Frenchman who is contented to 
 study the masterpieces of modern literature need learn no Ian 
 guage 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 contempuoiisly of what we are accus- 
 tomed 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 (.larkened ; he turned away in silence and in 
 another minute vanished from the room, persuading himself 
 that he fell not one pang of jealousy in leaving Gustave Rameau
 
 THE PARISIANS. 13 1 
 
 by the side of Isaura. " Her dearest friend Madame de Grant 
 mesnil ! " 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 George Sand. 
 
 At least as fearless as that great novelist in the frank expo- 
 sition 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 deli 
 cate subject than the English Milton has said : but then Mil- 
 ton did not write for a Roman Catholic community, nor adopt 
 a style likely to attract 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 alwa3's 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, 
 2iXQ.Jctee. 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 in*
 
 J 32 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 tellect, adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to tlie 
 orphan's friendless side, breathing love once more into her 
 ])ining 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 considei 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. Eouvier assembled round his table the elite of the young 
 i*arisians 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 oi 
 the faubourg ; those who did not, belonged to no political 
 ])arty at alj, — 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 
 Kochebriani 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 coidial warmth with which his cousins greeted him. 
 
 Tiiese young men had a striking family likeness to each 
 other, and yet in feature, coloring, 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 slunilder to indicate no inconsiderable 
 strengtii of frame. His hair worn short, and his silky beard 
 worn long, were dark, so were his eyes, shaded by curved
 
 THE PARrsrAsrs. T^3 
 
 drooping lashes ; his complexion was pale, but clear and healtli- 
 ful. In repose the. expression of his face was that of a some- 
 what melancholy indolence, but in speaking it became singu- 
 larly 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 moustache 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 o/ 
 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 pro- 
 portioned, 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, 
 OH the contrar)', was not without pretension in his attire : the 
 broderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by tli^e Queen of the 
 Fairies. His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and wrist- 
 buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double the rent- 
 al of Rochebraint, but probably they cost him nothing. He 
 was one of those happy Lotharios to whom Calistas make con- 
 stant 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 \i^- 
 C2imQ egalite, fraterniie towards one of their caste and kindred. 
 
 " We must do our best to make Paris pleasant to you," 
 said Raoul, still *retainmg 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 .? "
 
 ,34 THE PARISIAiVS. 
 
 " Our falher," answered Raoul, " was not so savage as to 
 conceal that fact, but he said )ou were onl}' here on business 
 for a day or two, had declined his invitation, and would not 
 give your address. Pauvre pere ! \sq. scolded him well for let- 
 ting 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 name 
 were unknown to the Provinicial : not a word was said that 
 showed the smallest interest in politics or the slightest acquain- 
 tance 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 socii:ty ; 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 lan- 
 guage the most refined. The Jockey Club of Paris has its per- 
 fume. 
 
 Raoul did not mix in the general conversati.on ; 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 a 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 dinentree, 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 Ly an alli- 
 ance in the fourteenth century: the Russian prince had known
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 135 
 
 the late Marquis, and " trusted that the son would allow him to 
 improve into friendshijD 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 
 spend at least an hour or two every evening. I am at home 
 there. Bah ! I take no refusal. Do not supose 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 faid 
 to the utmost. It is that of the Contessa di Rimini — a charm- 
 ing Italian by marriage, but by birth and in character French 
 — -jusqii' mi bout des ongles. 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 with- 
 in 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 com- 
 mon, and seeing it only held two, he drew back. 
 
 " Nay, enter, moncher," 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 caniage, 
 "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 life- 
 long 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 st'll more eagerly long to know
 
 12(5 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 nie 
 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 
 woild 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 prevalent tints were rose-color and white ; but the ornaments 
 on the mantelpiece, the china stored in the cabinets or arranged 
 on the shelves, the small nicknacks 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 exquis- 
 itely pretty. " There is." said a great French writer, " only one 
 way in which a woman can be handsome, but a hundred thou- 
 sand ways in which she can be pretty; " and it would be im- 
 possible to reckon upon 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 -m- 
 mistakably 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."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 137 
 
 She was not alone ; an elderly lady sat in an arm-chair 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, 
 respresentirig its eldest branch : welcome him for my sake — iii 
 future he will be welcome for his own." 
 
 The Contessa replied very graciously to this introiuctiou, 
 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 bonfe, and consulted for savoirvivre by the 
 young cavaliers whom she deigns to receive. Alam, 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 endeavor 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 
 you cousin frighten you from knowing me, M. 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 improvenent of the brute creation. Ask the 
 Contessa if I have not achieved a beau success with her Angoia 
 cat. Three months ago that creature had the two worst pro- 
 pensities of man. lie 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 con- 
 science, and, that done, the conscience regulates his actions : once 
 make 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 labor, one does awaken conscience in a 
 human sinner, it has no steady effect on his conduct — he con 
 tinues to sin all the same. Mankind xX Paris Monsieur le
 
 138 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Marquis is divided between two classes — one bites and the other 
 steals : shun both ; devote yourself to cats." 
 
 I'he Abbe delivered his 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 \vas_a 
 jjeneral expression of quiet benevolence, which made Alain 
 incline to the belief that he was only speaking as a pleasant 
 humorist ; and the Marquis replied gayly — 
 
 " Monsieur 1' Abbe, admitting the superior virtue of cats, 
 when taught by so intelligent a preceptor, sull the bus ness 
 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 t " 
 
 This sally, which showed that the Marqui: was already 
 shaking off his provincial reserve, met with great success. 
 
 Raoul and the contessa laughed merrily ; Madame de 
 Maurv 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, M. 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, fiftv francs, and Madame de Maury, five. 
 
 " Allow rne, Marquis," said the Abbe, "to steal from you ; 
 bless you twofold, mon fils !'' (taking the napoleon Alain ex- 
 tended to him) — " first, for charity — secondly, for the effect of 
 its example upon the heart of your cousin. Raoul de Vande- 
 mar, stand and deli\'er. Bah ! — what ! only ten francs ! " 
 
 Raoul made a sign to the Abbe', unperceived by the rest, as 
 he answered, " Abb^, I should excel your expectations of my 
 career if I always continue worth half as much as my cousin." 
 
 Alain fell 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 difficuli 
 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
 
 THE rAKTSTAA\^. 139 
 
 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 invita^ 
 tion 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. ".<4« revoir\ to- 
 morrow at one o' clock expect Enguerrand and myself." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Raoul 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 visit- 
 ing the poor, and this is their day ; but to-morrow you must dine 
 with us efifamille. Now to business. Allow me to light my eigar 
 while you confide the whole state of affairs to Enguerrand : what- 
 ever he counsels, I am sure to approve." 
 
 Alain, as briefly as he could, stated his circumstances, his 
 mortgages, and the hopes which his avoue\iz.6. 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 inter- 
 ference : and, to say truth, I have had much familiar inter- 
 course 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 tum- 
 bler : one can never be sure whether it will stand on its head or
 
 I40 'J'lfl-- PARISlAXr,. 
 
 its feet. Louvier very wisely wishes liimself safe whatever 
 party comes uppermost. He has no faith in the duration of 
 the Kinpire ; 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 ban Dieu, because the devil is spite- 
 ful 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 con- 
 ciliatory 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 in- 
 fluence over that sphere of o]Mnion which belongs to fashion for 
 fashion is ever 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 Maule'on, 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 avotie ; and with your leave 1 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." 
 
 " f,' ^°.°' gfatefuUy grant such an ambassador all powers to 
 treat," said Alain. " I am only ashametl to consign to him a 
 post so much beneath his genius,"—" and his birth," he was 
 about to add, but wisely checked himself. 
 
 Enguerrand shrugged his shoulders. " You can't do me a 
 greater kindness than by setting my wits at work. I fall a 
 martyr to en/iui, when I am not in action," he said, and was 
 gone. 
 
 " It makes me very melancholy at times," said Raoul, fling- 
 mg 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 PARISIANS. 141 
 
 the service of his county as if he were an Iroquois Indian, 
 He would have made a g;reat 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 al 
 present on the score of honor. 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 gentils-hommes. 
 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 sub- 
 stitutes 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 clay — you have chil- 
 dren, and Rochebriant must then be sold to pay for their 
 separate portions. How this condition of things, while render- 
 ing us so inefiiective to perform the normal functions of a 
 noblesse in public life, affects us in private life, may be easily 
 conceiv'ed. 
 
 " Condemned to a career of pleasure and frivolity, we can 
 scarcely escape from the contagion of extravagent luxury which 
 forms the vice of the time. With grand names to keep up, and 
 small fortunes whereon to keep them, we readily incur embar- 
 rassment and debt. Then neediness conquers pride. We<'an- 
 not be great merchants, but we can be small gamblers ot the 
 Bourse, or, thanks to the Credit Molnlier, imitate a cai met 
 minister and keep a shop under another name. Perhaps you 
 have heard that Enguerrand and I keep a shop. Pray buy 
 yours gloves there Strange fate for men whose ancestors 
 fought in the first Crusade niais que voukz-vous ?"
 
 ,^2 THE PARISIAA'S. 
 
 " 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 
 this 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 ; 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, 
 * 'I"he 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 ■Abonne who had nurs- 
 ed us in childliood and married a journeyman perfumer who 
 understands the business. It answers well : we are not in debt, 
 and we have preserved out freedom." 
 
 After these confessions Raoul went away, and Alain fell in- 
 to a mournful reverie, 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 him- 
 .self on a chair, he took some minutes to recover speech, rolling 
 his eyes staringly around the meagre, unluxurious room, and 
 then concentrating their gaze upon its occupier. 
 
 " resie, my dear Marquis !" he said at last, " I hope the next 
 time I \isit 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, M. Louvier : the 
 castle of Rochebriant is not on a level with the town." 
 
 An angry gleam shot from the eyes of the millionaire, but 
 there was no other sign of anger 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 jour cousin 
 Enguerrand de Vandemar. Homme demoyeiis, thoughj'o/tgafron. 
 He proposed that you should call on me. I said 'no' to the 
 chcr petit Enguerrand — a visit from me was due to you. To cut 
 maiiexs short, M. Gandrin has allowed me to look at your
 
 THE PARISIANS. 143 
 
 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 one thousand pounds ayearinsteadof four hundred. Louvier 
 proposed to take on himself the legal cost of transfer, and to 
 pay to the Marquis twenty-five thousand francs on the comple- 
 tion of the deed as a bonus. The mortgage did not exemjDt 
 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 aftiuence. 
 
 " Well, Marquis," said Louvier, " what does the castle say to 
 the town ?" 
 
 " M. Louvier," answered Alain, extending his hand with cor- 
 dial eagerness, "accept my sincere apologies for the indiscre- 
 tion 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 ; " 1 will take the paper to Gandrin and instruct him 
 accordingly. And now may I attach a condition to the agree- 
 ment which is not put down on paper ? It may have surprised 
 you perhaps that I should propose a gratuity of twenty-five 
 thousand 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 tlgure, 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 
 at the capital, and live, not extravagantly, like a 7iouveau nche, 
 but in a way not unsuited to your rank, and permitting you all 
 the social advantages that belong to it. These twenty-five 
 thousand francs, in addition to your improved income, will en 
 able you to gratify my wish in this respect. Spend the money
 
 , 44 THE rARISIAA'S. 
 
 In Paris : you will want every sou of it in the course of the year. 
 It will be money well spent, take my advice, (rZ/^-r Marquis. Au 
 p/aisir." 
 
 The financier bowed himself out. The 3'oung Marquis for- 
 g^ot all the mournful reflections with which Raoul's conversation 
 h;id inspired him. He gave a new touch to his toilet, and 
 sallied forth with the air of a man on whose morning of life a 
 sun heretofore clouded has burst forth and transformed the face 
 of the landscape. 
 
 CHAPTER VHI. 
 
 Since the evening spent at the Savarins', Graham had seen 
 no more of Isaura. He had avoided all clance of seein* 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 in- 
 voluntarily 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 necessiated her eternal banishment from the rever- 
 ence which belongs to all manly love ? Certainly he found no 
 satisfacloiy 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 sacri- 
 fice, short of duty and honor, too great to offer up unknown, 
 vmcomprehended, to the one beloved. Still, while thus soften 
 ed in his feelings towards Isaura, he became, perhaps in con 
 sequence of such softening, more and more restlessly impatient
 
 THE rAR/S/AxVS. 
 
 145 
 
 to fulfil the object for which he had come to Paris, the great 
 step towards which was the discovery of the uiidiscoverable 
 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 empjoyed, and had received short unsatisfac- 
 to:y 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 labor 
 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 dila- 
 tory confidant. 
 
 In that visit, finding himself pressed hard, and though nat- 
 urally 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 remunera- 
 tion 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 clue. I resign, therefore, the 
 task with which you honored 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 reverie. He 
 could not but be sensible of the difficulties in the way of the 
 object which had brought him to Paris, with somewhat san- 
 guine expectations of success founded on a belief in the om- 
 niscience of the Parisian police, which is only to be justified
 
 J ^5 THE PAKISIAXS. 
 
 when they have to deal with a murderess or a political incen- 
 diary. ]iut 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 
 whoni'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, and that you could not say if, through mairiage 
 or for other reasons, she had changed her name or not, and 
 vou had reasons for declining recourse 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 pur- 
 suit of whom your employe 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 re- 
 quest you made me when you first arrived in Paris this sea- 
 Sun : 
 
 •' Of course I do — in case you should ever chance in your 
 wide round of acquaintances to fall in with a Madame or 
 Mademoiselle Duval of about the age of forty, or a year or so 
 less, lo 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 hcii, mon cher. If you will come with me to le bal 
 <hatnpetre m 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 
 vounger, and is still very handsome. You said your Duval was 
 handsome. It was only last evening that I met this lady at a 
 w/r<f^given by Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, coryphee distinguee^ 
 m love with young Rameau." 
 
 " In love'with'young Rameau? I am /ery glad to hear it. 
 He returns the li.ve .'' " 
 
 " I suppose so. He seems very proud of it. But a propos 
 of Madame Duval, she has been long absent from Paris — just 
 returned — and looking out for conquests. She says she has a 
 gxedii penchant for the English; promises me to be at this ball. 
 Come." 
 
 *•■ Hearty thanks, my dear Lemercier. I am at your service."
 
 TIIK PARISIANS. i^y 
 
 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 had singled out Frederic Lemerciei 
 from all his acquaintances at Paris, to conjoin with the official 
 aid of M. Renard in search of the mysterious lady, he had con- 
 jectured the probability that she might be found in the Bohe- 
 mian world so familiar to Frederic ; if not as an inhabitant, at 
 least as an explorer. Bohemia was largely represented at J he 
 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. French- 
 men, not needing such care, prudently left their wives at home. 
 Among the Frenchmen of station were the Comte de Passy and 
 the Vicomte de Bre'ze. 
 
 On first entering the gardens, Graham's eye was attracted 
 and dazzled by a brilliant form. It was standing under a fes- 
 toon of flowers extended from tree to tree, and a gas-jet oppo- 
 site shone full upon the face — the face of a girl in all the fresh- 
 ness 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 tl>e ring of her laugh jarred upon Graham's ear. He 
 pressed Frederic's arm, and, directing his attention to the girl, 
 ftsked who she was. 
 
 " Who ? Don't you know ? That is Julie Caumartin. A 
 Ittle 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 splendor, and dismissed the rich admiiei 
 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 he girl's nature, if she had
 
 , ^ 3 THE P. 1 R/S/AA^S. 
 
 been properly trained. Rameau wrote a pretty poem on her, 
 which turned her licad and won her heart, in wliich she is styled 
 the ' Ondine of Paris,'— a nyniph-lil<e type of Paris itself." 
 
 " Vanishing t)'pe, like her namesake ; born of the spray, and 
 vanishing soon into the deep," said Graham. " Pray go and 
 1 jok for°he 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 .n due form to 
 the lady, with whom Frederic then discreetly left him. 
 
 " ^lonsieur 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 honor of knowing a lady 
 f>f your name ; and should I be fortunate enough to meet that 
 ladV, I am charged with a commission that may not be un- 
 welcome to her. M. Lemercier tells me your fiom 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 look- 
 ing 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, ad- 
 dressing her in that language. 
 
 " A leetle — speak unpen." 
 
 " 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 ? Fetit scelemt, 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 my lord Sir Boulby. Were you 
 never in England yourself .'' " 
 
 " Never " — with a coquettish side-glance — " I should like
 
 THE PARISIAXS. , ^r, 
 
 SO much to go. I have a foible for the English, in spite of that 
 vi/ahi peiit ]jo\x\hy. Who is it gave you the commission for me ? 
 Ha ! I guess — le Capitaine Nelton." 
 
 " No. What year, Madame, if not imjoertinent, were you 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle ? " 
 
 " You mean Baden ? I was there seven years ago, when I 
 met le Capitaine Nelton — bel licmme nux che^'cux 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 favor 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 your 
 own handwriting, Madame .'' " 
 
 " Yes, indeed." 
 
 " Tres belle ecriture" said Graham, and receded with a cere- 
 monious 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 Ue 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 "i " 
 
 '' 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
 
 ,-o THE PARISIANS. 
 
 extremely grieved, jjoor man, when his daughter Louise married 
 her drawing-master, Auguste Duval." 
 
 " Her draw ing-master, Auguste Duval ? Pray say on. I 
 think the Louise J)u\al my friend knew must have been hei 
 daughter. She was the only child of a drawing-master or artist 
 named Auguste Djval, and probably enough her Christian 
 name would have been derived from her mother. A Made- 
 moiselle de Mauleon, then, married ^1. Auguste Duval ? " 
 
 " Yes, the old Vicomte had espoused enpreniieres noces Made- 
 moiselle 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 w as 
 just of age when the first Vicomtesse died, and by the mar- 
 riage 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 past fift\' 
 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 better dot. Louise was indig- 
 nant at this, hated her stepmother ; and when a son was bom 
 by the second marriage she left the paternal roof, went to re- 
 side 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 majorit}' can, if she persist in her 
 determination, marry to please herself and disgrace her ances- 
 tors. 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 in Paris 
 — as roi des viveurs." 
 
 " Yes, he was before my time ; but I have heard of him as a 
 5'()ung man of fashion — said to be ver)' clever, a duellist, and a 
 sort of Don Juan." 
 
 " Exactly." 
 
 " And I remember vaguely to have heard that he committed 
 or was said to have committed, some villanous action con- 
 nected with a great lady's jewels, and to have left Paris in con- 
 sequence." 
 
 " Ah, yes — a sad scrape. At that time there was a political 
 crisis ; anything against a noble was believed. But I am sure 
 Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny. How-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 151 
 
 ever, it is quite true that he left Paris ; and I don't know wiiat has 
 become of him since. Here he touched De Brez<^, who, 
 though still near, had not been listening to the conversation 
 but interchanging jest and laughter with Lemercier on the mot- 
 ley 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 van- 
 ished I never heard more of him, — doubtless long since dead. 
 A good hearted fellow, in spite of all his sins." 
 
 " My dear M. De Breze, did you know his half-s'lster ? " 
 asked Graham — " a Madame Duval ? " 
 
 " No ; I never heard he had a half-sister. Halt there : I 
 recollect I met Victor in the garden once 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 con- 
 quest, 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.' 1 doubted the truth of his story 
 at the time ; but since you say he really had a sister, my doubt 
 wronged him." 
 
 " Have you ever seen this same young lady since ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " How many years ago was this .'' " 
 
 " Let me see — about twenty or twenty-one years ago. 
 How timetlies ! " 
 
 Graham still continued to question, but could learn no fur- 
 ther 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 its genuine ring of light-hearted joy — the laugh 
 he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound of which 
 had then saddened him. Looking toward the quarter from 
 which it came, he 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 lamp-lit alley, till lost to the English- 
 man's lingering gaze.
 
 1^2 TTTE PAKISTAXS. 
 
 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 favored me." 
 
 " I always counted on cliance, 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: charsre of her in the year 
 that the persons mterested in her discovery lost sight of her in 
 Paris ; and surely he must know what became of her after- 
 wards." 
 
 " Very probably ; and chance may befriend us j^et in the 
 discovery of Victor de Maule'on. You seem not to know tlie 
 particulars of that story about the jewels which brought him into 
 some connection with the police and resulted in his disappear- 
 ance from Paris." 
 
 " No ; tell me the particulars." 
 
 " Victor de MauMon was heir to some sixt}' or seventy 
 thousand francs a year, chiefly on the mother's side ; for his father, 
 though the representative of one of the most ancient houses in 
 France, was very poor, having little of his own except the emol- 
 uments 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 favorite 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 Pliilippe. The viveurs of Paris were fine types for the 
 heroes of Dumas and Sue — full of animal life and spirits. 
 Victor de MauMon was a romance of Dumas — incarnated,"
 
 THE rARISIANS. T53 
 
 " M. 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 ever to 
 my humble eminence if he be not something else than a pro- 
 fessional. 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 duelist, 
 nothing was ever said against his honor. On the contrary, on 
 matters of honor 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 country- 
 men, who had never handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, 
 took offence at something M. de Mauleon had said in dispar- 
 agement 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 countiymen can be 
 beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one gentle- 
 man can make to another for having forgotten the respect clue 
 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 honor of his countiy, 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 
 Due, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable sur
 
 , - _, THE PARISIAN'S. 
 
 }3rise, 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 Due's suspicions 
 naturally fell on the servants, especially on the femtne de 
 c/ia7nbre, who was in great favor 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 Maule'on was caught and appre- 
 hended 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 etitresol in the same hotel in which the 
 upper rooms were devoted to the Due 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 duelist, 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 demeanor at the bar, and 
 watch the expression of his face when he was sentenced to the 
 galleys. Put, Monsieur, this wretch completed the measure of 
 his iniquities. He was not trie*., at all. The Due and Duch- 
 esse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Due instructed his lawyer 
 to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte's
 
 THE r AN LSI AX S. 
 
 '5S 
 
 complete innocence of any other offence than that which he 
 himself had confessed." 
 
 " What did the Viconite 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 in- 
 fraction 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, in- 
 sisted 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 eiTects 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 his niece." 
 
 " I doubt it. He had no very near relations. The nearest 
 was an old cclibataire of the same name, from whoin 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, 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 clue, 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 w'eek or two I will have 
 the honor to call again upon Monsieur." 
 
 " Wait one instant. You have really a hope of discovering 
 ISI de Mauldon .? "
 
 iS^ 
 
 THE FARIS/AA^S. 
 
 " 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 in his heart, as if a load 
 had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to 
 the thought of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise un early 
 discharge of the commission connected with the discovery of 
 Louise Duval seemed to bring Isaura nearer to him, or at least 
 to ;ixcuse 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 Lsaura's villa. As he went, the 
 leaves of 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 re- 
 conciliation with the loved one from whom some trifle has 
 unreasonably estranged him, in a cloudless day of May, — if he 
 be not happv 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.
 
 THE rARISIANS, 157 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL. 
 
 It is many days since I wrote to yon, and but for youl 
 delightful note just received, reproaching nie 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-humoredly 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 fami- 
 liarly 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 mucli. 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 
 inio 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 fairy-land, 
 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
 
 ^rS THE PARTS I A AS. 
 
 to do such other authors as I have known. M. Savann, for 
 instance, sets down in his tablets as an enemy to whom ven- 
 geance 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 adminis- 
 trator 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 confeder- 
 ation in which each is bound to defend the territor}' of the 
 others, and all those territories united constitute the imjierial 
 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 
 "so\ereign '' 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 favorite ela'e now is a 
 young contributor to his journal, named Gustave Ranieau. M. 
 Savarin said the other day in my hearing, " I and my set were 
 Young France — Gustave Rameau and his set are Nnv ParisP 
 
 " And what is the distinction between the one and the 
 other.?" asked mv American friend, Mrs. Morlev. 
 
 " 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 ; what- 
 ever may be said against it in other respects, the power of 
 thews and sinews must be conceded to its chief representa- 
 tives. 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 pojiular in his time, because he represents a good deal ol 
 the mind of his time — viz, 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
 
 THE PARfSfAiXS. i i;g 
 
 desire that was evidently very sincere to find some occasion 
 on v/hich td render you iiis 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 1 
 had heard that you were busied on a new work ; and ihen, 
 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 favorite 
 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 labors. 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 compas- 
 sionate. 
 
 You will be pleased to hear that Dr. C. considers my health 
 so improved that I may next year enter fairly on the profes- 
 sion for which I was intended and trained. Yet I still feel 
 hesitating and doubtful. To give myself wholly up to the art 
 ui 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 fairy-land, 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 
 bast sounded to the deeps that circumfluent ocean called " jDracti- 
 dl human life," and hast taught the acutest of its navigators to 
 consider how far its courses are guided by orbs in heaven — canst
 
 i6o 
 
 THE PAK/SIAXS. 
 
 thou solve this riddle, which, if it perplexes me, must perpiex 
 so many ? What is the real distinction between the rare genius 
 and the conunonaltv of human souls that feel to the quick all 
 xW. grandest and d'ivinest tlnngs 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, 
 llie 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 an- 
 nounces. 1 am impressed with the truth of what I thus say 
 in proportion as I reperuse and restudy the greatest writers that 
 have come within my narrow range of reading. And by the 
 ^neatest writers 1 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 nmsic, 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 imagina- 
 tion of the few. The highest type of this union to me is Shak- 
 speare ; and 1 can comprehend the justice of no criticisni 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 exclaun, " He^ ex- 
 presses what we feel, but never the whole of what we feel ? " Is 
 it the mere power over language, a large knowledge of diction- 
 aries, 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 3'ou 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 em- 
 ploy 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 pri- 
 vaiely 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
 
 THE PAKISIAXS. ,6» 
 
 I do know I gather from very few books, and from what I hea- 
 said by the few worth listening to whom I happen to meet ; and 
 out of these, in solitude and reverie, not by conscious effort, 1 
 arrive at some results which appear to my inexperience orig- 
 inal. 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 un- 
 nettled, 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 ! that are but those of the humblest and 
 shortest-lived sort of niolh, scarcely born into daylight before il 
 dies. Could it reason, it might regret its earlier life, and say, 
 " Better be the silkworm than the moth." 
 
 F'roin the Same to iJic 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 En- 
 glishman well. Even I, who so loved and revered Mr. Selby — • 
 I, whose childhood was admited 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 t 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 aris- 
 tocraiie. 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 char- 
 acterize 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
 
 J 52 ^^^i^ FAKISIAAS. 
 
 countenance which the English depict by the word " open"— 
 that expression which inspires you with a belief in the ex- 
 istence of sincerity. Mrs. Morley said of liini, 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 idealiza- 
 tion 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 enthu- 
 siasm 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 toward 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 capit;il. The 
 Londoner knows its charm when he feels his tread on the soft- 
 ening swards of the Vale of Health, or pausing at Richmond 
 under the budding willow, gazes on tlie 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 
 blosson\, compared with the prim efnorescence 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;
 
 rilE PARISIANS. 
 
 163 
 
 he felt sure that he should find Isaura at home. Tlie garden- 
 
 t)' 
 
 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 neighbors, 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 arbor towards the farther end 
 of the garden — an arbor which, a little later in the year, must 
 indeed be delicate and dainty with lush exuberance of jessamine 
 and woodbine ; now into its iron trellis- work leaflet 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 
 arbor, Isaura did not perceive hini 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 dark- 
 ened, 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 1 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 color, and in 
 accents embarrassed and hesitating. " Both the words and 
 music are by an unkr.own 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 dia- 
 lect 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 senti- 
 ment than is conimon in the popular songs of Southern Italy."
 
 iC4 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " The sentiment in the original is changed in the para- 
 phrase, and not, I fear, improved by the change." 
 
 " Will you explain to me the sentiment in both, and let nie 
 judge which I prefer ? " 
 
 " In the Neapolitan song a young fisherman, who has moored 
 his boat under a rock on the sliore, 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 waters, loses the image, and brings up a 
 few common fishes. He returns home disaipointed, 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's reflected on the 
 waters from the rock behind him, on which she had her home. 
 The original air is arch and lively ; just listen to it." And Is- 
 aura warbled one of those artless and somewhat meagre tunes 
 to which light-stringed instruments are the fitting accompani- 
 ment. 
 
 "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 paraphase 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 illusion. If en- 
 amoured 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.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 165 
 
 " Despise the coining 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 win- 
 ter buds, it touched hers — lightly, indeed, but she felt the touch; 
 shrank from it, colored, 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 dis- 
 pleased 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 a|;bor ; 
 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 1 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 re- 
 cognized 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 melo- 
 drama, 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 under.
 
 ,C6 THE PAKISIANS. 
 
 Stand wants essence, and a poet we can scan wants form. Thank 
 heaven 1 am not vain enough to call myself artist. I have 
 written some very diy lucubrations in periodicals, chiefly politi- 
 cal, or critical upon other subjects than art. But why, aproposoi 
 M. Rameau, did you ask me that question respecting myself ? " 
 
 " Because much in your conversation," answered Isaura, in 
 rathci a mournful tone, " made me suppose you had more sym- 
 pathies with art and its cultivators than you cared to avow. 
 And if 3'ou 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 freemasonary among us, including masters 
 and disciples, and one art lias a fellowship with other arts ; 
 mine is but song and music, yet I feel attracted towards a sculp- 
 tor, 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 upward, though 
 with weak wings, or with erring footsteps, like myself." 
 
 " Mademoiselle," said Graham, earnestly, " I cannot say 
 how I thank you for this candor. 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 ' 
 W'hich 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 work, 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,
 
 IHL PARISIANS. xb', 
 
 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 yeais hence. 
 I should have to say, " Alas ! by what mistake has that weaUh 
 been wasted ! ' " 
 
 While they had thus conversed, mechanically they had 
 turned away from the house, and were again standing before 
 the arbor. 
 
 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 exlaimed, 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 1 " 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 hu- 
 manity ; 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 ex-
 
 1 68 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 pressed, on the ennobling effects of music and song upon a 
 popular audience, that counteracted the growing distaste to ren- 
 dering up my whole life to the vocation of the stage. But now 
 I think I should feel grateful to the friend whose advice inter- 
 preted 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 con- 
 fusion, and then instinctively retreated towards the arbor. 
 
 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 them- 
 selves on Isaura. Gustave Rameau was by her side. That 
 nosegay which had been left in the arbor 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 jeal- 
 ousy 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 MADAM K 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
 
 THE PARTSIANS. i5q 
 
 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 ho 
 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 per- 
 sons — not, indeed, in the usual and ordinary trifles of taste and 
 sentiment, but in those essentials which form the root of char- 
 acter 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. 
 
 Fr07n Madame de Granhnesnil to Isanra 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 cultiva- 
 tor, and is in itself so divine in its immediate effects upon hu- 
 nian 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 ot 
 workday life has never yet travelled; to whom the philosopher, 
 the preacher, the poet, appeal in vain — nay, to whom the con- 
 ceptions of the grandest master of instrumental music are in- 
 comprehensible ; to whom Beethoven unlocks no portal ir
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 170 
 
 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 
 inclosed 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. Uncon- 
 sciouslv 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 lyi 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 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 inimortality 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 yEschylus ; of the 
 Agathon, who perhaps excelled Euripides ; of the Alcaus, in 
 whom Horace acknowledged a master and a model ; their re- 
 nown 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 
 o" 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 dis- 
 tinction between the writer and the reader, when the reade'- 
 says, ' These are my thoughts, these are wrv feelings ; the writer 
 has stolen them, and clothed them in his own words ' .=• " And 
 the more the reader says this, tlie 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
 
 THE PARTSTANS. i^, 
 
 is not llie mere gift of expression, it is not the mere craft of the 
 pen, it is not the mere taste in arrangement of word and ca- 
 dence, wliich 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 inliuences he acquired, whether from ob- 
 servation 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 
 vi^riter of superior genius communicates to his admirers ! how 
 truly do you feel that the greater is the dissatisfaction in propor- 
 tion 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 re- 
 duce 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 with 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 wild 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 fwt 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 won- 
 derfully exacting, I fear it is supremely egotistical — so jeal- 
 ously 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
 
 1^2 THE PARIS TANS. 
 
 happy if he had married a Comeille in petticoats ? I whs 
 SDeak 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 endeavor 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 hap 
 piness would be to marry a commonplace woman, with separw 
 Hon lie bicns. He is, believe me, but one of the many with 
 whom New Paris abounds, who, because they have the infirmi- 
 ties 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 the 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., 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 endur- 
 ingly, 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, j'our ambition will fuse itself in his ; and know- 
 ing you as I do, I believe you would make an excellent wife to 
 an Englishman whom you honored as well as loved ; and sorry 
 though I should be that you relinquished the singer's fame, 1 
 should be consoled in thinking you safe in the woman's best 
 sphere — a contented home, safe froni calumny, safe from gos- 
 sip. 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 cele- 
 brity it won for the obscure commonplace of such woman lot. 
 Could I move human beings as pawns on a chess-board, I 
 should indeed say that the most suitable and congenial mate 
 for you, for a woman of sentiment and genius, would be a well
 
 THE PARISIANS. 173 
 
 born and well-educated German ; for such a German unites, 
 with domestic habits and a strong sense of family ties, a ro- 
 mance 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 yon would wither and die. Write 
 to me often, and tell me all. M. Savarin is right. IMy 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 re- 
 quire 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, Gra- 
 ham's persuasion that he was not yet free to court the hand of 
 Isaura became strengthened, and with that persuasion necessa- 
 rily came a question equally addressed to his conscience. 
 
 " If not yet free to court her hand, am I free to expose my- 
 self 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 : — 
 
 ViLMA , 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
 
 1^4 ^-^^ PAKISIANS. 
 
 the Rights of Women are firmly established, married folks al- 
 ways will do when left to themselves, especially if they are still 
 lovers, as P'rank 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 lit- 
 erature 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 humorist 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 ihe same roof as Isaura. Oh, 
 those hap])y 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 sunsh'ne of her joy, all the vivid colorings 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 render, whether you be man or woman, you have 
 come into la;, iar contact with sonie creature of a genius to 
 which, even as.',uming that you yourself have a genius in its 
 own way, you have no special affinities, have you not felt shy 
 with that creature.^ PLave 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 conmion 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 tlie superiority in which it fears it may 
 fail ()ei seldom does fail) — the superiority of conunon sense. 
 And when we cuir.e to woman, what marvellous truth is con- 
 veyed by the woman who has had no superior in intellectual
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 ns 
 
 gifts among her owti 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 whoni 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 
 George 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 ex- 
 claimed, 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 ordi- 
 nary 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
 
 ,76 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 tiowers. 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 in 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 Isanra was a 
 Cicogna — an offspring of a very ancient and ver)' 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 com- 
 panionship 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 with- 
 in the range of her experience, confined much to Parisian life, 
 nor in harmony wkh 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 pre- 
 dicted, 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 has 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 
 lier the shelter of a wedded home. Moreover, she had 
 cherished plans of her own for Isaura's future. Madame
 
 THE PARISIANS 
 
 17/ 
 
 Savarin had conceived for Gustave Raineau 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 com- 
 joetence 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 became 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 inimate 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 wiih 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 ; 
 more practised and with art more watchful, Madame Savar n con 
 trived to baftle her hostess's intention. But, indeed, neith ^-r Gra 
 ham or Isaura sought to make opportunities for themselv>-.s. He_ 
 as we know, did not deem himself wholly justified in utte ing the 
 words of love by which a man of honor binds himself for lite ; and 
 she Iwhat 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 v/ords to tell her that she was loved — no,
 
 178 
 
 THE PARJSIAxVS. 
 
 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 
 tlie presence of her lover. She knew that she herself could 
 not so love unless she were beloved. 
 
 Here woman's wit is keener and truthfuUer 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 en- 
 gaged 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 a nature so gifted what single mortal 
 can be the all in all .'' " 
 
 They spent the summer mornings in excursions round the 
 beautiful neighborhood, 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 liter- 
 ary 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 en- 
 countering each other ; they differed perhaps less in opinions 
 than in the mode by which opinions are discussed. The En- 
 glishman'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 or diffuse, and the happiness at his heart brought 
 out the gayety of humor which had been his early characteristic, 
 and yet rendered his familiar intercourse genial and playful, — • 
 still there was this distinction between his humor and Savarin's 
 wit, that at 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 hint in these intellectual skirmishes 
 with the more glittering Parisian. There was this distinction
 
 l^IIE PARISIANS. 17 
 
 she made between him and Savarin : when the last sjDoke she 
 often chimed in with some happy sentiment of her own ; but 
 she never interrupted Graliam — 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. 
 
 I'he 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 inhabitant 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 — mani- 
 kins, 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 can- 
 not 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 child- 
 hood, 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 favorite 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 techni- 
 cal catalogues. For fear of learning that name, I never have 
 pointed it out to any one before. I too at this moment dis-
 
 ,So THE PARISIANS. 
 
 linguish it aparl 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 favorite star t 
 
 " 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 
 Isaiu'a 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 181 
 
 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 art- 
 ists, 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 com- 
 pelled also to borrow a sum large for him, and the debt, ob- 
 tained 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 davs become due. The letter was not 
 from that creditor, but it was from his publisher, containing 
 a very disagreeable statement of accounts, pressing for settle- 
 ment, and declining an offer of Savarin's for a new book (not 
 yet begun) except upon terms that the author valued himself 
 to highly to accept. Altogether, the situation was unj^leas- 
 ant. 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 popu- 
 larity, f(;r he talked dejectly of himself as obsolete and 
 passing out of fashion ; to convince him also of the impossi- 
 bility that the ungrateful publisher whom Savarin's more 
 brilliant successes had enriched could encounter the odium of 
 hostile procedings ; and to remind him of all the authors, all 
 the artists, whom he, in their earlier difficulties, had so liber- 
 ally assisted, and from whom a sum sufficing to pay off the 
 bou7-geois creditor when the day arrived could now be honorably 
 asked and would be readily contributed. In this last sugges- 
 tion the homely prudent good sense of Madame Savarin 
 failed her. She did not comprehend that delicate pride of 
 honor which, with all his Parisian frivolities and cynicism, 
 dignified tlie 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 motliers, 
 and yet are deficient in artistic sympathies with artistic
 
 ,82 THE PARISTANS. 
 
 natures. Slill, a realh^ good honest wife is such an incalcula- 
 ble blessing to her lord, that, at the end of the talk in the 
 solitary allec, this man of exquisite finesse, of the undefinably 
 high-bred temperament, and, alas ! the painfully morbid sus- 
 ceptibility, which belong to the genuine artistic character, 
 emerged into the open sunlit lawn with his crest uplifted, his 
 lip cui-\-ed upward in its joyous mocker}-, and perfectly per- 
 suaded that somehow or other he should put down the offen- 
 sive 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 vehe- 
 mently. 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 
 ailed her ''enfant'' 
 
 Graham's letter was from M. Renard, and ran thus : — 
 Monsieur. — I had the honor to call at your apartment this 
 mornnig, and 1 write this line to the address given to me by 
 your concierge to say that I have been fortunate enough to as- 
 certain 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 considera- 
 tion. 
 
 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 feller. Perhaps in a few days he might frankly and honorably 
 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 
 
 \
 
 THE PARISrAiVS. 183 
 
 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 ! " ex- 
 claimed Graham ; " of course you mean M. de Mauldon, 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 ac- 
 quainted 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 especiallly 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 coiwtier or agent de change ; but it was 
 noticed that certain persons familiarly frequenting his apart- 
 ment, or to whose houses he used to go at night, were dis- 
 affected 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 Alidi, 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 busmess 
 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 Nornian 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
 
 i84 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 lislen to their 
 conversation. But of this he heard nothing — only when, at the 
 end of the lane, the rich man turned abruptly, shook his com- 
 panion 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 Maule'on ; sometimes talked to him. Yes, 
 that was the voice — the slight Norman intonation (Victor de 
 MauMon'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 woman — that was Victor de Mauleon. 
 But why there in that disguise .'' What w-as his real business 
 and object ? My confrere had not ime allowed to him to pros- 
 ecute 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 oiivriers a 
 paragraph stating that a Paris spy had been seen at Lyons, 
 warning all honest men against his machinations, and contain- 
 ing 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, trap de zele. Having only 
 heard the outlines of this story from another, I repaired to my 
 co/i/rcre 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 in- 
 offensive ; and the notice taken of him by persons of higher
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 185 
 
 rank was attributed generally to a"respect for his talents, and 
 not on account of any sympathy in political opinions. 1 found 
 that the confrere mentioned, and who alone could identify M. 
 de Mauleon in the disguise which the Vicomte had assumed, 
 was absent in 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 par- 
 ticulars. M. de Mauleon beais 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 fre- 
 quents the Cafe yean yacqnes, Rue J^aulwurg AfoJitmartre. 
 
 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. Foi, 
 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 investi- 
 gation 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 to-night. If the man be really a conspirator, and it 
 looks likely enough, who knows but he may see quick reason to 
 take alarm and vanish from Paris at any hour } Cafe yean 
 
 yacques. 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 mous- 
 tache — fair clear complexion — light colored 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 can scarcely go up to M. Lebeau, when you have discover- 
 ed him, and say, ' Pray M. 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."
 
 1 86 TlIK PARISIANS. 
 
 "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 ! M. 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 cautious- 
 ly 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 soothe 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 Avhich 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 liis 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 
 if tliose 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 of- 
 fence 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 dishonor — was a villanous action ; and his pres- 
 ent course of life is sufficiently mysterious to warrant the most 
 unfavorable 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 assume, 
 do not fear. I am no novice in that. In my younger days I 
 was thought clever in priv.n4.e theatricals, especially in the trans-
 
 THE PAKISIAXS. 
 
 .Sy 
 
 formations of appearance which belong to light comedy and 
 farce. Wait a few minutes and you shall see." 
 
 Graham then retreated to 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 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 JVench or German caricatures, — loose 
 jacket of tweed, with redundant pockets, waistcoat to match 
 short dust-colored trousers. He had combed his hair straight 
 over his forehead, which, as I have said somewhere before, ap- 
 peared 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 ex- 
 pression, with a glass screwed on 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 compli- 
 ments ; 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 Vr. 
 
 There is generally a brisk exhilaration of spirits in the 
 return to any sj^ecial amusement or light accomplishment as- 
 sociated with the pleasant memories of earlier youth ; and 
 remarkably so, I believe, when the amusement or accomplish- 
 ment 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 boy- 
 hood when disguising look and voice for a part in some draw- 
 uig-room comedy or charade. I might name statesnien of
 
 j^S THE PARISIAI^. 
 
 solemn repute rejoicing to raise and to join in a laugh at theii 
 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 Gra- 
 ham's character, if the i:nglishman felt the sort of joyous ex- 
 citement 1 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 humoristic 
 pleasantry by the sanguine hope that much to affect 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 \\v^ fiacre and entered. The 
 apartment devoted to customers comprised two large rooms. 
 The tirst was the cafe properly speaking ; the second, opening 
 on it, was the billiard-room. Conjecturing that he should prob- 
 ably 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 pos- 
 ition for him. Graham himself was a fair billard-player, both 
 in the English and the French game. He said to himself " No 
 man who can made 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. Tak- 
 ing care to speak in very bad, very English, French, Gra- 
 ham 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 
 pi aver. 
 
 "" Monsieur," replied the enthusiast, taking a short cuttypipe 
 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 189 
 
 comes out as he has done to-night ; but to-night he has stead- 
 ied his hand. He has had slxpefits 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 British in his accent : 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 " Monsieur, you are EngHsh." 
 
 " I confess it." 
 
 " And a stranger to the Faubourg Montmartre." 
 
 " True." 
 
 " Or you would have heard of M. Giraud, the Hvehest mem- 
 ber of the State Company for conducting funerals. They are 
 going to play La Foule.'" 
 
 Much disconcerted, Graham retreated into the cafe, and 
 seated himself haphazard at once 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 decenr, and es- 
 pecially 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, prob- 
 ably shopkeepers, were playing dominoes. Graham scrutinized 
 these last, but among them all could detect no one correspond- 
 ing to his ideal of the Vicomte de Mauleton. " 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 French- 
 man, " The English journal, at. your service." 
 
 Graham bowed his head, accepted the "Galignani," and 
 inspected his courteous neighbor. A more respectable look- 
 ing man no Englishman could see in an English country town. 
 He wore an unpretending liaxcn wig, with limp whiskers that 
 met at the chin, and might originally have been the same color 
 as the wig, but were now of a pale gray — no beard, no mous- 
 tache. He was dressed with the scrupulous cleanliness of a
 
 190 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 sober citizen — a high white neckcloth, with a large, old-fash- 
 ioned 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 — some- 
 what more. 
 
 Graham took kindly to his neighbor, insomuch that, in re- 
 turn for the " Galignani," he offered him a cigar, lighting one 
 himself. 
 
 His neighbor refused politely. 
 
 '■'■ Merci I I never smoke — never; vioii viedecin 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 withm himself " how instinctive to all Frenchmen good 
 breeding is ! " 
 
 Before, however, Graham had time to explain to his ami- 
 able neighbor the politico economical principle according to 
 which England, growing no tobacco, had tobacco much bet- 
 ter than France which did grow it, a rosy, middle-aged mon- 
 sieur made his appearance, saying hurriedly to Graham's 
 neighbor, 
 
 "I'm afraid I'm late, but there is still a good half-hour 
 before us if you will give me my revenge." 
 
 "Willingly, M. Georges. Gar(o?i, the dominoes." 
 
 "Have you been playing at billiards?" asked M. Georges. 
 
 " Yes, two games." 
 
 " With success ?" 
 
 " I won the first, and lost tlie 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 dominoes arrived, and M. Georges began shuftling 
 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."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 igi 
 
 " 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, M. Lebeau." 
 
 Graham almost started. Was it possible ? This mild, limp- 
 whiskered, flaxen-wigged man, Victor de Maul on, the Don Juan 
 of his time ! the last person in the room he should have guessed. 
 Vet now, examining his neighbor with more attentive eye, he 
 .vondered at his stupidity in not having recognized at once the 
 ct-devant gentilhomme and beau garcoii. 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 dominoes with one hand, not shielding his pieces with the 
 other (as M. Georges warily did), but allowing it to rest care- 
 lessly on the table, he detected the hands of the French aris- 
 tocrat; 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 me- 
 chanically in after-life — with long taper fingers and polished 
 nails ; white and delicate as those of a young woman, but not 
 slight, not feeble ; nervous and sinewy as those of a practised 
 swordsman, 
 
 Graham watched the play, and Lebeau good-naturedly ex- 
 plained to him its complications as it proceeded ; though the ex- 
 planation, diligently attended to by M. Georges, lost Lebeau 
 the game. 
 
 The dominoes were again shuffled, and during that opera- 
 tion M. Georges said, " By the way, M. Lebeau, you promised
 
 1 92 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 to find me a locatairc for my second floor ; liave you sue 
 ceeded ? " 
 
 " Not yet. Perhaps you had better advertise in Les Petitei 
 Affiches. You ask too much for the habitues of this nelglabor 
 hood — 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 }^ou an apartmatt dc gavcon 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 1 have business which may 
 keep me here a few weeks. I do but require a bedroom and a 
 cabinet, and the rent must be modest. I am not a tnilord:' 
 
 •' I am sure we could arrange, Monsieur," said M. Georges, 
 " though I could not well di\'ide my logemcnt. Put 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 ar- 
 range 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 neighborhood 
 where I could dine reasonably !" 
 
 "■Je crois bien — half a dozen. I can recommend you to one 
 where you can dine enprince 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 friends here, M. Lebeau. Ah, 
 on affairs his advice is as good as a lawyer's, and his fee a 
 bagatelle r 
 
 " Don't believe all that M. Georges so flatteringly says of 
 me," put in M. Lebeau, with a modest half-smile, and in 'Eng- 
 lish. " I should tell you that I, like yourself, am recently ar- 
 rived at Paris, having bought the business and good will of mv
 
 THE PARISIANS. 193 
 
 predecessor in the apaitment 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 at- 
 tribute the confidence shown to me, a stranger in this neigh- 
 borhood. 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 
 checkered life." 
 
 "You seem a very good fellow — in fact, a regular trump, 
 M. 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 intrusted 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 VIL 
 
 The next morning Graham sent for M. Renard and con- 
 sulted 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 acquain
 
 xg4 ^-^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 tance with the professional letter-writer, and find an easy 
 opportunity to introduce the name of Louise Duval. My chief 
 difficulty, J 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 a 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.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 »95 
 
 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 Thomson 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 commis- 
 sions 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 as- 
 sumed character with the skill of a man who, like the illustri- 
 ous Charles Fox, has, though in private representations prac- 
 tised 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 under- 
 ling 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, as- 
 cribe 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 re- 
 view, those contributions to refined literature, and had famil- 
 iarized 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 jfean Jacqjies ; he has 
 improved acquaintance with M. Georges and M. Lebeau ; he
 
 ig6 
 
 THE FAR/SIAA'i>. 
 
 has played at billiards, he has played at dominoes, with the 
 latter. He has been much surprised at the unimpeachable 
 lionesty 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 dominoes, — it is skill 
 combined with luck, as in whist; but in whist there are 
 modes or cheating which dominoes 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 
 ox dom\noe.s aX iht 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 \ohy faJifaron?iade, larger odds to his adversary 
 than his play justified. In dominoes, 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 ir- 
 reproachable, 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 modern Liberal ; much that 
 held in disdain the objects to which, in 1869, an English Radi- 
 cal directed his aspirations. Vote by ballot, universal suf- 
 frage, 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 w^as more 
 scornful of what Englishmen vuiderstand by radicalism or de- 
 mocracy than Graham had ever heard from the lips of an ultra 
 Toiy. 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, EugSne Dupont, 
 " Nous ne voulons plus de religion, car les religions dtouffeni 
 I'intelligence."* 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 
 
 * Discours par Eugene Dupont a la Cloture du congr^s de Bruxelles. 
 Sept. 3, 1S6S.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 197 
 
 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 sangfroid. 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 par- 
 ticipation. 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 ouvrter, in whom Graham could not help feeling 
 an interest. He was called Monnier, sometimes more famil- 
 iarly 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 em- 
 ployers 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 favor 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 honored him with a 
 nod and a smile, when passing by him to the table he gener- 
 ally 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 them 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."
 
 ^gS THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " Yet I believe the association to which most of those 
 ouvriers belong had its origin in England." 
 
 " Indeed ! what association ? " 
 
 " The International." 
 
 " Ah, I ha\-e heard of that." 
 
 Lebeau turned his green spectacles full on Graham's face as 
 he said, slowl}', " And what do you think of it 1 ' 
 
 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 neighborhood 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 dominoes 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 jSI. Renard. The office was rather imposing and stately, 
 considering the modest nature of M. Lebeau's ostensible pro- 
 fession. 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 gen- 
 erally 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 suf- 
 ficiently illiterate to require his aid as polite letter-writers — not 
 only by servant-maids and grisetfcs, by sailors, zouaves, and 
 journeymen workmen — but not unfrequently by clients evident- 
 ly 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, 
 ine last generally middle-aged. All these denizens of a higher
 
 THE PARISIANS. igg 
 
 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, 
 80 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 brought him to the Faubourg Monnnartre. 
 
 " You are very good," said Graham, speaking in the English 
 of a young earl in our elegant novels — " you uie 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 corre .:t 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 .«^peak 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 m}^ 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 in England we 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
 
 200 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 gener- 
 ally does look in the face the other man whom he accosts 
 seriously. The change in the face he regarded was slight, hut 
 it was unmistakable. It was the sudden meeting of the eye- 
 brows, 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 ;^ioo in ascer- 
 taining 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 1 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. Bnt 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 ai:ply to 
 the police. It would be waste of time and money. AILav 
 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 m)i way 
 of business — awfully. Bon-jour.'^
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 201 
 
 CHAPTER IX, 
 
 Punctually at eight o'clock Graham Vane had taken h:s 
 seat at a corner table at the remote end of the Cafe yean 
 yacques, 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 Eng- 
 land. What do you say to that assumption, M. 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, who- 
 ever 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 we uld 
 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 } "
 
 202 I^^^E PARISIANS. 
 
 " Excuse me, M. 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 
 fo guard but your own, in saying whether or not you ever knew 
 a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval. And if you have some rea- 
 son for not getting me the information I am instructed to ob- 
 tain, 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 ^loo, 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 — 
 
 " M. 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, M. Lamb, though a Frenchman very often in- 
 jures 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 vteiix,^'' 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 di\'c rce 
 your wives. Louise Duval may have married an Englishuian, 
 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 livinjr." 
 
 " By gad ! " cried Graham, " I think yoa hit the right nail 
 on the head ; c'est cela. But what then t "
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 203 
 
 " Wei], 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." 
 
 *■'• BoTi ! I will wait. Here comes M. Georges, I leave 
 rou to dominoes 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 Eng- 
 lish :— 
 
 " 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 3'ou 
 have become more than quadrupled by advantageous specula- 
 tions, in which M. Georges has been a most trustworthy agent. 
 A portion of them I have continued to employ in the mode 
 suggested — viz., 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 in- 
 considerable portion of our fund towards the inauguration of a 
 journal which shall graduajly give voice to our designs. Trust 
 to mc to insure its success and obtain the aid of writers who 
 will have no notion of the uses to which they ultimately con- 
 tribute. Now that the time has come to establish for ourselves 
 an organ in the press, addressing higli^er orders of intelligence 
 than those which are needed to destroy, ana mcapaoie of re- 
 constructing, the time has also arrived for the reappearance in 
 his proper name and rank of the man in whom you take so gra- 
 cious an interest. In vain you have pressed him to do so be- 
 fore ; till now he had not amassed together, by the slow process 
 of petty gains and constant savings, with such additions as pru- 
 dent 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 considera-
 
 2 04 T^^^E PARISIANS. 
 
 lion should ever tempt him either to appropriate to his personal 
 use a single sou intrusted to him for a public purpose, or to ac- 
 cept from friendship the pecuniary aid which would abase him 
 into the hireling of a cause. No ! Victor de Mauieon de^ 
 spises 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 tp'=k that may well seem impossible. To-morrow 
 he takes the hrst step towards the achievement of the impos- 
 sible. Experience is no bad substitute for youth, and ambition 
 is made stronger by the goad of poverty. 
 
 " Thou shall hear of his news soon."
 
 TNF PARISIANS. 
 
 30^ 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The next day at noon M. Louvier was closeted in his studj 
 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 tor 
 the transfer of the mortgages, that free bonus of one thousand 
 ouis 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. Farbleu, the 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 vietix vianoir, 
 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 busi- 
 ness." 
 
 " Tell him to send in his card," 
 
 " He has declined to do so, but states that he has already 
 the honor 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 aii 
 tres comineil fautP 
 
 " Well, you may admit him. I will not detain you longer 
 nu' dear Gandrin. My homages to Madame. Bonjour.^'
 
 2o6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 
 his hearth, with his back to the tireless 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 belonged 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 color and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore 
 neither beard nor moustache, and the darkness of his hair was 
 contrasted by a clear fairness of complexion, healtliful, 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 
 tlie 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 or sorrow 
 between nostril and lip, so th'at 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 hun 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,
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 207 
 
 and at last he faltered out, " del 1 is it possible 1 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 ; 1 
 thought you had long since quitted Paris for good." 
 
 " '■Lhomme propose,^ etc. I have returned, and mean to en 
 joy the rest of my days in the metropolis of Graces and Pleasures. 
 What though we are not as young as we were Louvier, — we 
 have more vigor 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 to the social temperament and am- 
 bitious 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 M. 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 ge.ntilhomme. 
 ' 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 miitat genus' " 
 
 The magnificent millionaire, accustomed to the homage of 
 grandees from the faubourg and lions from the Chausse'e 
 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 such a 
 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.
 
 2o8 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " No," resumed the Vicomte, politely, " I do not come here 
 to insult you, neither do 1 come to ask money ; 1 assume that i 
 am in my rights when I ask M. 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 well 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 ! ha\e you, M. 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 ur- 
 gent request she condescended to accept your hand." 
 
 " No, M. 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 — not alone — left it with her lover." 
 
 " Her lover! You do not mean that 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 
 v/ound, M. 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 af- 
 fected by matters belonging to a past life so remote from the 
 piesent. 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 y-it. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer .'' So proud 
 as si e was, I can scarcely believe it." 
 
 " Oh, it was not with a roturier she fled ; her pride would 
 iiot 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 chained to 
 another. Lci us talk of her no more."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 209 
 
 *• 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, aftei 
 w hat you tell me, I cannot dispute your right to say, ' talk ol 
 her no more.' You loved her and she wronged you. My poor 
 Louvier, pardon me if I make 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 obstrusivc 
 thought ; then with a changed expression of countenance — an 
 expression frank and winning — wtth a voice and 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 situa- 
 tions, 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 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 behavior to you offended my sense of 
 good breeding?" 
 
 Louvier colored, 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 I0 
 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 
 pcxQ your purse. On more than one occasion I accepted the of- 
 fer ; you would never have asked repayment if I had not insist- 
 ed 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 frelnqucts and lions who were my 
 more habitual associates. Do you remember some hours of se- 
 rious talk we have had together when we lounged in the Tuileries
 
 fc> 
 
 2IO THE PARISIANS. 
 
 or sipped our coffee in the garden of the Palais Royal ? — hours 
 when we forgot tliat 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 foi 
 the future which my follies in the present, alas ! were hourly 
 tending to frustrate ?" 
 
 " Ay, J. 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, noticing 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 ad- 
 mission to the Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet 
 to spare in idle loitermgs 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 favored your suit. You set out for Aix-la-Cha- 
 elle a dav 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 tliunderbolt, 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 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 1 
 did return to Paris, all that I heard of your story was the dark- 
 er side of it. I willinglv listen to your own account. You 
 never took, or at least never accepted the Duchesse de — — 's 
 jewels, and your friend M. de N. never sold them to one jewel- 
 ler and obtained their substitutes in paste from another .?" 
 
 The Y'icomte made a perceptible effort to repress an im- 
 pulse of rage ; then reseating himself in a chair, and with 
 that slight shrug of the shoulder by which a Frenchman im- 
 plies to himself that rage would be out of place, replied
 
 THE PARISIANS. 2 1 1 
 
 calmly, " M. de N did as you sa}^, but of course, nol em 
 ployed 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 mj-self 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 
 favor of fortune, which are vices common to every roi des 
 vivairs. Poor mock Alexanders that we spenthrifts 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 pat; i- 
 mony was rapidly vanishing ; but then my horses were match- 
 less. 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, vaiirieii 
 though he might be — was likely to steal or accept a woman's 
 jewels, Va, ?Hon paiivre Louvier ; again I say, ' Pots iion mutat 
 genus. ^ " 
 
 Despite the repetition of the displeasing patrician motto, 
 such reminiscences of his visitor's motley character — irregu- 
 lar, 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 French- 
 man recognized the Frenchman, Louvier doubted De Mau- 
 Mon'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 
 jvhich my all depended : it was lost. The loss absorbed the 
 ivhole of my remaining fortune ; it absorbed about twenty 
 thousand francs in excess,, a debt of honor to De N., whom 
 you called my friend : friend he was not ; imitator, follower, 
 fiatterer, 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 Maule'on, old and unmarried. By De N.'s advice I did 
 write to my kinsman. No answer came ; but what did come
 
 2 1 2 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 were fresh bills from creditors. I then cahnly 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 tJiat 
 was not quite certain — at all events, when the debts were paid 
 I should be beggared. Well, you know, Louvier, what we 
 Frenchman 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 honor — 
 viz., to the certain discharge of my liabilities — for the stud 
 and effects of Victor de Maule'on roi des viveurs, would com- 
 mand 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 veiy 
 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 sunn}, 
 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 honored 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' retractation 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 
 Maul^on paused in suppressed emotion, and then went on hur- 
 riedly : " No, the Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty pas- 
 sion, but she did inspire me with an affectionate respect. I
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 213 
 
 felt that she was by nature meant to be a great and noble crea- 
 ture, and was, nevertheless, at that moment wholly misled from 
 her right place among 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 
 h(ir, though no longer young ; and you say right — how I did 
 envy you that night ! " 
 
 " From that night, however, the Due, not unnaturally be- 
 came jealous. He reproved the Duchesse for her too amiable 
 manner towards a mauvais siijet like myself, and forbade her in 
 future to receive my visits. It was then that these notes be- 
 came 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 envel- 
 ope — Fontainebleau.' ' I posted it at Fontainebleau.' ' You 
 sent nie the money, you ! ' ' Nay, that is beyond my means. 
 Where it came from,' said this miserable, ' much more may 
 yet come ; ' and then he 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 bafiie my 
 suspicion and frustrate my scruples, he had gone to Fontaine- 
 bleau 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, hur- 
 ried 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 con- 
 siderate 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 honor to profit by such an act. Un-
 
 214 "^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 happily, what had been sent had been paid away ere I knew the 
 facts ;'bLit 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 cir- 
 cumstances 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 reflect, to decide 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, inclosed 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 Due had informed her he 
 should be out 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 med- 
 itated 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 cox- 
 combs 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 Due and jjy 
 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 Maul^on's voice here faltered, and he covered his face 
 witli a comnilsive hand, Almost in the same breath he recov- 
 ered 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 
 Due obeyed the first impulse of his wrath. He imagined that 
 I had dishonored him : he would dishonor me in return. Easier 
 to his pride, too, a charge against the robber of jewels than
 
 THE PARISIANS. 215 
 
 agamst a favored lover of his wife. But when I, obeying the 
 first necessary obUgation of honor, 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 gentil- 
 homme 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 ii 
 faiit 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 communications as the Due might 
 deem it right' to convey to me on the morrow. 
 
 " But on the morrow the Due, with his wife and personal 
 suite, quitted Paris e?t 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 — exag- 
 gerated, distorted, to my ignominy and shame. My detection 
 in the cabinet, the sale of the jewels, the substitution of paste 
 by D. 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 Duchess, and cleared away every 
 stain of your honor," 
 
 " 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 Due generously gave me better means of righting 
 mjself. 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 ab- 
 surd 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 neces- 
 sity of asking the only reparation I could make. That if it 
 deranged ' me to quit Paris, he would return to it for the
 
 2i6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 justijicatives. 
 
 " I need not say that I replied, stating the time at which 1 
 should arrive at Bayonne, and the hotel at which I should 
 await the Due's command. Accordingly, I set out that same 
 day, gained the hotel named, despatched to the Due the an- 
 nouncement of my arrival, and was considering how I should 
 obtain a second in some officer quartered m the town — for my 
 soreness and resentment at" the marked coldness of ray 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 ! 
 
 " ' M. 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 lias 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 
 heirt 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 sub- 
 sequently honored 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 calum- 
 niators 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
 
 THE PARfSIAJVS. 217 
 
 Duchesse, and which I remitted to the Due, 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 honor of the Duchesse, could but seem to her 
 all-sufficient ! Broken in spirit, bleeding at heart to the very 
 core, siill 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 MauJe'on." 
 
 " 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 Maule'on 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 justifi- 
 catives. 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 testimo- 
 nials 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 reappear 
 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 jiistificatives. I shall ask 
 you to summon my surviving relations or connections, among 
 whom are the Counts de Vandemar, Beauvilliers, De Passy, 
 and the Marquis de Rochebnant, with any friends of your own 
 who sway the opinions of tlie 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 your- 
 self tj your high-born relations ? " 
 
 " No, Louvier ; I have too well considered the case to alter 
 ray decision. It is through you, and you alone, that I shdl 
 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
 
 2i8 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 an authority w.th the public at large — a bourgeois, a niillion- 
 naire, a roi de la Bourse. 1 choose you, and that ends the 
 discussion." 
 
 Louvier could not help laughing good-humoredly 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 )-our 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 neighboring 
 courtyard, in which he had left his fiacre, and bade the coach- 
 man 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 \\\^ 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 oi fiacres Vi\. a little distance, entered 
 one, drove to the Faubourg Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle 
 at the mouth of a street not far from Mr. Lebeau's office, and 
 gained on foot the private side door of the house, let himself 
 in with his latch-key, entered the private room on the inner side 
 of his office, locked the door, and proceeded leisurely to ex- 
 change the brilliant appearance which the Vicomte de Mauleon 
 had borne on his visit to the millionaire, for the sober raiment 
 and houtgeois air of M. Lebeau the letter-writer. 
 
 Then, after locking up his former costume in a drawer ot 
 his secretaire, he sat himself down and wrote the following lines : 
 
 " Dear M. Georges, — I advise you strongly, from informa- 
 tion that has just reached me, to lose no time in pressing M.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 219 
 
 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 sentime?is les plus situe res. 
 
 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 appart- 
 ment de garcon an premier in the Rue du Helder, close by the 
 promenades and haunts of viode. It had been furnished and in- 
 habited by a brilliant young provincial from Bordeaux, who, 
 coming into an inheritance of a 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-77i07ide. 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 ardor of his passion, 
 and the diamonds and coupe which accompanied and attested 
 the ardor. The superb Hortense, supplanting De'siree, 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 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 
 avouifs business, his apartment was to be had for a tenth pait 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 ^^500. The Chevalier took 
 the same advantageous occasion to purchase the English weU
 
 220 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 bred hack and the neat coupe and horses which the Bcrdelais 
 was also necessitated to dispose of. These purchases made, 
 the Marquis had some five thousand francs( £206) left out of 
 Louvier's premium of ^1000. 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 char- 
 acter 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 kinsman, 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 frater- 
 nity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity 
 are most to be found. All gentilshomrnes 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 in Paris. If Paris 
 has the credit, or discredit, of it more than any other capital, 
 it is because in Paris moni th m in any other capital it charms
 
 THE PA KISIAiVS. 2 ^ i 
 
 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 sub- 
 jects for epigrams and tons f?iots, — it jests at loyalty to kings 
 and turns up its nose at enthusiasm for commonwealths-^it 
 aojures all grave studies — it 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 thwe are 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 Legiti- 
 mist 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 awned it not to others — 
 though as yet he scarce distinguished its whispers, much less 
 directed its movements towards any definite object. Mean- 
 while, all that he knew of his ambition was the newborn 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 break 
 fasted with Alain — a breakfast such as might have contented 
 the author of the Almanack des Gourmands, and provided 
 from the Cafe Anglais. Frederic has just thrown aside his 
 regalia. 
 
 '''' Pardieu ! my clear Alain, if Louvier has no sinister ob 
 ject in the generosity of his dealings with you, he will have 
 raised himself prodigiously in my estimation. I shall forsake 
 in his favor, my allegiance to Duplessis, though that clever
 
 222 THE PAR/SIAAT^. 
 
 fellow has just made a wondrous coup in the Eg}'ptians and 
 1 gained 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 m 
 the way you are doing, or mean to do, without some fresh ad- 
 dition 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 Rochebriant. 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 expen- 
 diture — 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 ex- 
 ample. At all events, beau seigneur, I presume you arc not 
 going to resuscitate the part of the Rrmite de la Chaussee d'An- 
 tin ; and the fair Parisiemies are demons of extravagance." 
 
 " Demons whom I shall not court." 
 
 " Did I say you would .-' They will court you. Before an 
 other month has flown, you will be inundated with billets-doux I!'' 
 
 " It is not a shower that will devastate my humble harvest. 
 But, man cher, we are falling upon very gloomy tof.ics. Lais- 
 sez-moi tranquille in my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, you 
 cannot conceive what a new life opens to the man who, like my 
 self, has passed the dawn of his youth in privation and fear, 
 when he suddenly acquires competence and hope. If it last 
 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 (he 
 incumbrance of a great name and heavily mortgaged lands.
 
 THE P ARISTA. VS. 223 
 
 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 ; 
 dough 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 F'inisterre, 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 Roche- 
 briant 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 F.nguer- 
 rant, 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 amusing, and a first-rate //^z^<f/'-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 pro- 
 fession 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 ])oorer, De Finisterre seems mysteri- 
 ously to become richer. Shun that sort of acquaintance." 
 
 " Who is your sagacious adviser ? "
 
 224 "^^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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 honey-getters, a seeker after fashion, and De Finis- 
 terre has not returned his bow." 
 
 " My dear Alain, I am to blame ; nothing is so irritatiug 
 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 appartemente an premier T 
 
 " 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, 
 mo7i 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, ^s siiis trap hour 
 geois to incur the ridicule of le bourgeois gentilhomme." 
 
 " Frederic, how dare you speak thus ? My dear fellow, 
 my friends shall honor you as I do." 
 
 " But that will be on your account, not mine. No ; honest- 
 ly, that kind of society neither tempts nor suits me. I am a 
 sort of king in my own walk ; and 1 prefer my Bohemian roy- 
 alty to vassalage in higher regions. Say no more of it. It 
 will Hatter 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 duc/iesse.'" 
 
 " Oh," said Lemercier, conceitedly, and passing his hand 
 through his scented locks, " women are different ; love levels 
 all ranks. I don't blame Ruy Bias 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. Apropos, what has become 
 of ce beau Grarm Yarn 1 I have not seen him of late." 
 
 ' Neither have I." 
 
 " Nor the belle Italienne 1 " 
 
 " Nor her," said Alain, slightly blushing. 
 
 At this moment Enguerrand lounged into the room. Alain 
 stopped Lemercier to introduce him to his kinsman. " Enguer
 
 TFTE PARISIANS. 225 
 
 rand, I present to you M. Lemercier, my earliest and one of my 
 dearest friends.'* 
 
 The young noble held out liis hand with the bright and jo)'- 
 ous grace which accompanied all his movements, and expressed 
 in cordial words his delight to make M. Lemercier's acquaint- 
 ance. Bold and assured as Frederic was in his own circles, he 
 was more discomposed than set at ease by the gracious accost ol 
 a lion, whom he felt at once to be of a breed superior to his own. 
 He muttered some confused phrases, in which ravi Tvadjlatte, 
 were alone audible, and evanished. 
 
 " I know M. Lemercier by sight very well," said Enguer- 
 rand, 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 frieds .'' " 
 
 " No, indeed. I once met him, and was not prepossessed 
 in his favor." 
 
 " Nevertheless, he is a man much to be admired and re- 
 spected." 
 
 " 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 reintroduce you. He is much courted in a 
 society which I have recently been presented 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, thought he is too old or 
 too indolent to act on it." 
 
 " And Raoul ? " 
 
 " Oh, Raoul, the melancholy and philosophical Raoul, has 
 BO 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 
 \isits their houses, and is at home by their sick-beds as at their 
 stinted boards. Nor does he confine his visitations to the limits 
 of our faubourg ; he extends his travels to Monlmartre and 
 Belleville. As to our upper worid, he does not concern himself
 
 226 THE PARISTAh^, 
 
 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 eartly love, and not to be 
 degraded into that sickly sentiment called Platonic affection) 
 for the Comtesse di Rimini, who is six years old than himself, 
 and who is very faithfully attached to her husband, Raoul's 
 intimate friend, whose honor he would guard as his own. It is 
 an episode in the drama of Parisian life, and one not so uncom- 
 mon 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 in- 
 tolerant 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 por- 
 trait 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 Duchess of Tarascon. I have pledged my- 
 self to her to bring you, and she is at home on purpose to re- 
 ceive 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. AUons,
 
 THE PARISIANS. 227 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Duchesse de Tarascon occupied a vast apartment in 
 tlie Rue Royale, close to the Tuileries. She held a high post 
 among the ladies who graced the brilliant Court of the Em- 
 press. She had survived her second husband the Due, who 
 left no issue, and the title died with him. Alain and Enguer- 
 rand were ushered up the grand staircase, lined with tiers of 
 costly exotics as if for a Jete ; but in that and in all kinds of 
 female luxury the Duchesse lived in a state of Jete perpetuelle. 
 The doors on the landing-place were screened by heavy por- 
 tieres 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 Due'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 Se'vres 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- 
 colored 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 ticllised 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 Due, of his father the Marshal and Madame la Mare'ch>le, 
 of the present Duchesse herself, and of some of the piincipal 
 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 
 ♦all ; not large — but with rounded figure inclined to anbon-
 
 2 28 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 un- 
 mistakable 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 Roche- 
 briant. 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 — 
 ficst-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 fair 
 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. " Com- 
 pliment is the perfume of gentilhomtnerie. And if you 
 brought enough of that perfume from the flowers of Roche- 
 briant to distribute among the ladies at Court, you will be 
 terribly the viode 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. T 
 shall be proud to present to their Imperial Majesties so be- 
 coming a cousin. But seat yourselves here, Messieurs, close to 
 my arm-chair ; causonsy 
 
 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 calcu- 
 lated to please Alain, shunning all that might have pained 
 him ; asking him for descriptions of the surrounding scenery
 
 THE PAR IS TANS. 22g 
 
 — 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 
 leplies; then turned to Enguerrand with sprightly small-talk 
 un 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 grav^e, 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 per- 
 sonal 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 a hered- 
 itary chamber. The nearest approach to it was the monarchy 
 of Louis i^hillippe — 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 Com- 
 munists, ready to tear them to pieces. And then — what then } 
 — the commercialists, the agriculturists, the middle class com- 
 bining to elect some dictator who will cannonade the mob, and 
 become a mimic Napoleon, grafted on a mimic Necker or 
 mimic Danton. Oh, Messieurs, 1 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 useful 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 start 
 led and profoundly affected Alain. He remained silent, leav 
 ing 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 i^ 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
 
 ?30 THE PARlSIAiVS. 
 
 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, 
 M. 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 counterbalance to the perilous oscillations of demo- 
 cratic 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 XVL was in moral attributes the best of the Bour- 
 bons, — he dies the death of a felon ; Lous XVIIL, 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 out- 
 law simply because he descends from Henry IV. and has a 
 right to reign. Madame, you appeal to us as among the repre- 
 sentatives 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 honor 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 ujDset the Empire you could 
 get back the Bourbons ? that you would not be in imminent 
 danger of a government infinitely more opposed to the theo- 
 ries on which rest the creed of Legitimists than that of 
 Louis Napoleon ? After all, what is there in the loyalty of
 
 THE PARISIANS. 231 
 
 you Bourbonites that has in it the solid worth of an argu 
 ment 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 in it the 
 person of an individual utterly insignificant in himself } In 
 a word, if you prefer monarchy to the hazard of republican- 
 ism 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 
 honored, a national church secured in reality if not in name ; 
 under it you have united the votes of millions to the estab 
 lishment 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 splendor, 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 opposite scale of 
 the balance of European power. Satisfied with the honor of 
 our alliance, she has lost every other ally ; and her forces 
 neglected, her spirit enervated, her statesmen dreaming be- 
 lievers 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 ;'n- 
 ferior satellite ; without France she is — nothing. Add to all 
 this a Court more brilliant than that of Louis XIV., a sover- 
 eign 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 hotite 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
 
 232 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 throne could possibly gain by a few powerless converts from 
 an unpopulai 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 honor. 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 notrest 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 Engeurrand." 
 
 " 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 honor : it has one cause of rot 
 which now undermines it — dishonest jobbery in its administra- 
 ave departments ; even in that of the army, which apparentlv 
 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 militarv 
 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 after- 
 wards the two friends took leave. ■ ■ 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Three days elapsed before Graham again saw M. Eebeau, 
 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 en- 
 gaged on important matters that took him from home.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 233 
 
 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 be- 
 fore 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 min- 
 utes, said, " You are waiting for your antagonist at dominoes, 
 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 ex- 
 istence 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 St. Si- 
 monian, 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 neighbor'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 read 
 ing or your own reflection ? " 
 
 "Well, from both, but from circumstances in life that in- 
 duced me to read and reflect. I am one of the many victims 
 of the tyrannical law of marriage. When very young I mar- 
 ried 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 hu- 
 miliations — be called contemptuously an ouvrier's mistress.
 
 234 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Then, thou£;h 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 wo- 
 man'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, includ- 
 ing 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 char- 
 acters. And men of your sense should not look for a creed in 
 the fictions of poets and romance-writers." 
 
 " Ah," said Monnier, " I daresay neither Madame de Grant- 
 mesnil 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 1 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 Mont- 
 martre, when there came a slight knock at his door. He was 
 so wrapt in thought that he did not hear the sound, though 
 twice rejDeated. The door opened gently, and M. Lebeau ajv 
 peared 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 be- 
 fore he spoke. " A thousand pardons for disturbing your 
 slumbers, M. 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. 
 
 " M. Lebeau .? " 
 
 " At your service. I promised to give an answer to you] 
 question : accept my apologies that it has been deferred sc
 
 THK PA R IS r A, VS. 235 
 
 long. I shall not this evening go to our cafe; I took tlic lib- 
 erty of calling " 
 
 " M. Lebeau, you are a brick ? " 
 
 " A what, Monsieur ! — a brique ? " 
 
 " I forgot — 3'ou 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 undertak- 
 ing further inquiries. They could only be prosecuted in an- 
 other country, and it would not be worth my while to leave 
 Paris on the chance of gaining so trifling a reward as you pro- 
 pose. 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 1 — what could she do there ? " 
 
 " It is a Spa in great request ; crowded during the summer 
 season with thousands of visitors from all countries. She might 
 have gone there for health or pleasure." 
 
 " Do you think that one could learn more at the Spa itselt 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 de//e — she might have attracted admirers." 
 
 *' If," answered Lebeau, reluctantly, " I can believe the re- 
 port 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 com- 
 promised her honor and sacrificed her future. I believe she 
 would have scorned all proposals that were not those of mar- 
 riage. 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 — ^^^^ ^'''^'^ 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 
 I^ouise Duval Lad been seen at Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly she 
 found some att/ action at that place, and might yet be dis-
 
 236 THE PARIS /A NS. 
 
 covered 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 
 ver}- strong, though I should be willing to serve her, and glad 
 to know 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 will 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 M. Lamb." 
 
 Here M. Lebeau rose and departed. 
 
 Graham relapsed into thought, but a train of thought much 
 more active, mueh 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 ofthat woman 
 operate still more strongly against tendering to her own 
 relation a sum that might indeed secure aid, but would un- 
 questionably arouse suspicions, and perhaps drag into light all 
 that must be concealed. Oh, this cruel mission ! I am indeed 
 an impostor to myself until it is fulfilled. I will go to Aix, and 
 take Kenard with me. I am impatient till I set out, but I can- 
 not quit Paris without once more seeing Isaura. She consents 
 to relinquish the stage ; surely I could wean her too from inti- 
 mate friendship with a woman whose genius has so fatal an effect 
 on enthusiastic minds. And then — and then ?" 
 
 He fell into a delightful reverie ; 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 gen 
 lie sovereign of his household, the sacred mother of his chil 
 dren. 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, reced*'' into the 
 background of the picture. It was all these, no doubt, that had
 
 THE PAKISIAXS. 237 
 
 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. I.amb, 
 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 
 Pans. At the bottom of the court stood a large house, much 
 dilapidated, but bearing the trace of former grandeur in pilas- 
 lers and fretwork in the style of the Renaissance, and a defaced 
 coat of arms, surmounted with a ducal coronet, over the door- 
 way. The house had the aspect of desertion : many of the 
 windows were broken, others were jealously closed with mould- 
 ering 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 re- 
 cognizing Lebeau. 
 
 " What I so early citizen ?" 
 
 "Is it too early .'"' said Lebeau glancing at his watch. " So 
 it is. I was not aware of the time ; but 1 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 senteniously :" while man reposes 
 men advance," 
 
 " A profound truth, Citizen Le Roux ; though, if they ad- 
 vance on a reposing foe, they have blundering leaders unless 
 they march through unguarded by-paths and with a noiseless 
 tread."
 
 238 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 ?ifauteuilzt its head. On 
 the mantlepiece 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, in- 
 deed, 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, nion 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, " No7n 
 (f un petit bonhomme — ilfi'y a rien de tel que les belles manicres." 
 
 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 com- 
 pound of contradictory elements. In his stormy youth there 
 had been lightning-like flashes of good instincts, of irregular 
 honor, 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 loice and warmth —
 
 THE PARISIANS. 239 
 
 time and necessity had improved that gift. Coveting, during 
 his brief career of fashion, tlie distinctions which necessiate 
 lavish expenditure, he had been the most reckless of spend- 
 thrifts, but the neediness which follows waste had never de- 
 stroyed his original sense of personal honor. Certainly Victor de 
 Mauldon 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 honor and temptation. Nor could 
 that sort of question have, through 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 Maule'on ! I pick 
 a pocket ! I cheat at cards! 1 ! " 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 unscrupu- 
 lous 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 there- 
 fore it must be destroyed, no matter what or 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 
 surpreme contempt for the populace. A man with mental 
 powers equal to De Mauldon'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
 
 240 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 happens that genuine liberty is not disarmed in the passage, and 
 what suffering must be undergone by those who live by their habor 
 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 t3^pe in a Victor de Mauldon. 
 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 am- 
 bition more intense, because it increased his scorn for the 
 human instruments it employed. 
 
 Victor de Maule'on 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 forms 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 indi- 
 vidual force of character to find himself among the uppermost in 
 the genial houleversement. 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 MauMon 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 win- 
 dow, when Citizen Le Roux re-entered, closed the window, light- 
 ed two of the sconces, and drew forth from a drawer in the table 
 implements of writing, which he placed thereon noielesslv, as if 
 he feared to disturb M. Lebeau, whose head, buried in his 
 Iiand, 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:
 
 THE PARISIANS. 241 
 
 they will be here in a minute or so." Lebeaii 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 salo7i two men wrapped in cloaks, despite the warmth of 
 the summer night. LelDeax 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 honor 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 com- 
 bination of heat and moisture. The surgeon was about the 
 age of forty, the atheist a few years older. In another min- 
 ute 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 ^nd exit. 
 
 The three new-comers were not Frenchmen — one mi^ht 
 see that at a glance : probably they had reasons for greater 
 precaution than those who entered by the front door. Ot^e, 
 a tall, powerfully-built man, with fair hair and beard, dressed 
 with a certain pretension to elegance — faded threadbare ele- 
 gance — exhibiting no appearance of linen, was a Pole. One 
 • — a slight bald man, very dark and sallow — was an Italian. 
 I'he third, who seemed like an ouvrier in his holiday clothes, 
 tvas 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. " Cwz/r^/rj-," 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 neighbor, who was the Pole, a large cigar-case amply
 
 242 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 furnished ; and the Pole, helping himself to two cigars, handed 
 the case to the man next to him — two only declined 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 Roux 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 
 bloicse, — not that he wore that antique garment, but that he was 
 in a 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 
 nim, " our number for the present seance is complete. To bus- 
 iness. 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 Napoleotiiennes — a 
 fatal mistc^ve 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 the silken city of would-be philosophers 
 and wits, if they were told that,here within this mouldering bar- 
 aque, eight men so little blest by fortune, so little known to fame 
 as ourselves, met to concert the fall of an empire. The Govern- 
 ment would not deem us important enough to notice our exist- 
 ence." 
 
 " I know not that," interrupted the Pole. 
 
 " Ah, pardon," resumed the orator ; " I should have confined 
 my remark to \\\Q.five of us who are Fiench. I did injustice to
 
 THE PARISIANS. 2+3 
 
 the illustrious antecedents of our foreign allies. I know that you 
 Thaddeus Loubisky — that you, Leonardo Raselli — have been t^x) 
 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 ir. defence 
 of freedom which despots and cowards would fain miscall the 
 ) 'rands of the felon, still owe it to your special fraiernity 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 wherever 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 expan- 
 sion. 
 
 " You, valiant Pole — you, politic Italian — enjoy the cor • 
 fidence 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 labor in its revolt from the in- 
 iquities 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, honored alike for the 
 profundity of your science and the probity jf your manners, 
 induced to join us by your abhorrence of priestcraft and su[.t;r- 
 stition — you have 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 Fauvres,' — when the
 
 244 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 time comes wherein soldiers shall fly before the satis ailolfes, 
 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. 
 
 " Vou, 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 coicp-d'etat ; you, cultured in the 
 eloquence of Robespierre himself, and in the persuasive phi- 
 losophy of Robespierre's teacher, Rousseau — you, the idolizeol 
 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 demo- 
 lition of that 'which exists — the Empire, In the course of my 
 special calling of negotiator or agent in the towns of the Midi, 
 1 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 com- 
 municate 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 bonds to which it limits its design and its 
 force. That design unites us; to go beyond would divide. 
 We a'l agree to destroy the Napoleonic dynasty ; none of us 
 mi^ht 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 principle of Fourier; 
 Le Noy adhers to the policy of Danton, and would commence 
 tlie republic by a reign of terror; our Italian ally abhors the 
 notion of general massacre, and advocates individual assassina-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 245 
 
 tion. Ruvigny would annihilate the worship of a De'.ty ; Monniei 
 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 al< 
 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 the most numerous and the more rich — • 
 for a constitutional monarchy, and, if possible, for the abridg 
 ment of universal suffrage, which, in their eyes, tends only to 
 anarchy in the towns and arbitrary rule under priestly influence 
 in the rural distincts. 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 honor to boast such confreres as I see around me. They 
 subscribe, as we concert, for the fall of Bonaparte. The policy 
 I adopt 1 borrow from the policy of the English Liberal. In 
 England, potent millionaires, high-born dukes, devoted Church- 
 men, 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 "i 
 
 " 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 de- 
 voted. 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 sensa- 
 tion. It will begin with a tone of impartiality : it will refrain
 
 246 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 from all violence of invective; it will have- wit, it will have 
 sentiment and eloquence ; it will win its way into ihe salons and 
 Ciifes 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 1 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, 
 wiitten not to alarm but to seduce fluctuating opinions, a com- 
 bination of men immeasurably inferior to us may be anywhere. 
 
 " Cofi/reres, this affair settled, I proceed to distribute among 
 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 mem- 
 ber 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 Mcdccin 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 a 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 
 tlie president, who placed them unopened in his pocket, and 
 resumed — 
 
 " Cotfreres, our seajice 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 ani not 
 satisfied with the progress made by the two travelling mission- 
 aries who complete our Council of Ten ; and though I do not 
 question their zeal, I think my experience may guide it if J
 
 THE FAI^ISIAA'S. 247 
 
 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 meet- 
 ing or transmit instructions to such of our members as may be 
 most usefully employed. For the present, cofifrereSy you are 
 lelieved. Remain only you, dear young author." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the president of the Se- 
 cret Council remained silently musing for some moments ; but 
 his countenance was no longer mooody and overcast — his nos- 
 trils were dilated, as in triumph — there was a half-smile of 
 pride on his lips. Rameau watched him curiously and admir- 
 ingly. The young man had the impressionable, excitable tem- 
 perament common to Parisian genius — especially when it nour- 
 ishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belong- 
 ing 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 
 jead 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 in- 
 toxicated vision — vision indeed intoxicated at this moment, for 
 before it floated the realized image of his aspirations, — a jour- 
 nal of which he was to be editor-in-chief — in which his poetry, 
 his prose, should occupy space as large as he pleased — through 
 which his name, hitherto scarcely 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 b'.s 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 
 rames that posterity shall read. Struck wdth certain articles 
 r f 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 im- 
 pression, that you were exactly the writer I wished to secure to
 
 248 THE PARIS TANS. 
 
 our cause. I therefore sought you in }our rooms, unintro- 
 duced and a stranger, in order to express my admiration of 
 your compositions. Brcf, we soon became friends ; and after 
 comparing minds, I admitted you, at your request, into this Se- 
 cret 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 condi- 
 tions. Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: that station, if the 
 journal succeed, will secure you position and fortune ; if it fail, 
 you will 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 
 v^ears." 
 
 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, " wil^ 
 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 department of a journal intended to 
 make w'ay at its first start, we need the aid, not indeed of men 
 who write better than you, but of men whose fame is estab- 
 lished — whose writings, good or bad, the public run to read, 
 anc will find good even if they are bad. You must consign 
 on£ column to the playful comments and witticisms of Sa- 
 vann." 
 
 " 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 ultra- 
 democratic revolution. If he care for politics at all, he is a 
 constitutionalist, an Orleanist," 
 
 '■'^ Enfant I as an author Savarin will condescend lo con- 
 tribute to your journal, first; because it in no way attempts ic 
 interfere with his own ; secondly — I can tell you a secret — Sa
 
 THE PARISIANS. 249 
 
 varin's journal no longer suffices for his existence ; he has sold 
 more than two-thirds of his 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 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 
 ss soon as he has disposed of the old one. You say that, as a 
 politician, Savarin, an Orleanist, will not aid in an ultra-demo- 
 cratic revolution. Who asks him to do so ? Did I not imply 
 at the meeting that we comnjence 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 lioat 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 Des- 
 moulins. 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 be- 
 yond 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 arti- 
 ficial 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 se- 
 cured 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 fnode 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 ? "
 
 250 
 
 THE PAKISIANS. 
 
 " 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. AUcz, courage ! Take my advice ; see Savarin the first 
 thing to-morrow morning. Of course, my name and calUng you 
 will keep a profound secret from him as from all. Say as mys- 
 teriously as you can that parties you are forbidden to name 
 instruct you to treat with M. Savarin and offer him the terms I 
 l)ave 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 — tha: 
 is, wherever you offer money and don't ask for it." 
 
 Here Lel^eau took up his hat, and, with a courteous nod of 
 adieu, lightly descended the gloomy stairs. 
 
 CHAPTER VHL 
 
 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 
 overbusied 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 remainin?
 
 THE PARISIANS. 251 
 
 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 dis- 
 honorable in me if 1 entered the military service vrder '^he 
 ruling sovereign ? " 
 
 " Certainly not, if your country needed you," 
 " And it may, may it not ? I hear vague rumors of coming 
 war in almost ever}' salon I frequent. There has been gun- 
 powder in the atmosphere we breathe ever since the battle of 
 Sadowa, What think you of German arrogance and ambi- 
 tion ? 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 ajuour-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 border-land 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, pas- 
 sionately ; " and against a Prussian I 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 1 don't like the color 
 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 1 had he spoken
 
 252 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 slightingly of her — of herl 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, loo, would this man, of fairer youth than himself, think 
 of that disparaging counsel, when he 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, " Yoii 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. 
 
 "1 wish now to retract all I said thereon. Mademoiselle 
 Cicogna is not bent on the profession for which she was edu- 
 cated. She would willingly renounce all idea of entering it. 
 The only counter-weight 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 harmo- 
 nizes with the loveliness of her face. In one word, Marquis, 
 I should deem myself honored, 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 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 my- 
 self 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
 
 THE PARISIANS 253 
 
 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 ver)' 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 J 
 said to myself, ' Why should I shrink, with an obsolete old 
 world prejudice, from what my forefathers would have termed 
 a incsalliance 1 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 1 had 
 become familiarly acquainted with her who had thus attracted 
 my eye and engaged my thoughts, she might have become 
 
 mv 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 Roche- 
 briant; I have made myself responsible for the dignity of 
 my name. I could not give that name to one, however peer- 
 less 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 be- 
 come your rival." 
 
 There was something in this speech that jarred upon Gra- 
 ham's sensitive pride. But, on the whole he felt relieved 
 both in honor and in heart. After a few more words, the two 
 young men shook hands and parted. Alain remonnted his 
 horse. The day was now declining. Graham hailed a vacant 
 fiacre^ and directed the driver to Isaura's villa.
 
 2 54 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ISAURA. 
 
 The sun was sinking slowly as Isaura sal at her window, 
 gazing dreamily on the rose-hued clouds that made the western 
 border-land between earth and heaven. On the table before 
 her lay a few sheets of MS. hastily written, not yet reperused. 
 That restless mind of hers had left its trace on the MS. 
 
 It is characteristic perhaps of the different genius of the 
 ^exes, that woman takes to written composition more impul- 
 sively, 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 ; and one well-educated man in ten thou- 
 sand does. So, without serious and settled intention of be- 
 coming an author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and 
 vivid fancy seeks in poetry or romance a confessional — an out- 
 pouring of thought and sentiment, which are mysteries to her- 
 self till she has given them words — and which, frankly re- 
 vealed 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 renun- 
 ciation 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, irresisti- 
 bly 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 jjerils 
 that beset the actress. Here it seemed as if, could she but 
 succeed, her fame would be grateful to the jjride 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 honored name, that 
 name took its place at once amid the higher ranks of the social
 
 THE PARISIANS. 255 
 
 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 in- 
 voluntary that it seemed to her 110 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 in- 
 toxicated 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, in- 
 tensely subjective. It is himself that he expresses— that he repre- 
 sents — 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 un- 
 tutored — 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 idiosyn- 
 crasy — than could be achieved by the art that "sings other peo- 
 ple's words to other people's music." From the work thus com- 
 menced 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 reverie 
 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 
 5he turned away with a restless sigh, her eyes fell on the MS., 
 but the charm of it was gone. A sentiment of distrust in its 
 worth had crept mto 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 him- 
 self to a task half done. She fell again into a reverie, when, 
 starting as from a dream, she heard herself addressed by name, 
 and, turning round, saw Savarin and Gustave Eameau in the 
 room.
 
 256 THE rARISIAAS. 
 
 "We are come, Signorina," said Savarin, "to announce to 
 you a piece of news, and to hazard a petition. 'I'he news is 
 this : my young friend liere has found a M;ucenas who has the 
 good taste so to admire his lucubrations under the no)ii de 
 plume of Alphonse de Valcour as to volunteer the expenses for 
 starting a new journal, of which Gustave Rameau is to be edi- 
 lor-in-chief ; and 1 have promised to assist him as contributor 
 for the tirst two months. I have given him notes of introduc- 
 tion to certain other feiiilktoftistes and critics whom he has on 
 his list. But all put together would not serve to float the jour- 
 nal like a short toman from Madam de Grantmesnil. Know- 
 ing 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 /lonoraires, she has but to name them." 
 
 " Carte b/anche," cried Rameau, eagerly. 
 
 "You know Eulalie too well, M. Savarin," answ^ered Isaura, 
 with a smile half reproachful, " to suppose that she is a mer- 
 cenary in letters and sells her services to the best bidder." 
 
 "Bah, bc/le efi/atife /" 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 
 accom.pany 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 bans mots znd anec- 
 dote ; 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 man- 
 ners ; 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, pleading. 
 
 " Certainly I will, as soon " 
 
 " As soon as you have the prospectus, and the names of the 
 coilaborcieurs," interrupted Rameau. " I hope to send you 
 these in a very few days." 
 
 While Rameau was thus speaking, Savarin had seated him- 
 self by the table, and his eye mechanically resting on the open 
 MS. lighted by chance upon a sentence — an aphorism — em- 
 bodying 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 257 
 
 writers, and, rare even in the best, come upon us like tmths 
 seized by surprise. 
 
 "■ Farblcu f" 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 
 MS. 
 
 "Pardon," said Savarin, humbly; " I confess my sin, but 
 it was so unpremediated that it does not merit a severe pen- 
 ance. Do not look at me so reproachfully. We all know that 
 young ladies keep commonplace-books in which they enter 
 passages that strike them i» the works they read. And you 
 have but shown an exquisite taste in selecting this gern. Do 
 tell me where you found it. It is somewhere in Lamartine ? " 
 
 " No," answered Isaura, half in audibly, 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 
 Ranieau's journal, and I answer for its success." 
 
 Rameau approached, half incredulous, half envious. 
 
 " My dear child," resumed Savarin, drawing away the MS. 
 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 ? 
 
 " Nav, 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 MS., 
 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, 
 mors woman-like than author-like, ashamed even to seem
 
 258 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her back turned, 
 in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her MS., — 
 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' Che'nier 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 trifier 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 MS.; 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 PARISIANS. 259 
 
 Tlie 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 recog- 
 nize. An ord'nary political observer, contemplating the condi- 
 tion of a nation, may ver}^ 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 MS. in his hand. 
 
 " Son of peffidious Albion," said Savarin, gayly, " we feared 
 you had deserted the French alliance. Welcome back to Paris 
 and the entente cor dialed 
 
 " Would I could stay to enjoy such welcome. But I must 
 again quit Paris" 
 
 " Soon to return, fCest-ce pas ? Paris is an irresistible magnet 
 to les beaux esprits. A propos of beaux esptits, be sure to leave 
 orders with your bookseller, if you have one, to enter your name 
 as subscriber to a new journal." 
 
 " Certainly, if M. 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. Gnstave Rameau 1 " 
 
 " No, ndeed ! " said Isaura, somewhat frightened at the 
 idea. 
 
 " But I hope," said Savarin, " that the Signorina may be 
 come a contributor too important for an editor to offend by 
 insulting her favorites, Tasso included. Rameau and I came 
 hither to entreat her influence with her intimate and illustrious
 
 26c THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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- law of marriage ? " 
 said Graham, with a sarcastic smile, which concealed the quiver 
 of his lip and the pain in his voice. 
 
 " Nay," answering 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 ro?nait, 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 MS. 
 
 " How so ? " asked Graham, his eye following the glance. 
 
 " If the writer of this MS. 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 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 Grant- 
 mesnil V 
 
 " Bah !" said Savarin, " I should indeed be guilty of mockery 
 if I p-^id the Signorina so false a compliment as to say that in 
 a firs*^ effort she attained to the style of one of the most finished 
 sovereigns of language that has ever swa3'ed 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 bravos you could command 
 as actress and singer." The Englishman pressed his hand con- 
 vulsively 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 enthuastic 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 into a sentiment of unutterable sadness and com- 
 passion. Practical man as he was, he knew so well all the 
 dangers, all the snares, all the sorrows, all the scandals menacing
 
 THE PARISIANS. 261 
 
 name and fame, that in the world of Paris must beset the father- 
 less girl who, not less in authorship than on the stage, leaves the 
 safeguard of private live 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 Bohetnicnne! 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 
 gained 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. " Per- 
 haps 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 MS. was fairly for- 
 gotten. 
 
 " 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
 
 2G2 TlfK PARISIANS. 
 
 your subscribers. Mademoiselle, my best regards to Signora 
 Venosta. When I see you again, no doubt you will ha\'e be- 
 come famous." 
 
 Isaura here could not control herself. She rose impulsively, 
 and approached him, holding out her hand and attempting to 
 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 t — 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 you 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 fi<ure 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 judg- 
 ment as the conduct of a new journal, and a journal, too, wljch 
 is to address itself to the i?eau monde. However, it is not for 
 me to criticise a selection which brings a godsend 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 M. Gustave Rameau." 
 
 " My good nature does not go to that extent. It is Rameau 
 who confers a service upon me. Pesie ! man chct, 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 Iias fnilf^d me of Inte ; and tliis morninir I did not ex-
 
 TIFE PARISIANS. 263 
 
 actly 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 publisliers — 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 collahorateun 
 of whose company I am not ashamed are in the same boat. 
 But the charming young 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 MS, 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, 
 liut once an author always an author." 
 
 " Ah ! is it so ? If you had a beloved daughter, S.-warin, 
 would you enconragevher 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 hus- 
 bands." 
 
 " Ah you think the Signorina will marry one of those uncom- 
 lortable 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 the improvement in Gustave's 
 moral life which she thinks a union with Madomoiselle Cicogna 
 would achieve. At all events, the fair Italian would have in 
 Rameau a husband who would not suffer her to bury her talerXs 
 mider a bushel. If she succeeds as a writer (by succeeding I 
 mean making money), he will see that her ink-bottle is nevei 
 empty ; 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 he will manage to spend." 
 
 " I thought you had an esteem and regard for Made- 
 moiselle Cicogna. It is Madame, your wife, I suppose, who 
 has a grudge against her ? "
 
 264 ^^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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 coi tributors. 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 con- 
 versation. 
 
 When he had set down his lively companion, Vane dismissed 
 \v\i, 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 pu]Dil of 
 Madame de Grantmesnil, the associate of Gustave Rameau, 
 the rival of Julie Caumartin, the aspirant to that pure atmos- 
 phere 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 mvsterv which 
 oppresses me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insolu- 
 ble, — as it is, how fortunate that I did not find her alone — 
 did not utter the words that would fain have leapt from my 
 heart — did not say, " 1 may not be the rich man I seem, but 
 in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because struggle 
 and labor are the sinews of ambition ! Should I be rich, will 
 you adorn my station ! should I be poor, wiP you enrich 
 povertv with your smile ? And can you, in either case, forego 
 — really, painlessly forego, as you led m"e 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 excite- 
 ments 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 J* No — no ! — woe is me, no ! "
 
 THR PAFISIAA^S. 
 
 265 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A FEW wecKS after the date of the preceding chapter a gay 
 y arty of men were assembled at supper m one of the private 
 salons of the Maison Dorce. 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 fam- 
 iliarly together. Art, Literature, and the Bourse had also their 
 representatives — in Henri Bernard, a rising young portrait- 
 painter, whom the Emperor honored with his patronage, the 
 Vicomte de Breze, and M. Savarin. Science was not altogeth- 
 er 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 or 
 ungenial guest at any banquet in which the Graces relaxed their 
 zones. Martial glory was also represented at the social gather- 
 ing 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 M. 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,\\Y>ox\ 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
 
 266 THE FARISTAiVS. 
 
 1 do think there is a smattering of philosophy in tliat 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 En- 
 glish 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 live- 
 liness ; 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 is 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, twirl- 
 ing his moustache ; " if the Emperor were not in his dotage, 
 their Sadowa would ere this have cost them their Rhine." 
 
 " The Germans," resumed Savarin, unheeding the inter- 
 ruption, " 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 mfancy. All 
 people subject to toothache are sentimental. Goethe was a 
 martyr to toothache. Werter was written in one of those 
 paroxysms which predispose genius to suicide. But the 
 German character is not all toothache ; beer and t<^othache 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 sour-crout and stewed prunes, they produce fumes 
 of self-conceit. A German has little of French vanity ; he 
 has Germa*" self-esteem. He extends the esteem of self to 
 those arouiid him ; his home, his village, his city, his coun- 
 try — all belong to him. It is a duty he owes to himself to 
 defend them. Give him his pipe and sabre — and, M. 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 franc- 
 piece if I borrowed it from your parse and had to give it back 
 the next day."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 267 
 
 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 
 toothache. We drinkers of the champagne, all our own, have 
 only pity for the rest of the human race. This new jour 
 nal ' Les Sens Commun' has a strange title, M. 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 Comtmin.' It is mysterious." 
 
 " True," said Savarin ; " it may mean the Sensus communis 
 of the Latin, or the Good Sense of the English. The Latin 
 phrase signifies the sense of the common interest ; the F^ng- 
 lish 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 re- 
 markable ; for they are so unlike the articles in other journals, 
 whether those journals be the best or worst. Eor 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 Br^ze, who piqued himself on 
 the polish of his style, " they are certainly not the composi- 
 tion of any eminent writer. No eloquence, no sentiment ; 
 though I ought not to speak disparagingly of a fellow-con- 
 tributor." 
 
 " All that may be very true," said Savarin, " but M. En- 
 guerrand 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 Comniitn^'' 
 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 disappointe d 
 indeed if that does not charm you. No lack of eloquence and 
 sentiment there." 
 
 " I am rather tired of eloquence and sentiment," said F^n-
 
 268 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 guerrand. " 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 Maule'on 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 comninn, must think that 
 the less said about him the better. I remember him well ; a 
 terrible mauvais siijet, but superbly handsome. There was a 
 shocking story about the jewels of a foreign duchesse, which 
 obliged him to leave Paris." 
 
 " But," said Savarin, " (he 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 com- 
 mon one among young Parisians — he had lavished away his 
 fortune. He returns when, either by heritage or his own exer- 
 tions, he has secured elsewhere a competence." 
 
 " Nevertheless I cannot think that society will receive 
 bun," said Bacourt. " When he left Paris, there was one joy- 
 ous 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, mo?i 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 MauMon — among whom are the Marquis 
 de Rochebriant, the Counts De Passy, De Beauvilliers, De 
 Chavigny, my father, and of course his two sons — and submit- 
 ted to us the proofs which completely clear the Vicomte de 
 MauMon of ev-en a suspicion of fraud or dishonor in the affair 
 of the jewels. The proofs include the written attestation of 
 the Duke himself, and letters from that nobleman after De 
 Mauldon's disappearance from Paris, expressive of great esteem, 
 and, indeed, of great admiration, for the Vicomte's sense of 
 honor and generosity of character. The result of this family 
 council was that we all went in a body to call on De Maul^on
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 269 
 
 And he dined with my father that same day. You l<now 
 enough of Count de Vandemar, and, I may add, of my mother, 
 to be sure 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 
 honor." 
 
 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'i Louvier is no relation of that well-born vaurten ; why 
 should he summon your family council .'' " 
 
 " Louvier excused his interference on the ground of early 
 and intimate friendship with De Mauldon, 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 honor of our rehabilitated 
 kinsman. I and Raoul go." 
 
 " Yes, I shall be charmed to meet again a man who, what- 
 ever might be his errors in youth, on which," added Alain, 
 slightly coloring, " it certainly does not become me to be severe, 
 must have suffered the most poignant anguish a man of honor 
 can undergo — viz, honor suspected ; and who now, whether by 
 years or sorrow, is so changed that I cannot recognize a like- 
 ness to the character I have just heard given to him as maiivais 
 sttjet and vaurten." 
 
 " Bravo ! " cried Enguerrand ; " all honor 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 Brezd ; " 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 formid - 
 able reputation he acquired in youth ; his manner is so 
 singularly mild and gentle, his conversation so winningly 
 modest, so void in pretence, and his mode of life is as simple 
 fts that of a Spanish hidalgo." 
 
 " He does not, then, affect the role of Monte Christo," said
 
 270 ^-^^-^ PARISIANS. 
 
 Duplessis, " and buy himself into notice, like that hero ol 
 romance ? " 
 
 " Certainly not : he says verj' 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 Conwiun' 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 Brdzd. 
 
 " 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 pre- 
 sume," rejoined De Brdze, 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 favor 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 Mauldon 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, M. Duplessis," 
 said En2:uerrand. 
 
 " 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 Duch- 
 esse de Tarascon's ball. You as one of her special favorites, 
 will doubtless honor her reunion." 
 
 " Yes ; I have promised my daughter to go to the ball. 
 But the Duchesse is Imperialist. M. de Mauldon seems to be 
 either a Legitimist, according to M. le Marquis, or an Orleanist, 
 according to our friend De Brdzd." 
 
 " 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 
 wit'n De Mauleon, though but distantly "
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 271 
 
 ** 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 sen- 
 sation 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 suc- 
 cess. 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 Cofntnun,^^ 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 
 defined conjecture. They were signed Pierre Firmin — supposed 
 to be a ?iom de plume^ as that name was utterly unknown in the 
 world of letters. They affected the tone of an impartial ob- 
 server ; 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 forboding 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 thai liltle was
 
 272 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 not disrespectful ; yet, day afccr day, tlio articles contributed to 
 sap the Empire. All inalcontenls of ever)' 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 philoso- 
 phers on paper who thought that their contradictory crochets 
 could fuse themselves into any single Utopia, or that any social 
 edifice, hurriedly run up by the crazy few, could become a per- 
 manent habitation for the turbulent many, without the clamps 
 ot 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 dis- 
 dained 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 popularitv' of Tacitus, and, always quietly under- 
 mining 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 un- 
 wonted ev-ent. 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 favor 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 Maul^on 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 273 
 
 nature, he had no blame for those who did go — not for Enguer- 
 rand, still less, of course, for Alain. 
 
 Something, too, might well here be said as to his feeling 
 towards Victor de Mauldon. 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 ieWow-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 friend- 
 ship, 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 honor. 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 jiistificatives. 
 I St. That he had served under another name in the ranks of 
 the army in Algiers ; had distinguished himself there for signal 
 valor, and received, with promotion, the decoration of the cross. 
 His real name was known only to his Colonel, and on quitting 
 llie service the Colonel placed in his hands a letter of warm 
 eulogy on his conduct and identifying him as Victor de Mauleon. 
 2dly. That in California he had saved a wealthy family from 
 midnight murder, fighting single-handed against and overmaster- 
 ing three ruffians, and declining all other reward from those 
 he had preserved than a written attestation of their gratitude. 
 In all countries valor ranks high in the list of virtues ; in no 
 country does it so absolve from vices as it does in France.
 
 -., - THE PARISIANS. 
 
 But as yet Victor de Mauldon's vindication was only known 
 by a few, and those belonging to the gayer circles of life. Ho\* 
 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 dis- 
 tinguished 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 much older man, whom En- 
 guerrand was presenting to the Duchesse, and in whom Du- 
 plessis rightly divined the Vicomte de Maule'on. Certainly if 
 •no one could have recognized M. Lebeau in the stately person- 
 ao-e who had visited Louvier, still less could one who had heard 
 of the wild feats of the roi des viveiirs in his youth reconcile 
 belief in such tales with the quiet modesty of mien which dis- 
 tinguished 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 moustache, there was something 
 emphatically masculine in the contour of the close-shaven cheek 
 and resolute jaw, in a forehead broad at the temples, and pro- 
 tuberant 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 wonder- 
 fully fascinating when they smiled. Altogether, about this Vic- 
 tor de Maule'on 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 ad-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 275 
 
 venturous 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 al- 
 ways a mixed feeling of curiosity and respect for the lion of a gen- 
 eration 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, lend- 
 ing his arm to a lady of the same age radiant in diamonds, 
 passed by towards the ballroom, 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 Maule'on. 
 
 " The Baron De Lacy now Count d' Epinay, ambassador at 
 
 the Court of , and, if report speak true, likely soon to 
 
 exchange that post for the portefeuille of Minister." 
 
 "He has got on in life since I saw him last, the little Barcn. 
 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 daresay, when, being a 
 parvenu despite his usurped title of Baron, he aspired to the 
 etitree 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."
 
 2^(5 ^'^^^" PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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 in- 
 to tlie chamber, spoke well, defended the coup-d' etat. H« has 
 just been made Prefet of the great department of the , a pop- 
 ular 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 Mauldon said this, he moved from the col- 
 umn and advanced toward 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 M. Hennequin," said Enguerrand, interposing, 
 and wishing good-naturedly to save De Mauleon the awkward- 
 ness of introducing himself, — " allow me to introduce 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 M. le Comte had 
 returned to Paris," and, moving to the doorway, made his sal- 
 utation to the hostess, and disappeared. 
 
 " The insolent ! " muttered Enguerrand. 
 
 " Hush ! " said De Maule'on 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 au*:hority 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 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 
 (hence by a young and very pretty girl resigned to his charge 
 by a cavalier with wliom she had been dancing. She was the
 
 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 277 
 
 only daughter of Duplessis, and he vahied her even more than 
 the millions he had made at the Bourse. " The Princess," she 
 said, " has been swept ofif in the train gf 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 1 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 quad 
 rille, 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 
 ballroom. 
 
 The girl glanced at her tablet. 
 
 " Well, the first on the list is Milord somebody, with an un- 
 pronounceable 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 /^////^;v, M. de Bre'zd." 
 
 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 ballroom ; 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 h'i ances- 
 try. Perhaps he still disliked Alain, but the dislike tvas now 
 accompanied with a certain, not hostile, interest ; and if he 
 became connected with the race, the pride in it might grow con- 
 tagious. 
 
 They had not been long in the ballroom before Alain came 
 up to claim his promised partner. In saluting Duplessis, his
 
 278 
 
 THE r ARTS TANS. 
 
 manner was the same as usual — not more cordial, not less cere< 
 moniouslv 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 
 prett}' girl in the room. In talking with the Vicomte de 
 Br^zd in the intervals of the dance, he had made some passing 
 remark on her beauty ; De Breze 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 con- 
 versation. 
 
 Now, as they took their place 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 think it a ver}' pleasant ball, Mademoiselle ? " 
 
 " Yes," dropped, in almost inaudible reply, from Valerie's 
 rosy lips. 
 
 " And not overcrowded, 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 again : — 
 
 " They tell me the last season was more than usually gay ; 
 of that I cannot judge, for it was wellnigh 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 Vale'rie 
 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 lie more habitually
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 279 
 
 danced ; and it was with rather a sensation of relief that he 
 made his parting bow and receded into the crowd of by- 
 standers. 
 
 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 posi- 
 tion 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 — to 
 men who in youth had looked up to himself, and whose daz- 
 zling career of honors 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 Mauldon 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 standing of the two men. One day 
 calling on Hennequin, he found him in a great state of nervous 
 excitement. The avocat had received a public insult in the 
 salo7i of a noble, to whom De Maule'on 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 spa dassin — a duelist little less re- 
 nowned for skill in all weapons than De Mauldon 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 honorable and dis- 
 tinguished career opening before him, marriage with the 
 woman he loved : still he had the Frenchman's point of 
 honor. He had been told that he must fight ; well, then, he 
 must. He asked De Mauleon to be one of his seconds, and, in
 
 28o THE PARISIANS. 
 
 asking him, sank in his chair, covered his face with his hands 
 and burst into tears. 
 
 " Wait till to-morrow," said De Maule'on ; " take no step till 
 then. Meanwhile, you are in my hands, and I answer ^ot 
 your honor." 
 
 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 chal- 
 lenge ensued; a duel with swords took place the next morning. 
 De Mauldon disarmed and wounded his antagonist, not gravely, 
 but sufficiently to terminate the encounter. He assisted to con- 
 vey 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 ? 
 tor 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/oi / tvQ.rY 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 that friend his life, his marriage, his honor, 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 V.- 
 comte de MauMon, 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 m.an 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 281 
 
 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 servents. He rose and answered the summons. 
 He recoiled a few paces on recognizing in his visitor M. Henne- 
 quin. 
 
 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 XhQ 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 honor to meet you 
 last night." 
 
 " It appears to me M. Hennequin, that you, as an avocat so 
 eminent, might have convinced yourself very readily of that 
 fact." 
 
 " M. le Vicomte, I was in Switzerland with my wife at the 
 lime of the unfortunate affair in which you were involved." 
 
 " But when you returned to Paris, yon might perhaps have 
 deigned to make inquiries sO' affecting the honor of one you had 
 called a friend, and for whom you had professed" — De Mauleon 
 paused ; he disdained to add — " an eternal gratitude." 
 
 Hennequin colored slightly, bat replied with self-posses- 
 sion — 
 
 " I certainly did inquire. I did hear tha^ 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 re- 
 membered, that relations so high-placed receive you so cordial- 
 ly, — now, I rejoice to think that you will have no difficulty in 
 regaining a social position never really lost, but for a time re- 
 signed." 
 
 " I am duly sensible of the friendly joy you express. I was
 
 2S2 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 reading the other clay in a lively autlior 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, M. 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 cidevant vaurien 
 before him. Again he stretched forth his hand, and this time 
 grasped De Mauldon's warmly. " Forgive me," he said, feel- 
 ingly 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, tliough but slightly, the service 
 I owe you." 
 
 De Mauldon looked steadily at the Prefet, and said slowly, 
 " \^'ould you ser\'e 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 the other. Let it emanate solely from your 
 practised judgment." 
 
 " Be it so," said Hennequin, wondering what was to come. 
 
 De MauMon 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 imniediately succeeded the fall of Louis 
 Philij^pe 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 any fair opening under
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 283 
 
 the empire ? You pause. Answer, as you liave 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 ceutious 
 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 admis- 
 sion 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 oppo 
 sition 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 en- 
 courage 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 fron the turbulent vul- 
 garity of politics." 
 
 " I am answered. Thank you once more. The serv'ice I 
 rendered you once is requited now." 
 
 " No, indeed — no ; but will you dine with me quietly to-day, 
 and allow me to present to you my wife and two children, born 
 since we parted 1 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 Count de Beauvilliers, to meet some of the Corps 
 Diplomatique. I must make good my place in the salons, since
 
 284 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 ihe 
 scum conies uppermost." 
 
 " No fear of that. The subterranean barracks and railway 
 have ended forever the rise of the scum — the reign of the ca- 
 naille and its barricades." 
 
 " Adieu, my dear Hennequin. My respectful hommages a 
 ^farlame." 
 
 After that day the writings of Pierre Firmin in " Le Sens 
 Connnun" 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 MS. had passed into print ; 
 it came out in the French fashion of feuillctons — a small de- 
 tacliment 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 installment 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 favorites 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 sanguinelv 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 scarc'ely realized her dawning fame, 
 she was drawn from her quiet home and retired habits ; she was 
 fctce 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 285 
 
 metropolis, but especially in Paris, seeks to gain borrowed 
 light from luminaries in art and letters. But the very admira- 
 tion 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 dresses 
 of female authors and the familiar greetings of male authors who 
 frankly lived in philosophical disdain af the conventions respect- 
 ed by sober, decorous mortals. On the other hand, in the civ- 
 ilities 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 toward the 
 young stranger with no other protector than Signora Venosta, 
 the ci-devant public singer, who had made her debut in a journal 
 edited by 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 one lively soiree, 
 and Savarin laughed at her shrinking fastidiousness as that of 
 a child's ignorance of the world. But still she had her morn 
 ings to herself ; and in those mornings, devoted to the contin- 
 uance 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 re- 
 nounced all idea of the professional career which he had evi- 
 dently disapproved. Life then seemed to her a bright posses- 
 sion. We have seen that she had begun \v^xro77ian without plan- 
 ning 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 forboded a tragic 
 close. But for the general reader it became, with every chap- 
 ter, still more interesting : the poor child had a singularly musi- 
 cal gift of style — a music which lent itself naturally to pathos. 
 Every young writer knows how his work, if one of feeling, will
 
 2 86 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 color itself from some truth in his innermost self, and, in pro- 
 portion 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 lie 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 own personality and lives in existences 
 that take no colorings 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 Ensflishman — 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 lov^e, 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 I In the occupa- 
 tion 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 faiicied 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 Sava- 
 rin'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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 287 
 
 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 aston- 
 ishment at the power of a female writer so young to rival the 
 veteran practitioners of fiction in the creation of interest in im- 
 aginary 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 everyday ex- 
 istence. 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 art of 
 compliment. I am by no means flattered by what he says of my 
 trifles, and I daresay 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 '■ Se7is Commun,' and on the chat- 
 eaux en Espag?ie which he constructs thereon, he has already 
 furnished an apartment in the Chassee d'Antin, and talks of 
 setting up a toupe 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 wonder- 
 ment over the words referring to herself in Graham's letter 
 Read through but once, she knew them by heart. What! did 
 he consider those characters she had represented as wholly im- 
 aginary ? In one — the most prominent, the most attractive — ■
 
 288 TJIE PARISIANS. 
 
 could he detect no likeness to himself ? What ! did he consider 
 those characters she had represented as wholly imaginar)' ? In 
 one — the most prominent, the most attractive — could he detect 
 no likeness to himself ? What ! did he consider so " over-ro- 
 mantic 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 
 lomantic — 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 
 on which the first kiss was interchanged, nay, of a violet gath- 
 ered, 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 ex- 
 cuse, there is in man an orignal 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 re- 
 member any English poet whom we should consider conspicu- 
 ously eminent in that lore, unless it be the prose poet, nowadays 
 generally underrated and little read, who wrote the letters oi 
 Clarissa Harlowe. I say all this in vindication of Graham 
 Vane, if, though a very clever man in his way, and by no means
 
 THE PARISIANS. 289 
 
 uninstructed in human nature, he had utterly failed in compre- 
 hending 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 lan- 
 guage which cannot explain itself except in music. So speaks 
 in the human heart, much which is akin to music. Fiction (that is, 
 poetr}', whether in form of rhyme or prose) speaks thus pretty 
 often. A reader must be more commonplace than, I trust, my 
 gei.tle 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, idea- 
 lized, 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 per- 
 suading 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 work-day real life. 
 
 In this frame of mind, then, he had written to Savarin, and 
 the answer he received hardened it still more. Savarin had re- 
 plied, 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 ex-
 
 igo THE PARISIANS. 
 
 perience and a closer study of that model of eloquent st)'le, — 
 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 
 ^ the heroine and Uie marriage of the writer. 
 
 CHArTER V. 
 
 And still the weeks glided on ; autumn succeeded to sum- 
 mer, the winter to autumn : the season of Paris was at its 
 height. The wondrous Capital seemed to repay its Imperial 
 embellisher by the splendor and joy of \\.% 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 ob- 
 servers felt anxious. Napoleon had renounced les idees Napol- 
 eonietines. Pie 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 Commufi" 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 
 Not 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 the 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 contributers, and was then referred 
 to the publisher, whom he supjiosed iM. Lebeau had secured, 
 and received the first quarter of his salary in advance. The 
 salary was a irille compared to the extra prohts thus generously
 
 THE PARISIANS. 291 
 
 volunteered. He called at Lebeau's office, and saw only the 
 clerk, who said his c/ief was abroad. 
 
 Prosperity produced a marked change for the better, if not 
 in the substance of Rameau's character, at least in his man- 
 ners 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 tliis new-found genius. But there was a deeper and 
 more potent cause for sympathy with the success of his fair 
 young contributer. 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 accom- 
 panied with a certain reverence, the reverence with which the 
 ancient knighthood, in its love for women, honored 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 af- 
 fection. 
 
 I do not think that, even if she had never known the Eng- 
 lishman, she would have really become in love with Rameau, 
 despite the picturesque beauty of his countenance, and the con- 
 geniality of literary pursuits; but perhaps she might h.?L\'e. fancied 
 herself in love with him. And till one, whether man or woman, 
 has known real love, fancy is readily mistaken for it. But, lit- 
 tle as she had seen of Graham, and that little not of itself wholly 
 favorable 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. Siill, for Rameau her exquisitely kind 
 and sympathizing nature conceived one of those senti- 
 ments 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 corapassi'»-n 
 was checked by her perception of his more unaimable and e -
 
 2^2 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 vious attributes. But now those attributes, if still existent, had 
 ceased to be apparent to her, and the compassion became un- 
 alloyed. Indeed it was thus so far increased, that it was impos- 
 sible for any friendly observer to look at the beautiful face of 
 this youth, prematurely wasted and worn, without the kindli- 
 ness of pity. His prosperity had brightened and sweetened 
 the expression of that face, but it had not effaced the vesti^fes 
 of decay; rather perhaps deepened them, for the duties of his 
 post necessitated a regular labor, to which he had been unaccus- 
 tomed, and the regular labor 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 i:ourse, 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 his spirits, and the 
 contrast saddened her. Intellectually, too, she felt for him 
 compassion. She recognized and respected in him the yearn- 
 ings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the ar- 
 rogance 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 arro- 
 gance, 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 warn- 
 ing and urging ; and the young man took all these " preach- 
 ments " with a pleased submissive patience. Such, as the new 
 year dawned upon the grave of the old one, was the position 
 between tliese 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 dis- 
 tinctly 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. Lebcau.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 293 
 
 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 on 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 ex- 
 perience if you learned my bequest without being prevised of 
 the conditions which I am about to impose upon your honor. 
 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 pit- 
 tance. 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 irregu- 
 larities 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 ob- 
 tained a few pupils, and often lost them as soon as gained. Pie 
 wa« 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 quar- 
 terly from some person or other, and it was an unhappy pro-
 
 ,^4 ^^^ PAK/SrAATS. 
 
 vision for him. It tended to make him an idler in his propel 
 calling ; and whenever he received the pa}Tnent he spent it in 
 debauch, to the neglect, while it lasted, of his pupils. This 
 man had residing with him a young daughter, singularly beau- 
 tiful. You may divine the rest. I fell in love with her — a 
 love deepened by the compassion wdth 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. 1 knew that she did not love me — there was little, in- 
 deed, to captivate her fancy in a poor, threadbare 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 he con- 
 tinued 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 hap- 
 pened to hear from a fellow-student that his sister, who was the 
 principle of a ladies' school in Cheltenham, had 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 suffi- 
 ciently acquainted with English to make his instructions intel- 
 ligible 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 fam- 
 ilies I communicated this intelligence to Duval. He caught 
 ai 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 Y.n- 
 gland with specimens of Duval's drawings. Li a few days the 
 oiler of an engagement arrived, was accepted, and Duval and 
 his daughter set out for Cheltenham. At the eve of theii 
 departure, Louise, profoundly dejected at the prospect of ban- 
 -shment to a foreign country, and placing no trust in her 
 father's reform to steady habits, evinced a tenderness for me
 
 THE PARISIANS. 295 
 
 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 com- 
 plied with the request. Duval had been about a week at the 
 watering-place, and was discharging the duties he had under- 
 taken with such unwonted steadiness and regularity that I 
 began sorrowfully to feel I no longer had 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 ex- 
 hausted; 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 that he had always gone for it in person, but to whom 
 he went was a secret which he had never divulged. And at 
 this critical juncture his mind was too enfeebled even to com- 
 prehend 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 pro- 
 tector was thus afflicted. There seemed but one alternative 
 to that of abandoning her altogther — viz — 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 Enghsh 
 ceremony and Protestant ritual. Shortly after our mar- 
 riage 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
 
 296 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 ieft much alone with her poor father in the daytime. Tlie 
 defects in her character became more and more visible. She 
 reproached me for the solitude to which 1 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 humor and 
 manner of Louise. She was no longer peevish, irascible, reproach- 
 ful, but taciturn and thoughtful. She seemed to me under the 
 intiuence of some suppressed excitement, her cheeks flushed 
 and her eye abstracted. At length one evening when I re 
 turned I found her gone. She did not return' 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 had lodged had no coticierge \\\iom. 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 to- 
 wards the evening. Two terrible conjectures beset me : either in 
 her walks she had met some admirer, with whom she had tied 
 or, unable to bear the companionship and poverty of a imion 
 which she had begun to loathe, she had gone forth to drown 
 herself in the Seine. On the third day of 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 ad- 
 vantage of my inexperienced youth and friendless position to 
 decoy me into an illegal marriage. My only consolation undei 
 my calamity and disgrace is, that I am at least free from a de- 
 tested 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 refuge I have sought, 
 and have the audacity to molest me, you would but subject your- 
 self to the chastisement you so richly desen'C. 
 
 ' Louise Duval.' 
 
 " At the perusal of this cold-hearted ungrateful letter, the 
 love I had felt for this woman — already much shaken by hei
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 297 
 
 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 1 
 
 " When 1 recovered from the stun which was the first effect 
 of her letter, I sought the opinion of an avotie in the neighbor- 
 hood, 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 be- 
 longed — and, above all, without the form of civil contract 
 which is indispensable to the legal marriage of a French sub- 
 ject. 
 
 " The aToue 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 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 question hereafter as to her single 
 state and absolute right to re-marry. 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 honor in leaving that honor in so questionable a 
 point of view, I was aroused by a letter from the distant kins- 
 man by whom hitherto I had been so neglected. \\\ the pre- 
 vious 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 affair connected with his inheritance per- 
 mitted, I returned to Paris, and again saw M. Sartiges. I had
 
 2Qg THE PARISIANS. 
 
 never heard from Louise, nor from any one connected with her, 
 since the letter you have read. No steps had been taken to an- 
 nul the marriage, and sufTicient time had elapsed to render it 
 improbable that such steps would be taken now. But rf 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 meas- 
 ures that occurred to him to ascertain where Louise was, and 
 who was the relation with whom she asserted she had found 
 refuge. The police were employed ; advertisments were issued 
 concealing names, but sufficiently clear to be intelligible to 
 Louise if they came under her eyes, 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 hither- 
 to failed of discovering her, but were sanguine of success, when 
 a few weeks after these advertisements a packet reached M. 
 Sartiges, inclosing 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 considdered by M. Sartiges as well as 
 myself. Here, then, all inquiry ceased — the police were dis- 
 missed. 1 was free. By little and little I overcame the pain- 
 ful 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 marriasre — nearlv five vears after I had received the 
 certificates of Louise's death — I and your aunt made a summer 
 excursion into the countrv 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, stumbleci 
 and fell just before my feet ; I took her up, and as she was cry- 
 ing 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 299 
 
 little trace of the needy, careworn, 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, be- 
 coming aware of what she called the ' persecution* of the adver- 
 tisements 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 repa- 
 ration 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, 
 ;:o 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 1 did not attempt to interrupt her. The blow had 
 so crushed me that I scarcely struggled under it ; only, as she 
 turned tc leave me, I suddenly recollected that the child, when 
 taken from my arms, had called her ^ Ma man,' 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 ! c^n you insult me by such a doubt ? No ! 
 she cried out, impulsively and haughtily. 'But, as I was not 
 legally your v/ife, 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 proprosal. 
 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, J
 
 300 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 dis« 
 cover 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 ir, but Louise had 
 already turned scornfully towards the bank on which she had 
 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 wliich she did it ! —not as a 
 mother who loves her child. Just then oiher passengers ap- 
 peared 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 fr3m me, and was surely 
 best off under the mother's care. Thus I sought fo comfort 
 and to delude myself. 
 
 "The next day Janet and I left Aix-la-Chapelle and re- 
 turned 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 under- 
 went a silent revolution. I had previousl); cherished the am- 
 bition common to most men in public life — the ambition for 
 fame, for place, for power. That ambition left me; 1 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 — viz., that I had previously 
 borne another name — the name of her husband — and finding 
 me wealthy and honored, might hereafter be tempted to claim 
 for herself or her daughter the ties she abjured for both while
 
 THf PARISIANS. 301 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumstances placed at my disposal. I was alanned when ev^en 
 such quiet exercise of mind and fortune acquired a sort of cele- 
 brity. How painfully I shrank from it ! The world attributed 
 my dread of publicity to unaffected modesty. The world prais 
 ed 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 
 borne 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 con- 
 science I had so long sought to tranquillize became terribly re- 
 proachful. 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 clue 
 to the whereabouts of Louise, should any have been gained 
 since I last saw her, was left. What then to do I knew not. 1 
 did not dare to make inquiries through strangers, which, if dis- 
 covering my child, might also bring to light a marria.ge thai 
 would have dishonored the memory of my lost saint. I return- 
 ed 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, v/ith the exception of trifling 
 legacies^ and donations to public charities, the whole of my for-
 
 302 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 fune. But you will understand by this letter that it is to be 
 held on a trust which I cannot specify in my will. 1 could not, 
 without dishonoring 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 device 
 which would not arouse gossip and suspicion and furnish ulti- 
 mately a clue to the discovery I would shun. I calculate that, 
 after all deductions, the sum that will devolve to you will be 
 about ^220,000. That which I mean to be absolutely and at 
 once yours is the comparatively trifling legacy of ;^2 0,0:0. 
 If Louise's child be not living, or if you find full reason to sup- 
 pose 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 
 comes. You perceive that it is your object if possible, even 
 more than mine, to preserve free from slur the name and mem- 
 ory 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 constrainingyour inclinations, you could make her 
 yowx wife. She would then naturally share with you my fortune 
 and all the 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 circum- 
 stances were true, her daughter has possibly been educated 
 and reared with tenderness and care. You have already as- 
 sured me that you have no prior attachment. But if, on dis- 
 covering this child, you find her already married, or one whom 
 you could not love or esteem, I leave it implicitly to your honor 
 and judgment to detemiine what share of the _;^2oo,ooo 
 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 future 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 honor with the largest share of prac- 
 tical sense and knowledge of life. 'J'he main difficulty, what- 
 ever this lost girl may derive from my substance, will be in 
 devising some means to convey it to her so that neither she roi
 
 THE PARISIANS. 303 
 
 those around her may trace the bequest to me. She can never 
 be acknowledeged 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. Tliis 
 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 in- 
 formation 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 in- 
 quiries 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
 
 304 ^^^^ PARISIAA^S. 
 
 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 sor- 
 row that took him to the tomb of the aunt he so revered, and 
 whose honored memory was subjected to so great a risk ; the 
 sliglitness of cliange in his expenditure and mode of life, aftei 
 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 re- 
 pulsive to his inclinations. Tacitly he subscribed to the reason for 
 the 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 honor of his aunt, of 
 Richard King himself — his benefactor, — of the illustrious house 
 from which Lady Janet had sprung. Perhaps, too, the consid- 
 eration that by this course a fortune so useful to his career was 
 secured was not without influence on the mind of a man natu- 
 ally 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 uncer- 
 tainty as to the extent of his fortune was dispelled, there inter- 
 posed 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 im- 
 possible 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 conscious 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 be- 
 came 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 305 
 
 of heart were repelled on that last interview. His English pre- 
 judices 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 ardor 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 irre- 
 parable 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 ver)' handsome, 
 and much of the same height and coloring. But Madame 
 Marigny was the handsomer of the two. Madame Duval fie- 
 quented the gaming-tables, and was apparently of a 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
 
 3o6 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 in which the lodging-house keeper had last seen her coin- 
 cided 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 tire 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-colors 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 Dicu ! That was indeed her name. Did you know 
 her ? I should be so glad to hear she is well and — I hope — 
 happy } " 
 
 " 1 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 be- 
 gan to suspect it a few days before it happened ; and that was
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 307 
 
 SO suddenly that all was happily over before we could send 
 for the accoucheur^ 
 
 " And the child ? — 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's 
 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 aftei 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 un- 
 kind, 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 postmarks ? " 
 
 " Well, I daresay : 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 1 " 
 
 " 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 
 Ihlle one." 
 
 Graham strode on under the clearing skies to the house indi- 
 cated. 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 tlie postmarks on the envelopes ; and
 
 3o8 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 the only one that she did remember was the first, that contained 
 a bank-note, and that postmark was " Vienna." 
 
 " But did not Madame Marigny's letters ever give you an 
 address to which to write with news of her child ? " 
 
 " 1 don't think she cared much for her child, Monsieur. 
 She kissed it very coldly when she came to take it away. J 
 told the poor infant that that was her own mamma; and Mad- 
 ame said, ' Yes, you may call me mamma,' 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 tresbelle, 
 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 let- 
 ters contained no address." 
 
 " She never wrote more than two letters. One inclosing 
 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 M 
 
 , 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 depart- 
 ure. On his way home, meditating the new idea that his adven- 
 ture that day suggested, he resolved to proceed at once, accom- 
 panied by 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 at- 
 tached no importance.
 
 THE PARISIA.YS. 
 
 s'^g 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 No satisfactory result attended the inquiries made at INfu- 
 nich, save indeeti 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 gen- 
 tleman, 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 
 rentere. On comparing the handwriting of this entry with 
 the letter from Richard King's tirst 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 an- 
 nounced by any nanie. 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
 
 210 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 she had written being expected, her effects were, in the mean, 
 while, 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 
 boutoti de rose in the course of the following week ; it was only 
 signed Achille, and gave no address. Two 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 ques- 
 tioned as to Madame Duval's relations and position, she ap- 
 peared 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 tenns, at least 
 she had never heard her speak of any ; and that her own acquain- 
 tance with the deceased, though cordial, was very recent. 
 She could or w^ould not give any clue to the writer of the let- 
 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 re- 
 moved from the effects, which consisted of two malles and a 
 dressing-case. But they only contained the articels appertain- 
 ing to a lady's wardrobe or toilet. No letters — not even an- 
 other note from Achille — no clue, in short, to the family or an- 
 tecedents of the deceased. What then had become of these 
 effects, no one at the hotel could give a clear or satisfactory 
 account. It w'as 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 authori- 
 ties. In fact, it was clear that poor Louise Duval had beea
 
 THE PARISIANS. 311 
 
 considered as an adventuress by the hotel-keeper and the medi- 
 cal 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 Ma- 
 rigny 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 En- 
 gland 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 Mariguy ; 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 had 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 can- 
 didature of the county, and purchase back, at least, the old 
 Stamm-sc/iloss. But Graham obstinately refused to entertain 
 either proposal, continued to live as economically as before ki 
 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 mis- 
 sion 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
 
 312 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 consciousnes 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 pre- 
 judices, 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 con- 
 dernnatory 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 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 
 cheeks — 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 reasons 
 why she had adopted the profession of author instead of that of 
 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 grajtd seigjteurs noted for their liaisons with, ballet-dancers, 
 or by authors whose genius soared for beyond the flatnmantia 
 moe?iia of a world confined by respect for one's neighbor's land- 
 marks, — all this, which belongs to ground of personal gossip 
 untouched by English critics of female writers — ground espe- 
 cially favored 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 reman. What do you think 
 of it? Very fine writing, I daresay, but above me. I go in for 
 • Les Mystferes de Paris' or 'Monte Christo.' But I even find
 
 HIE PAKISIAiVS. 313 
 
 George 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 
 only, " How can I — I, Graham Vane — how can I be such an 
 idiot — how can I in every hour of tlie twenty -four sigh to myself, 
 What are other women to me ? — Isaura, Isaura 1' "
 
 314 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 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 vir- 
 tuous, his poetry has been declared by authorities in the press 
 to be superior to that of Alfred de Musset in vigor, — 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 nowa- 
 days, 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 brillianL cir- 
 cles, and, following the general example of French litterateurs 
 in fashion, lived well up to the income he received, had a de 
 lightful bachelor's apartment, furnished with artistic effecr, spent 
 largely on the adornment of his person, kept a coupe, and enter- 
 tained profusely at the Cafd Anglais and the Maison Dorde. A 
 reputation that inspired a graver and more unquiet interest had 
 been created by the Vicomte de Mauleon. Recent articles in 
 the " Sens Commnn" 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 comps>
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 315 
 
 sitions of the contributors to the journal he edited ; and that 
 though, as long as Pierre Firmin had kept his caustic spirit 
 within proper bounds, the government had winked at the eva- 
 sion 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 plu7ne ; 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 sus- 
 pended, 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 Vic- 
 tor 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 at- 
 tempt legal measures against him. The government was pru- 
 dent 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 petty wrath. His 
 old reputation for personal courage and skill in sword and pis- 
 tol sei-ved, hideed, to protect him from such charges as a Pari- 
 sian journalist does not reply to with his pen. If he created 
 some enemies, he created many more friends, or, at least, par- 
 tisans and admirers. He only needed fine and imprisonment 
 to become a popular hero. 
 
 A few days after he 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 break- 
 fast. 
 
 Rameau joyfully went. He had a very natural curiosity to 
 see the contributor whose articles had so mainly insured the 
 sale of the " Sens CommunT 
 
 In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged 
 man, with commanding port and courtly address, he failed to 
 recognize 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 fa- 
 miliar, but he could not recollect where he had heard the voice 
 it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did not occur to him ; if
 
 3i6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 it "had occurred it would only have struck him as a chance coin- 
 cidence. Rameau, like most egotists, was ratlier 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 liber- 
 allv," answered Rameau. 
 
 " I take that compliment to myself, f/^^rr<7-^r^r<?/ 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 brilliant contributions, but for those of the colleagues you 
 secured. Monsieur Savarin's piquant criticisms were most val- 
 uable 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. Apropos 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 ronian ; but I have heard warm praise of this stor)- 
 from the young, — they are the best judges of that kind of litera- 
 ture ; 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 favor 
 us with another rotnan in series." 
 
 " Mademoiselle Cicogna," said Rameau, with a somewhat 
 sharper intonation of his sharp voice, " has accepted for the re- 
 publication of her roman in a separate form terms whicJi 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 gener- 
 ously sent to her through your publisher." 
 
 " Has she accepted them. Monsieur Rameau ? If so, tani 
 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 bythe pro 
 prietor of the ' Sens Comniun.'' " 
 
 " And your advice guides her ? Ah 1 c/ier confrere, you are 
 a happy man — you have influence over this young aspirant to 
 the fame of a De Stael or a George Sand." 
 
 " I flatter myself that I have some," answered Rameau,
 
 THE PARISIAN'S. 
 
 317 
 
 smiling loftily as he helped himself to another tumbler of Vol- 
 ney wine — excellent, but rather heady. 
 
 " So much the better. I leave you free to arrange terms 
 \\Ith Mademoiselle Cicogna, higher than she can obtain else- 
 where, 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 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 ihiit 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 
 throug'h an able man at the head of the State .'' The multitude 
 never comprehend principles ; principles are complex ideas ; 
 they comprehend a simple idea, and the simplest idea is, a 
 Name thai rids their action of all responsibility of 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 ca\) pit against Napoleon the Third ; there- 
 fore I steer our little bark in the teeth of the popular gale 
 R'hen I denounce the plebiscite^ and ' Le Sens Commun' wil. 
 necessarily fall m .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 Ram,eaii, 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 ca?iaille of Paris and of 
 the manufacturing towns. But I use the canaille for my own pur- 
 pose — I don't mean to enthrone it. You comprehend i" — the 
 canaille quiescent is simply mud at the bottom of a stream ; 
 the canaille agicated is mud at the surface. But no man ca-
 
 3i8 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 pable of three ideas builds the palaces and senates of civilized 
 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 supe 
 rior to every man who writes grammar, and whose idea of a 
 commonwealth is the confiscation of private propeity." 
 
 Rameau, thoroughly puzzled by this discciirso, 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 Vicornte, 
 courteously, " and my answer shall be very frank. I am against 
 absolute rule, whether under a Bonaparte or a Bourbon. I 
 am for a free State, whether under a coni'dtutional hereditary 
 sovereign like the English or Belgian, or whether, republican 
 in name, it be less democratic than constitutional monirchy in 
 practice, like the American. But, as a man interested in the 
 fate of ' Le Sens Com7nun\ I hold in profound di.sdiiin all 
 crochets for revolutionizing the elements of Humari Nature 
 Enough of this abstract talk. To the point. You ■^^'n of course 
 aware of the violent meetings held by the Socialists, nominally 
 against tYvo. plebiscite, really against the Emperor h'jr,j*-'ll ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know at least that the working clasi ani extremely 
 discontented; the numerous strikes last month W'','i e not on a 
 mere question of wages — they were against the existing forms 
 of society. And the Articles by Pierre Firniin diiiich brought 
 me into collision with the government seeme'/i to differ from 
 what you now say. They approved those si nkes ; they ap 
 peared to sympathize with the revolutionary ri<';e tings at Bell 
 ville or Montmartre." 
 
 " Of course ! We use coarse tools for de-jr^-oying ; we cast 
 them aside for finer ones when we want to xv.construct. 
 
 " I attended one of those meetings last ni/ht. See, I have 
 a pass for all such assemblies, signed by sorn.' dolt who cannot 
 ever, spell the name he assumes — ' Pom (U- '.fairJ A commis- 
 sary of police sat yawning at the end ot the orchestra, his 
 secretary by his side, while the orators stai/uner out fragments 
 of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns more 
 wearily than before, secretary disdains to uic 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 virtuc^us Guizot, moves this 
 resolution — ' The French people condeniu.s Charles Louis Napa
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 319 
 
 leon the Third to the penalty of perpetual hard labor.' Ther 
 up rises the commissar}- 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 great-coat 
 ■ — the secretary gives a last touch to his nails and pockets his 
 penknife — the audience disperses — the silhouette of a mac 
 effaces itself — all is over," 
 
 " You describe the scene most wittily," said Rameau, laugh- 
 ing, but the laugh was constrained. A would-be cynic himself, 
 there was a something grave and earnest in the real cynic thai 
 awed him. 
 
 " What conclusion do you draw from such a scene, cher 
 pode ? " 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 ad- 
 mire M. Victor Hugo. Conceding that he would have em- 
 ployed a more sounding phraseology, comprising more abso- 
 lute ignorance of men, times, and manners in unintelligible 
 metaphor and melodramatic braggadocio, your answer might 
 have been his ; but pardon me if 1 add, it would not be that of 
 Common Sense.^' 
 
 " Monsieur le Vicomte might rebuke me more politely," 
 said Rameau, coloring 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 block- 
 heads, 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 intellecl 
 is necessarily confined to the few, 
 
 " Intellect is the most revengeful of all the elements of so- 
 ciety. It cares not what the materials through which it insinu- 
 ates or forces its way to its seat. 
 
 " I accept the aid of Pom-de Tair. I do not demean my 
 self to the extent of writing articles that may favor the princi
 
 320 "^f^^ PARISIANS 
 
 pies of Pom-de-Tair, signed in the name of Victor de MauMon 
 or of Pierre Firmin. 
 
 " I will beg you, my dear editor, to obtain clever, smart 
 writers, who know nothing about Socialists and International- 
 ists, who therefore w'ill not commit ' Le Sens Cotnmufi ' by ad- 
 vocating 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 Eurojoean system,' etc., of the artists 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 prop- 
 erty, nothing that may not be considered hereafter as the harm- 
 less 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 ; 
 '.n that case I allow no substitutes — I go myself. 
 
 " Now you have my most secret thoughts. I intrust them 
 to your judgment wi*^h 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 gliding 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 beside 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."
 
 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 321 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 On leaving De MauMon 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 compUmented, and 
 he comprehended vaguely that he had been somewhat snubbed. 
 He was not only irritated — he was bewildered : for De Mau- 
 Icon's political disquisitions did not leave any clear or definitf^ 
 idea on his mind as to the principles which as editor of the 
 * Sens Commuri' he was to see adequately represented and 
 carried out. In truth, Rameau was one of those numerourt 
 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 multi- 
 tude, 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 analyzing its nature — a power made up of large expe- 
 rience 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 instru- 
 ments he used, he had found a master. De MauMon, 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
 
 322 THE PARISIAyS. 
 
 the ' Sens Commtin,^ and with it Rameau's luxurious subsist- 
 ence. 
 
 ' Altogether the visit to Dc 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 mar- 
 riage to a brilliant salon. What salon more brilliant than that 
 which he and Isaura united could command .-' He had long con- 
 quered 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 mo- 
 tives 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 com- 
 pared 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 «on- 
 stantly, 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. t^21 
 
 felt ar vnp-v and sore foreboding that if he were to insist too 
 seri'-m?ly on the earnestness of their import and ask her phiin- 
 ly to be his wife, her refusal would be certain, and his visits 
 to her house might be interdicted. 
 
 Stiii Isaura was unmarried, still she had refused offers of 
 marriage from men higher placed than himself, — still he di- 
 vined 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 Julia, I would devote myself so 
 completely to winning Isaura's heart that I must succeed ! — 
 but how to get rid of Julia ? She so adores me, and is so head- 
 strong ! 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 HI. 
 
 Yes, celebrities are of rapid growth in the salo7is of Paris. 
 Far more solid than that of Rameau, far more brilliant than 
 that of de Maule'on, 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 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 apart- 
 ments 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 acquaint- 
 ance — 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 exer- 
 cise 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 constitu- 
 tion, had triumphed over all tendencies to the malady for 
 which he had been consulted.
 
 ^2 4 77/^ PARISIANS. 
 
 To hear Isaura Cicogna sing in her own house was a privi' 
 lege 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 attrac- 
 tion of song to her youth, her beauty, her frank powers cf con- 
 verse — an innocent sweetness of manner free from all conven- 
 tional affectation — and to the fresh novelty of a genius which 
 inspired the young with enthusiasm and beguiled the old to in 
 dulcence, it was no wonder that Isaura became a celebrity ai 
 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 color before a look, hei 
 heart beat at the sound of a footfall. Perhaps if there had 
 been the customary finish 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 th(i 
 beloved which you cannot distinguish, cannot measure, cannot 
 guess, and therefore cannot surmount ; and you say to your- 
 self at the dead of solitarj' night, " Oh for an explanation ! 
 Oh for one meeting more ! All might be so easily set rigl.t ; 
 or, if not, I should know the worst, and, knowing it, could con- 
 quer ! " 
 
 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 , 
 ^hat this dread something still continued — what was it ? She 
 •was certain that it would vanish, could they but meet once 
 again, and not before others. Oh for such a meeting !
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 325 
 
 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 to conquer her affection. 
 
 Of Graham Vane she heard occasionally. He had ceased 
 to correspond with Savarin ; but among those who most fre- 
 quented her salon were the Morleys. Americans so well edu- 
 cated 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 arrival in London, or whose presence at dinner-tables, is 
 recorded as an event, that the " Athenaeum " had mentioned a 
 rumor 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 sub- 
 ject 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 labors she undertook for that celebrity con- 
 tinued to be sweetened yet more by secret association 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 labors 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 beatm. 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 
 n* /ed beside her in the gardens of fairyland.
 
 326 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IsAURA was seated in her pretty salon, with the Venosra, M, 
 Savarin, the Morleys, and the financier Louvier, when Rameau 
 was announced. 
 
 " Ha ! " cried Savarin, " we were just discussing a mattei 
 which nearly concerns you, cherpoete. I have not seen you since 
 the announcement that Pierre Firmin is no other than Victor de 
 Maule'on. Mafoi, 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 govern- 
 ment. 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, mag- 
 niloquently, "who will not brave a danger for his body in de- 
 fense 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 oratoiy." 
 
 " 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 "i " 
 
 " 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 per- 
 mission to do so on Thursday evening when she receives." 
 
 Isaura, who had hitherto attended very listlessly to the con-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 327 
 
 versation, bowed assent. " Any friend of yours will be welcome. 
 But I ovtn the articles signed in the narue of Pierre Firmin do 
 not prepossess me in favor of their author." 
 
 " Why so ? " asked Louvier ; " surely you are not an Impe- 
 ialist .? " 
 
 " 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 gen- 
 uine gayety, and below^ it solid kindness. You have that which 
 I do not find in M. de Mauleon's writings, nor often in the talk 
 of the salons — 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 
 odor of fallen leaves. Not that his diction wants vigor : on the 
 contrary, it is crisp with hoar-frost. But the sentiments con- 
 veyed by the diction are those of a nature sear and withered. 
 And it is in this combination of brisk words and decayed feel- 
 ings 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 friend« of liberty to praise the present style 
 of things .'' ' 
 
 " I should be obliged to the friends of liberty," said the 
 Colonel, dryly, " 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 biases, the Parisians are eager for strange ex- 
 citement, and ready to listen to any oracle who promises a re-
 
 328 ^ THE PARISIANS. 
 
 lief from indifferentism. This it is which makes the Press 
 more danj^erous in France than it is in any other country. 
 Elsevvhtj-o the press sometimes leads sometimes follows, public 
 opinion. Here there is no public opinion to consult, and in- 
 stead of (^pinion the Press represents passion." 
 
 " My dear Colonel Morley," said Savarin, " I hear yovi very 
 oft«n say that a Frenchman cannot understand America. Per- 
 mit n\e to observe that an American cannot understand France 
 —01 at least Paris. Apropos of Paris — that is a large specula 
 tion (.'t yours, Louvier, in the new suburb." 
 
 " And a very sound one ; I advise you to invest in it. I can 
 secure you at present five 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 moneys I hold for you, Signorina, 
 and add to them whatever you may have made by your delight- 
 ful ronian, as yet lying idle, to this investment.? I cannot say 
 more in its favor than this — I 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 j'ou advise on such a subject," said Isaura, gra- 
 ciously, " is sure to be as wise as it is kind." 
 " You consent, then 1 " 
 " Certainly." 
 
 Here the Venosta, who had been listening with great atten- 
 tion 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- 
 poco/mo, 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 capita- 
 lists — from five hundred 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."* 
 
 " More than double it, I hope, long before the street is com- 
 pleted." 
 
 " I have saved a little money — very little. I have no rela- 
 " * Avere il cervello nella calcag}m,''—\iz., to act without prudent reflection
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 329 
 
 tions, 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 neces- 
 sary 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 ex- 
 ample, except Rameau, who was 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, dryly enough, upon pecuniary matters ; acquit- 
 ting himself of the mission with which De Mauldon had charg- 
 ed him, the request for a new work from her pen for the " Sens 
 Commtin" and the terms that ought to be asked for compliance. 
 The young lady-author shrank from this talk. Her private in- 
 come, though modest, sufficed for her wants, and she felt a sen- 
 sitive shame in the sale of her thoughts and fancies. 
 
 Putting hurriedly aside the mercantile aspect of the ques- 
 tion, 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 indulgence, that we must wait for inspiration ; but once 
 force ourselves to work, and ideas spring forth at the wave of 
 tlie pen. You my 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 labor : 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
 
 32° 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 for more comprehensive fame, more exalted honors, 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 woman." 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 : vou 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 our- 
 selves solitary, unloved : how often have they been mine ! 
 But how different would labor be if shared and sympathized 
 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 ! 
 Oh, Signorina ! oh, Isaura ! are we not made for each other ? 
 Kindred pursuits, hopes and fears in comNion, the same race 
 to run, the same goal to win ! I need a niotive stronger than 
 I have yet known for the persevering energy that insures suc- 
 cess : 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 some- 
 what calculating on her dot ; one from a timid but enthusi- 
 astic admirer of her genius and her beauty, himself rich, 
 handsome, of good birth, but with shy manners and faltering 
 
 tongue.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 ZZ^i- 
 
 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 nevei 
 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 .s 
 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 now with Isaura ; aii^l 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, in- 
 terested 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 unfavorable 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 inter- 
 course. 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
 
 ,-2 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 comfort, nay, an inspiration. For the spontaneous gush of 
 her fresh thoughts and fancies served to recruit his o\v* 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 organization 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 salotis in which the envy of virtues doubted sought to . 
 bring innocence itself into doubt, warmed into a genuine rever- 
 ence 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 dis- 
 tractions. 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, com- 
 passionate eyes of Isaura. 
 
 " Be consoled, dear friend,"' she said, with a smile, half 
 cheering, half mournful. " Perhaps for all true artists the soli- 
 tary lot is the best." 
 
 " I will try to think so,"," answered Rameau ; " and mean- 
 while, 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 w// 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.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 333 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 It was late in the evening of that day when a man who had 
 the appearance of a decent bou?-geois, 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 in the street fell on the face of 
 the person thus quitting the house — the face of a young and 
 handsome man, dressed with the quiet elegance which betoken- 
 ed one of higher rank or fashion than that neighborhood was 
 habituated to find among its visitors. The first comer retreat- 
 ed 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 wa}' 
 with 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 / Ws 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 the 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 recognized the visitor; evidently 
 the visit was not welcome to her. 
 
 " Monsieur Lebeau again !" she exclaimed, shrinking back. 
 
 " At your service, chere dame. The good man is of course 
 at home ? Ah, I catch a sight of him," and sliding by the 
 woman, M. Lebeau passed the narrow lobby in which she stood 
 through the open door conductin.g into the room in which Ar- 
 mand 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
 
 334 T^^^E PARISIANS. 
 
 with a set of bone tablets inscribed with the letters of the al- 
 phabet. 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 
 mantlepiece. On the wall were hung designs for the decora- 
 tion of apartments, and shelves on which were ranged a few 
 books. 
 
 The window was open, and on the sill were placed flow- 
 er pots ; you could scent the odor 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 ->ne side a small but commodious kitchen ; on the other side 
 on N;hich 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 these addi- 
 tional rooms, but it may be well here to mention them as indi- 
 cations of the comfortable state of an intelligent skilled artisan 
 of Paris, who thinks he can better that state by some revolu- 
 tion 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 visits 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, mo7j brave.'" 
 
 " I hope so : what's in the wind now ?" 
 
 " Oh, 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 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 gayly under the father's kiss. 
 
 " Canst thou doubt, my Heloise," said the artisan mildly, 
 " that, whatever I do, thou and these are uppermost in mv
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 335 
 
 thoughts ? I act for thy 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 leaned her head upon his breast and wept quietly. 
 Monnier led her thus from the room, whispering words of sooth- 
 ing. The children followed the parents into the adjoining cham- 
 ber. In a few minutes Monnier returned, shutting the door 
 behind him and drawing \\\q. 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 eifect 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 with me — scarce gone 
 before you rang at the bell — you might have almost met him 
 on the stairs." 
 
 " I saw a beau inonsieur come out of the house. ^\nd so 
 t's talk has affected Madame." 
 
 ' Very much ; it was quite brotherlike. He is one of the re« 
 ligious set, and they always get at the weak side of the soft 
 sex." 
 
 "Ay," said Lebeau, thoughtfully; "if religion were ban- 
 ished 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 ? "
 
 336 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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 ob- 
 taining fairer money's worth for our work ; but he tried ro 
 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 honor 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 He'loise 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 sup- 
 pose 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 fhem 
 we gave ourselves worse tyrants in the new aristocracy of the 
 capitalists. Our quarrel now is that of artisans against em- 
 ployers." 
 
 "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 com- 
 mon 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 337 
 
 Hdloise came together I have not wasted a sou 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 H^loise is such a housewife, so 
 thrifty, scolds me if I buy her a ribbon, poor love ! No won- 
 der that I would pull down a society that dares to scoff at 
 her — dares to say she is not my wife, and that her children 
 are baseborn. 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, replaces the stone. I no longer war against 
 society. I do not 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 Mon- 
 nier ; and he seized Lebeau's hand and shook it with warmth 
 and vigor. "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 anything to endanger my skin. I always went by his 
 advice till you taught me that it is well enough for women 
 to talk and complain ; men should dare and do." 
 
 "Nevertheless," said Lebeau, "your brother is a safer 
 (jouusellor to a pere de famille than I. I repeat what T have 
 so often said before : I desire, and I resolve, that the Empire 
 of M. Bonaparte shall be overthrown. I see many concur- 
 rent circumstances to render that desire and resolve of prac- 
 tical 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
 
 338 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 you the moment you would ask me to aid your design in the 
 hazard of experiments which ^the world has never yet favored, 
 and trust me, Monnier, the world never will favor." 
 
 " 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 specta- 
 Cjes, " I recognize 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, wrongheaded 
 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 demon- 
 stration against the Imperial resort to a rural priest-riddeii 
 suffrage, on the part of the enlightened working-class of Paris." 
 
 " Good ! " said Monnier. 
 
 " In a day or two the result of \he plebiscite will be known. 
 The result of universal suffrage will be enormously in favor of 
 the desire expressed by one man." 
 
 " I don't believe it," said Monnier, stoutly. " France can- 
 not 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 blunder- 
 ing millions, I want an etneute, or rather a menacing demon- 
 stration — not a premature revolution, mind. You must avoid 
 bloodshed." 
 
 " It is easy to say that beforehand ; but when a crowd ©f 
 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 
 fierr.e gleam in his bold eyes. 
 
 " I tell you, all that is required at this moment is an evi- 
 dent 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 waciL is 
 what we have not got — a head to dictate action to us."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 339 
 
 ** 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 withinv say, a week after the 
 vote of the plebiscite is taken. You will oeed that time to pre- 
 pare." 
 
 " 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 sympathize 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 in- 
 genuous 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." 
 
 " Eh bien ! you have warned me, like an honest man ; like 
 a 1 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 ! — a la lanterne /' You talk of ' superior experience ;* 
 bah ! what does experience really tell you ? Do you suppose 
 that Louise Egalit^, 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
 
 340 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 vigor 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 tevoir.''' 
 
 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 oi la Jeunesse (ioree\ 
 among the latter the brilliant Enguerrand de Vandemar, who, 
 deeming the acquaintance of every celebrity essential to his 
 own celebrity, in either Carthage, the beau ?nonde, or the detni- 
 tnonde, had, two Thursdays before made Louvier attend her soiree 
 and present him. Louvier, though gathering to his own salons 
 authors and artists, very rarely favored 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 tnoyens, qui ira loinJ' 
 
 Savarin was there, of course, and brought with him an En- 
 glish gentleman of the name of Bevil, as well known at Varis as 
 in London, — invited everywhere — popular, everywhere — one of 
 those welcome contributors to the luxuries of civilized society 
 who trade in gossip, sparing no pains to get the pick of it, and
 
 THE PARISIANS. 341 
 
 exchanging it liberally, sometimes for a haunch of venison and 
 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 .'f 
 doubting him than you would doubt Rothschild if he said, " This 
 is Lati^te of '48." 
 
 Mr, J]evil was at present on a very short stay at Paris, and, 
 naturallv wishins: to make the most of his short time, he did not 
 tarry beside Savarin, but, after being introduced to Isaura, flit- 
 led here and there through the assembly. 
 
 "Apis Matinas — 
 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 sar 
 donic smile — aggressive in demeanor — forward or contemptuous 
 in his very politeness — a Methistopheles engrafted on the stem 
 of 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 a ri- 
 pened 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 pathe- 
 tic smile w^hich seemed to disarm censure for past faults by say- 
 ing, " 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 honor she had permitted Rameau to confer upon 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 ?]nguerrand amidst a group of men of whom Duplessis 
 was the central figure, 
 
 At that time — the first week in May, 1870 all who were 
 in Paris will remember there were two subjects uppermost 
 in the mouths of men : first, the. plebiscite ; secondly, the conspi-
 
 342 THE I'ARISIAxVS. 
 
 racy to murder the Emperor, — which the disinfected considered 
 to be a mere fable, a pretence got up in time to serve the 
 plebiscite and prop tlae Empire. 
 
 Upon this latter subject Duplessis had been expressing him- 
 self 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 seventj'-two persons of a 
 crime which the police had been instructed to invent. 
 
 As De Maule'on approached, the financier brought his speech 
 to an abrupt close. He knew in 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, gayly, as he exchanged a 
 cordial shake of the hand with Victor/"'! 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 sympathize 
 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 in- 
 stead is a crazy tub and a rotten rope." 
 
 " Tres-bten," said Duplessis, in Parliamentary tone and 
 phrase. 
 
 '• But," said de Maulee'on, with his calm smile, " would you 
 like the captain of the ship, when the sky darkened and the sea 
 ros(^ 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 lib- 
 eral, he_ is bound again to consult the people from whom he 
 holds his power. It is not, however, of the. plebiscite vi^ 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
 
 TJfE PARISIANS. 
 
 343 
 
 ever) party must feel against a combinaticm united by the purpose 
 of murder." 
 
 The Vicomte bowed, as in assent. 
 
 " But do you believe," asked a Liberal Deputy " 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 
 w^as distinguished from an honest politician. 
 
 " Ma foi" answered De Mauleon, shrugging hi'; shoulders, 
 *' I have only one belief left ; but that is boundless. I believs 
 in the folly of mankind in general, and of Frenchmen in par 
 ticular. 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 drunk- 
 ard among 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 though 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 under- 
 taking, and no one bu*. you who believe in the infinity of human 
 folly 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 canoniza- 
 tion !" 
 
 " Do not lament — he will probably have what is abetter 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 1 
 Several months ago his Legtimist 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 com-
 
 244 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 mand of Napoleon III. I have not yet heard of him as 3 V^to' 
 de France — I hear a great deal of him as a viveur de Pan ' 
 
 " Don't you know why his desire for a military careet wa^ 
 frostbitten ? " 
 
 "No ? why?" 
 
 " Alain came from Bretagne profoundly ignorant of irosl 
 things known to a gamin of Paris. When he conscientioys!'} 
 overcame the scruples natural to one of his name, and told the 
 Duchesse de Tarascon that he was ready to fight under 1h< 
 flag of France whatever its color, he had a vague reminiscence 
 of ancestral Rochebriants earning early laurels at the head o' 
 their regiments. At all events, he assumed as a matter of 
 course that he, in the first rank as genlilhomme, would enter the 
 army, if as a sous-Iieiitenant, still as ge?itilhomme. But when tolc 
 that, as he had been at no military college, he could only entej 
 the ranks as a private soldier — herd with private soldiers for aJ 
 least two years before, passing though the grade of corporal, hi? 
 brith, education, and habits of life could with great favor, rais*! 
 him to the station of a sous-lieutenant, you may conceive that tha 
 martial ardor of a Rochebriant was somewhat cooled." 
 
 " If he knew what the dormitory of French privates is, anr' 
 how difficult a man well educated, well brought up, finds it 
 first, to endure the coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blas- 
 phemy, and then, having endured and been compelled to sharo 
 them, ever enforce obedience and disciplinecas a superior among 
 those with whom just before he was an equal, his ardor would 
 not have been merely cooled — it would have been changed into 
 despair for the armies of France if hereafter they are met bj 
 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 twofold 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 re- 
 port is not unfounded. And my conscience accuses me of hav- 
 ing been to blame in the first instance^ You see, when Alain
 
 THE PARTSTANS. 343 
 
 made terms with I.ouvier by which he obtained a very fair in- 
 come, if prudeiuly 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, etc., which it appeared to 
 me that he might reasonably afiford — I mean such as, with his 
 means, I "should have prescribed to myself " 
 
 " All ! 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 fhrift with show. It 
 is your Provincial, who comes to Paris in the freshness of un- 
 dimmed 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, compliment 
 arily 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 temp- 
 tations 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 " 
 
 " Certainlv, 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 witli, ' Boii-joiir mon 
 avii. ' "
 
 346 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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, 
 C'alifornia ! " 
 
 " Where have I not been ? Tush ! music — shall I hear our 
 tair hostess sing ? " 
 
 " 1 am afraid not to-night ; because Madame S is to 
 
 favor 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 profes- 
 sional rival, conceived for her a wonderful affection, and will- 
 ingly contributed her magnificent gifts of song to the charms of 
 Isaura's salon^ now began a fragment from "'■ I Puriiani" which 
 held the audience as silent as the ghosts listening to Sappho ; 
 and when it was over, several of the guests slipped away, espe- 
 cially 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 Val(fria, and, after well-merited eulogium 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 Mauldon," she said. 
 " Do you not perform yourself "i " 
 
 " 1 ? No. But music has always had a fatal attraction to me. 
 I ascribe half the errors of my life to that temperament which 
 makes me too fascinated by harmonies — too revolted by dis- 
 cords." 
 
 " I should have thought such a temperament would have lei 
 from errors — are not errors discords ? " 
 
 " To the inner sense, yes ; but to the outer sense not al- 
 n-ays. 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."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 347 
 
 " Monsieur," cried Valdrie, with a pretty brusqiurie which 
 became her well, " you talk like a Vandal." 
 
 " It is, I think, by Mademoiselle Duplessis that I have the 
 honor 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." Valeria took her 
 father's arm with a brightening smile and a heightened color. 
 Alain de Rochebriant might probably be at the Duchesse's. 
 
 " Are you not going also to the Hotel de Tarascon, M. de 
 Mauleon t " 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 VaMria 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 re- 
 newed the interrupted conversation with her, the Venosta join- 
 ing therein ; and so agreeable did he make himself to her Ital- 
 ian tastes by a sort of bitter-sweet wisdom like that of her native 
 proverbs — comprising much knowledge of mankind on the un- 
 flattering 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 Mauldon's talk hostile to all which we 
 call romance that excited the imagination of Isaura, and com- 
 pelled her instinctive love for whatever is more sweet, more beau- 
 tiful, more ennobling on the many sides of human life, to oppose 
 what she deemed the paradoxes of a man who had taught him 
 self 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 energ)' of earnest conviction — the enthusiasm of an 
 impassioned zeal. 
 
 Gradually De Mauleon relaxed his share in the dialogue,
 
 348 Tffi!- PAR JS J A AS. 
 
 and listened to her, rapt and dreainingly 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 
 tlie 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 tht boundaries of 
 the visible and materia! nature, which is finite ; forever 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 butter- 
 flies, 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 roman- 
 tic ? " 
 
 " But there comes a time when we weave no flower-chains 
 and chase no butterflies." 
 
 " Is it so i* — 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 MauMon, 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 color the 
 world. But the Signora Venosta will acknowledge the truth of 
 an old saying expressed in every civilized 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 gray hair." 
 
 *' ' Tis not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age 
 of the heart,'" answered De MauMon, in another paraphrase of 
 Italian proverb, and he was gone. 
 
 As he walked homeward, through deserted streets, Victor 
 de Maul^on thought to himself, " Poor girl, how I pity her I 
 manied to a Gus^ave Rameau — married to any man — nothing 
 in the nature of man, be he ihe best and the cleverest, can
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 349 
 
 ever realize the dream of a girl who is pnre 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 thoughts 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 — suscepti- 
 bility to fleeting impressions. It was a key to many m3'^steries 
 in his character when he owned his subjection to the influence 
 of music, and in music recognized not the seraph's harp, but 
 the siren's song. If you could have permanently fixed Victor 
 de Maule'on 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 concen- 
 trated by his intense sense of individuality — sense of wrongs 
 or of rights — interests or objects personal to himself. He ex- 
 tended the royal saying, " L'etat, c'esttnoi," to words far more 
 grandiloquent. " The universe, 'tis I." The Venosta would 
 have understood him and smiled approvingly, if he had said, 
 with good-humored 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 to him which strongly excited his nervous 
 system. It contained a request to see him forthwith, signed by
 
 ,-0 THE FAKISJAX\S. 
 
 those two distinguished foreign members of the Secret Council 
 of Ten, Thaddeus Loubinsky, and Leonardo Raselli. 
 
 The meeting of that Council had been so long suspended 
 that Rameau had ahnost 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 out- 
 ward appearance was in notable discord with that of the poet- 
 politician — he all new in the latest fashions of Parisian elegance, 
 and redolent of Parisian prosperity and extrait tie Moiisseline ! 
 
 " Confrere^^'' said rhe 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 in- 
 nermost secrets or to 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 when- 
 ever 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 pro- 
 prietor 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 those of its president, whom I 
 have not seen for nearly a year ; indeed, I know not if the 
 Council still exists." 
 
 " The Council exists, and with it the obligations it im 
 poses," 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 confere" murmured the 
 bland Italian , " permit me to dispel the reasonable doubts of
 
 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 351 
 
 OUT 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 14th. 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 
 inteUigible 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 formindable to 
 be disregarded. There could be no doubt that, though his 
 name was not mentioned, he, Rameau, was accurately desig- 
 nated as the youngest member of the Council. Still, however 
 he might have owed his present position to the recommenda- 
 tion 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 demonstra- 
 tion, as De Mauldon 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, dryly ; " I have business that 
 way." 
 
 "^^'///"said the Pole; "I did not think you would fau 
 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 accent upon the cause 
 of the human race," put in the Italian, whispering. 
 
 " I do not write the political articles in ' Le Sense Commun,^ " 
 answered Rameau ; " and I suppose that our president is satis- 
 fied with them, since he recommended me to the preference of 
 the person who does. Have you more to say 1 Pardon me ; 
 my time is precious, for it does not belong to me." 
 
 " Enough ! " said the Italian : " we will detain you no
 
 352 
 
 THE PARISIAK^i. 
 
 longer," Piere, with bow and 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 — /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 into 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 Signer Raselli in the name of the same 
 cause," whispered Rameau, with a smile he might have plagiar- 
 ized 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 Ital- 
 ian. All ways to take the life of an enemy are honorable — 
 no way is honorable 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 — " Descende, man 
 petti 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 overmuch 
 covet distinction and overmuch 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 ex- 
 tended 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 1" 
 
 While this man spoke, others gesticulated ; some shrieked 
 out, " He is an employer ! he thinks he can drive over the em- 
 ployed ! " Some leader of the crowd — a Parisian crowd always 
 has a classical leader, who has never read the classics — thun- 
 dered forth, " Tarquin's car! " " Down with Tarquin." There- 
 with came a yell, " A la lanterne — Tarquin!'' 
 
 We Anglo-Saxons, of the old country or the new, are not 
 familiarized to the dread roar of a populace delighted to have
 
 THE PARISIANS. 353 
 
 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 be 
 ween 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, Afmand Monnier. He comes to help us. 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 aristocr-acy 
 is recognized 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 labor, 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 yon." 
 
 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 gmnins of Paris, com- 
 mingled 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 sound of laughter rose predominant ; jests and 
 bons mots flew from lip to lip. The astonishing good-humor 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 enieute 
 than a gathering of schoolboys bent not less on fun than on 
 mischief. But still, amid this gayer crowd were sinister, lower- 
 ing faces ; the fiercest were not those of the very poor, but 
 father of artisans, who, to judge by their dress, seemed well off 
 — of men belonging to yet higher grades. Rameau distin- 
 guished among these the medecin des pauvres, the philosophical 
 atheist, sundry young long-haired artists, middle-aged writers 
 for the republican press, in close neighborhood with ruffians 
 of villanous 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 inter- 
 spersed among the rioters. The whole scene was to Rameau
 
 354 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 Parison 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 im- 
 patient of the suspense of strife. Monnier, having deposited 
 him safely wdth 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 qjiariiers where 
 the rising was to have been simultaneous with this. We are in 
 a piet-apens — the soldiers will be down on us in a few minutes ; 
 hark 1 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 wuth other 
 cries, " Vive la Kepublique ! " " Vive le drapeau rouge I " 
 
 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 serpens de ville are force enough to disperse the swarm 
 of those gnats. Behind the sergens come soldiers who will not 
 fraternize. Lose not one life to-day. The morrow when we 
 shall need every man — nay, every gamin — will dawn soon,
 
 TTFE FARISTANb. 355 
 
 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 laborer, but through such disguise he recognized the pale 
 gray whiskers and green spectacles of Lebeau. He yielded 
 passively to the grasp that led him away down the deserted 
 street at the angle. 
 
 I At the farther 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, fol- 
 lowed mechanically by Rameau. They issued at last on the 
 Boulevards, in which the usual loungers were quietly saunter- 
 ing, wholly unconscious of the riot elsewhere. " Now take 
 t\i?it_/iacre and go home ; write down your impressions of what 
 you have seen, and take your MS. to M. de Mauldon." Le- 
 beau 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 
 vtlle, calmly scaling the barricades, carried off in triumph, as 
 prisoners of war, ionr ga?nins, three women, and one Irishman 
 loudly protesting innocence and shrieking " Murther ! " So 
 ended the first inglorious rise against Xho. plebiscite and the Em- 
 pire, on the 14th of May, 1870. 
 
 From Isaura Cicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil. 
 
 " Saturday, May 21, 187a 
 
 " I am Still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of Lti- 
 pressions wholly new to me. I have to-day witnessed one of 
 those scenes^vhich 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 
 Vale'rie Duplessis. She is in herself so charming in her com- 
 bination of petulant wilfulness and guileless iiaivete that she 
 might sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines. Hei 
 father, who is in great favor at court, had tickets for the Salle 
 dcs Eiats of the Louvre to r'- - • 'icii, as the journals will LcJ!
 
 356 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 you, ihe results of the plebiscite were formally announced to the 
 Emperor — and I accompanied him and Valerie. I felt, on en- 
 tering the hall, as if I had been living for months in an atmos- 
 phere of false rumors, for those I chiefly meet in the circles of 
 artists and men of letters, and the wits Tiwdi 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 weav- 
 ing 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 Coi ps 
 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 1 ' 
 
 " ' It is now,' said the President, ' eighteen years since 
 France, wearied with confusion, and anxious for security, con- 
 fiding in your genius and the Napoleonic dynasty, placed in 
 your hands, together with the Imperial Crown, the authority 
 which the public necessity demanded.' Then the address pro- 
 ceeded to enumerate the blessings that ensued — social order 
 speedily restored — the welfare of all classes of society pro- 
 moted — advances in commerce and manufactures to an extent 
 hitherto unknown. Is not this true 1 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 coun- 
 try, and, foreseeing the progress of modern society, you pro 
 claimed that " Liberty must be the crowning of tl* 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 plebis- 
 cite which I ha\e heard S3 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
 
 7'HE PAR IS TANS. 
 
 357 
 
 should not be made without the participation of the people 
 themselves. Then, enumerating the millions who had wel- 
 comed the new form of government — the President paused a 
 second or two, as if with suppresed 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 
 imder the protection of your dynasty and the great bodies of 
 the State.' Is France with him 1 I know not ; but if the mal- 
 contents of France had been in the hall at that moment, I be- 
 lieve they would have felt the power of that wonderful sympa- 
 thy 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 which 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 eyelids, 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 round 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 characterizes 
 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 the beauty to which, as woman, I 
 could never give my heart — were I man, the intellect that would 
 not command my trust. But, nevertheless, in beauty it is sig- 
 nal, and in that beauty the expression of intellect is predomi- 
 nant.
 
 ,-8 "^^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 " Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing ! The Eniperoi 
 spoke — and believe me, Eulalie, whatever the journals or your 
 compatriots may insinuate, there is in that man no sign of de- 
 clining 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 Emper- 
 or. There was something grand and something young in the 
 modesty with which he put aside all reference to that which his 
 Empire had done in the past, and said, with a simple earnest- 
 ness 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 dis- 
 turbance, 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 r Empereurf 
 
 *' ' Vi7'e r Emperatrice .-' 
 
 "' Vive le Ptince Imperial !' — and the last cxy was yet more 
 prolonged than the others, as if to affirm the dynasty. 
 
 " Certainly I can imagine no Court in the old days of chiv- 
 alry more splendid than the audience in that grand hall of 
 the Louvre. To the right of the throne all the ambassadors of 
 the civilized world in the blaze of their rich costumes and mani- 
 fold orders. In the gallery at the left, yet more behind, the 
 dresses and jewels of the dames if honneur and of the great 
 officers of State. And when the Empress rose to depart, cer- 
 tainly my fancy cannot picture a more queenly image, or one 
 that seemed more in unison with the representation of royal 
 pomp and power. The very dress, of a color which would have 
 been fatal to the beauty of most women equally fair — a deep 
 golden color (Valerie profanely called it buff) — seemed so to 
 suit the splendor 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 ha? 
 been impressed on me by the pageant of to-d;ty : I feel as if
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 359 
 
 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 :o mc in agree- 
 ment as to-^^iie sort of government to be established in place of 
 the presenil''^ The ' Liberty ' clamored 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 Mon- 
 day 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 found in epigrams he would be also the French 
 Solon. 
 
 There, too, was Victor de MauMon, regarded by the Re- 
 publican 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 
 * ^e suis tra/ii' when Common Sense is to be put into action." 
 
 A group of admiring listeners had collected round one 
 (perhaps the most brilliant) of these oratorical lawyers, by whom, 
 in France, the respect for all law has been so often talked away : 
 he was speaking of the Saturday's ceremonial with eloquent in- 
 dignation. 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 General of 
 Division ; the second, forsooth, in that of a sous-lieutenant. 
 Then other Liberal chiefs chimed in : " The army," said one, 
 " was an absurd expense ; it must be put down :" " The 
 world was grown too civilized for war," said another. "The Em- 
 press was priest-ridden," said a third : " Churches might be tol- 
 erated ; 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 had before 
 been listening with earnest attention, and her eyes fell on the 
 countenance of de MauMon, who was seated opposite. The
 
 360 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 countenance startled her, its expression was so angnly scorn- 
 ful ; that expression, however, vanished at once as de Mauldon's 
 eye met her own, and, drawing his chair near to her, he said, 
 smihng, " 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 Avho 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 cun- 
 ning as the quack; he did not name the ingredients of his 
 pills." 
 
 " But, M. de Maul^on," 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 opposi- 
 tion, replied to a somewhat similar question, — ' I don't pre- 
 scribe 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 
 earthqnake for a good trade to the pills of these me.ssieurs, or 
 for fair play to the remedies you will not disclose till called 
 in." 
 
 *' Ah, IMadcmoiselle ! 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 so desire to know 
 
 more." 
 
 ^ i\I. de MauMon paused, and looked at her earnestly with a 
 kmdly, half-compassionate look, wholly free from the imperti- 
 nence of gallantry. " Young Poetess," he said, softly, " you 
 iare for politics I 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 d:i 
 M. dc Mauleon seem to expect one ; with that rare delicacy 
 of high breeding which appears in France to belong to a former
 
 THE PARISIANS, 361 
 
 generarion, he changed his tone, and went on as if ihere had 
 been no interruption to the question her words implied. 
 
 " You think the Empire secure — that it is menaced by n • 
 earthquake ? You deceive yourself. The Empero began with 
 a fatal mistake, but a mistake it needs many years to discover. 
 ] le 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 such tender heed of manual labor to the disparage- 
 ment of intellectual culture. Paris is embellished ; Paris is the 
 wonder of the world : other great towns have followed its ex- 
 ample ; 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 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 the vast majority of 
 votes, that will be utterly useless to it except as food for gun- 
 powder in the times that are at hand. Seven days before, on 
 the 14th of May, there was a riot in the Faubourg da Temple — 
 easily put down — you scarcely hear of it. That riot was not 
 less necessary to those who would warn the Empire that it is 
 mortal. True, the riot disperses — but it is unpunished : riot un- 
 punished is a revolution begun. The earthquake is nearer than 
 you think ; and for that earthquake what are the pills yon 
 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 say to the ministers, ' Reform it' t 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-edu- 
 cated gentlemen, see that yours are' 1 Oh, no ; they are demo- 
 crats too stanch not to fraternize with an armed mob ; they
 
 362 TIFE PAR/SI A ATS. 
 
 content themselves with grudging an extra so}i to the Commis- 
 sariat, and winking at the millions fraudulently pocketed by 
 some ' Liberal contractor.' Dieu des dieiix ! 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 organized, beaten she ^m^-/ be, if she meets 
 the march of the German." 
 
 " You appall 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 journaUsts who had been insisting that the Empire can- 
 not coexist with free institutions will no longer hint that it can 
 be safely assailed from without.' And more than ever I may 
 say, Z' Empire c'est la paix i " 
 
 Monsieur de Mauldon 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 what 
 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 I " 
 
 " 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 govern- 
 ment that would seek to turn France into a madhouse and make 
 the maddest of the inmates the mad doctor 1 " He turned 
 away, and here their conversation ended. 
 
 But it so impressed Isaura, that the same night she con 
 eluded 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 
 aii ominous thunder-cloud."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 3^3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 4 
 
 The Marquise 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 Mauldon and Enguerrand de 
 Vandemar, that the austere Seigneur Breton had become a fast 
 vtveur of Paris. He had long since spent the remnant of 
 Louvier's premium of ;^iooo, and he owed a year's interest. 
 For this 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. Hdbert to press the contractor ; the 
 contractor had replied that if not pressed he could soon settle 
 all claims — if pressed, he must declare himself banlcrupt. 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 re- 
 cover. 
 
 ''Bagatelle!'' said Chevalier. "Tschu! CoIIot, 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 profes- 
 sional 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 " Alon cher,^'' Alain 
 had taken him aside and commenced explanation and excuse, 
 Louvier had cut him short. " ^i?j-/^ / don't mention such trifle;;
 
 364 THE PARISIAIVS. 
 
 There is such a thing as business — that concerns my agent; 
 such a thing as friendship — that concerns me. Alkz /" 
 
 Thus M. de Rochebriant, confiding in debtor and in creditor, 
 had suffered twelve months to gHde by without much heed of 
 either, and more than hved 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 down- 
 ward, much as the French Marquis of tradition was wont to 
 slide ; not that he appeared to live extravagantly, but he needed 
 all he had for his pocket-money, and had lost that dread of be- 
 ing 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 honor — 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 impru- 
 dence, 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. I'' 
 is no wonder he left his letters unopened, however charming 
 they might be ; he was quite sure they would contain no check 
 which would enable him to pay his debt and retain his equi- 
 page. 
 
 The door opened, and the valet announced M. le Chevalier 
 de Finisterre — a man with smooth countenance and air dis- 
 tingue, a pleasant voice and perpetual smile. 
 
 " Well, moji cher, " cried the Chevalier, " I hope that you 
 recovered the favor 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 gayety — much too l^on 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 im- 
 port ; the stakes might be small 10 you, to me large. Entrt 
 nous, chcr ami, I am at the end of my purse, and I have only
 
 THE PARISIANS. 865 
 
 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— " 
 
 ^'•Peste!" interrupted De Finisterre ; " Louvier take pro- 
 ceedings ! Louvier, the best fellow in the world ? But don't 
 I see his handwriting on that envelope ? No doubt an invita- 
 tion to dinner. " 
 
 Alain took up the letter thus singled forth from a miscel- 
 lany of epistles, some in female handwriting, unsealed but in- 
 geniously twisted into Gordian knots — some also in female 
 handwritings, carefully sealed — others in ill-looking envelopes, 
 addressed in bold, legible, clerk-like calligraphy. Taken alto- 
 gether, these epistles had a character in common : they be- 
 tokened 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 mascu- 
 line, 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 Mar- 
 quis — It is an age since I have seen you. No doubt my humble 
 soirees are too dull for a beau seigneur 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 but be 
 aware that I have embarked a great part of my capital in build- 
 ing 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 owed 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
 
 366 7W^ PAK/SIAA^S. 
 
 too lenient to Collet, 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 f aire i The Rue de Louvier 
 stops the way, and 1 must leave it to my agent to clear it. 
 
 " Accept all my excuses, with the assurance of my senti- 
 ments 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 1 Louvier must be much pressed for money, or he 
 would not have written in this strain. What does it matter ? 
 CoUot 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 } " 
 
 " Ma/oi/ 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 daresay ; 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 tha 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 Roche- 
 briant. 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 Roche- 
 briant, if he were sixty years old, would rank high in the ma- 
 trimonial market. The more the democrats have sought to im 
 poverish titles and laugh down historical names, the more do 
 rich democrat fathers-in-law seek to decorate their daughters
 
 THE PARISIANS. 367 
 
 wilh titles and give their grandchildren the heritage of histori- 
 cal names. You look shocked, /awz/r^ ami. Let us hope, then, 
 that CoUot will pay. Set your dog — I mean your lawyer — at 
 him ; seize him by the throat ! " 
 
 Before Alain had recovered from the stately silence whh 
 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 Finis- 
 f.erre- 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 Lemer- 
 cier, rememberinsr the wise cautions which that old colleo:e 
 friend had wasted on him at the commencement of his Pari- 
 sian 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 w-ith the pride which characterized Frederic Lemer- 
 cier. 
 
 "Alafoif" 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. Le- 
 mercier." 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 When the door had closed on the Chevalier, Frederic's 
 ck untenance became very grave. Drawing his chair near to 
 Alain, he said, " We have not seen much of each other 
 lately, — na}', no excuses ; I am well aware that it could 
 scarcely be otherwise. Paris has grown so large and so sub- 
 divided into sets, that the best friends belonsrinsr to different 
 sets become as divided as if the Atlantic flowed between them. 
 I come Lo-day in consequence of something I have just heard
 
 368 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 from Duplcssis. Tell me, have you got the money for the wood 
 you sold to IVI. 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. Wliat 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 7000 louis 1 " 
 
 " Somewhat more — ^}'es. But that is not the first care that 
 troubles me — Rochebriant may be lost, but with it not my 
 honor. I owe the Russian Prince 300 louis, lost to him last 
 night at ecarte, I must find a purchaser for mv coupe and 
 horses ; they cost me 600 louis last year, — d9 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 ac- 
 count. But you have so many friends " 
 
 " Who would give their soul to say, ' I bought these horses 
 of Rochebriant.' Of course I have. 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, k has clever articles, and I remember how I was 
 absorbed in the eloquent roman 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 vear 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 e7neute 
 ten days ago, the coupe got smashed, the horses disappeared. 
 He will buy one of your horses and cou{>e. Leave it to me.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 369 
 
 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 ckib." 
 
 " 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 daresay. Ah ! I wish I had been less absurdly fastid- 
 ious. 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 Mojisquetaire in the melodrame, ' I am rich — I 
 have my honor and my sword ! ' " 
 
 " Nonsense ! Rochebriant shall be saved ; meanwhile I 
 hasten to Rameau, An revoir, at the Hotel Duplessis — seven 
 o'clock." 
 
 Lemercier went, and in less than two hours sent the Mar- 
 quis bank-notes for 600 louis, requesting an order for the de- 
 livery of the horses and carriage. 
 
 That order written and signed, Alain hastened to acquit 
 himself of his debt of honor, and, contemplating his probable 
 ruin with a lighter heart, presented himself at the Hotel Du- 
 plessis. 
 
 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 
 stlons of the elder financier. 
 
 Before that year, indeed, Duplessis had confined such enter- 
 tainments as he gave to quiet men of business, or a few of the 
 more devoted and loyal partisans of the Imperial dynasty; 
 but since Valeria came to live with him he had extended his 
 hospitalities to wider and lovelier circles, including some ce- 
 lebrities 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
 
 -yo ^^-^^ FARISIANS. 
 
 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 of 
 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 enteute 
 of the 14th; exulted in the success of i]\& plebiscite ; and, ad- 
 mitting 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 fe't 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 Uttle 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, watch- 
 ing 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 
 s])ell of an enchantress to remain long without the pale of the 
 circle she draws around her." 
 
 Isuara turned her face quickly towards the speaker, and 
 her lips moved, but she said nothing audibly. 
 
 "Can there have been quarrel or misunderstanding?"
 
 THE PARISIANS. ,7, 
 
 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. 
 ThoLi wert removed from her forever when thou didst accept 
 the world as "a barrier between you ; then, poor as thou wert, 
 thou wouldst havfe preferred her to riches. Thou wert then 
 sensible only of the ingenuous impulses of youth ; but the 
 moment thou saidst, ' I am Rocliebriant, 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 senti- 
 ment which could alone give to that dream the colors 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 in- 
 stinctively that Graham was dear to her, and that the tender 
 interest with which she inspired himself was untroubled by one 
 l^ang 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 honor; our acquaintance is 
 but slight, but it impressed me with the idea of a man of vigor- 
 ous intellect, frank temper, and perfect honor." 
 
 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 tri- 
 umph has induced you to forego the career in which all the'best 
 judges concur that your successes would be no less brilliant ; 
 surely one art does not exclude another." 
 
 Elated by Alain's report of Graham's words, the conviction 
 .hat these words applied to herself, and by the thought that her re- 
 nunciation of the stage removed a barrier between them , Isaura, 
 answered, with a sort of enthusiasm — 
 
 " 1 know not, M. Duplessis, if one art exckides another ; if
 
 372 
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 
 
 there be desire to excel in each. But I have long lost all de- 
 sire 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 admi 
 ration so merited of the lady whom M. Duple'ssis has just had 
 the honor to address." 
 
 All this while, Valerie who was seated at the farther 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 be- 
 tween Alain and the friend whom till that day she had so enthusi- 
 astically loved. Hitherto she had been answering in monosyl- 
 ables all attempts of the great man to draw her into conversation ; 
 but now, observing how Isaura blushed and looked down, that 
 strange faculty in woman, 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 common- 
 place the Minister had adapted to what he considered the pov- 
 erty of her understanding, with a quickness of satire which 
 startled that grave man, and he gazed at her astonished. Up 
 to this 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 nuise, of whom all the journalists in 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 
 3'oung Marquis, whom, no doubt, she wished to fascinate. 
 
 Valerie fairly outshone Isaura in intellect and in wit ; and 
 neither Valdrie nor Isaura cared, to the value of a bean-straw, 
 about that distinction. Each was thinking only of the prize
 
 THE PARISIANS. 373 
 
 which the humblest peasant women have in common with the 
 most brilUantly accompUshed of their sex— the heart of a man 
 beloved. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 On the Continent generall}', 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 \\\q. salofi ; and 
 Alain quilted 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 Vandemnr. 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 com- 
 pelled me to enter the ranks as a private soldier." 
 
 " I sympathize with that scruple ; but you are aware that 
 the Emperor himself could not have ventured to make an 
 exception even in your favor." 
 
 " Certainly not. I repent me of niy 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 Erance." 
 
 " Your distinction is childish, my kinsman," said the Duch- 
 esse impetuously. " You talk as if the Emperor had an 
 •merest apart from the nation. I tell you that he has not a 
 rorner of his heart — not even one reserved for his son and 
 his dynasty — in which the thought of France does not pre- 
 dominate." 
 
 " 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
 
 374 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 the scabbard.' But would the Bourbon saj^, ' The place of a 
 Rochebriant is among the vaktaille of the Corsican's suc- 
 cessor' ? " 
 
 " 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 Vale'rie, 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, de- 
 tained 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 iwo 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 ques- 
 tions. M. Louvier has constituted himself your sole mortgagee ; 
 to what amount, at what interest, and from what annual pro- 
 ceeds 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 j'^our estate ; 
 he makes himself sole 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 capitalists who would accept the trausfei
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 375 
 
 of the mortgage at the same rate. This is not like Loiivier, 
 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 de- 
 posit, 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 pro- 
 perty 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 u?i commandetnent tendant a saisie tm- 
 mohiliere, 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 com- 
 petitors in the mere business-way would vie with Louvier ; the 
 mortgage at thiee 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 con- 
 descend 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.''
 
 376 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 "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 dropping 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 con- 
 fiding of my friends to do so — M. Duplessis, never 1 If I car- 
 ried the porter's knot of an Auvergnat, I should still remain^^«- 
 iilho7nme and Breton^ 
 
 Duplessis, habitually the driest of men, rose with a moistened 
 eye and flushing cheek. " Monsieur le Marquis, vouchsafe me 
 the honor to shake hands with you. I too am by descent gcntil- 
 honwie, by profession a speculator on the Bourse. In both 
 capacities I approve the sentiment you have utttered. 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 fellow- 
 ship, equally rare to the measured reserve of the financier, he 
 asked, with a lively twinkle of his gray eye, " Did yx)\\ never 
 hear. Marquis, of a little encounter between me and M. 
 Louvier ? " 
 
 "Encounter at arms — does Louvier fight?" asked Alain, 
 mnocently. 
 
 " In his own way he is always fighting ; but I speak meta- 
 phorically. You see this small house of mine — so pinched in 
 by the houses next to it that I can neitlier get space for a ball- 
 room for Valerie, nor a dining-room for more than a friendly 
 party like that which has honored 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 busi- 
 ness cannot bear to be too much cheated ; a little cheating we 
 submit to — much cheating raises our gall. Brcf — this was on 
 Monday. I offered the man 1000 louis above the fairpirce 
 and gave him till Thursday to decide. Somehow or other 
 Louvier hears of this. ' Hillo I ' says * Louvier, here is a finan- 
 cier who desires a hotel to vie with mine ! ' He goes on Wed- 
 nesday to my next door neighbor. ' Friend you want to sell 
 your house. I want to buy — the price ? " The proprietor,
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 377 
 
 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 asked too little. I will give you 3000. A fig for M. 
 Duplessis ! I am Monsieur Louvier.' So when I call on 
 Thursday the house is sold. I reconciled myself easily enough 
 to the loss of space for a larger dining-room ; but, though 
 Vale'rie 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 ver)' soon. M. Louvier buys 
 an estate near Paris — builds a superb villa. Close to his prop- 
 erty is a rising forest ground for sale. He goes to the proprie- 
 tor ; 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 
 every thing. On Friday night I go to the man and give him 
 6000 louis where he had asked 5000. Fancy Louvier's face 
 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 insignifi- 
 cance 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, — "per- 
 haps now, M. le Marquis, you might understand why I humili- 
 ate 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."
 
 378 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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, Unking his arm in Lemercier's, Alain made 
 his bow and withdrew. 
 
 When his guests Lad 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 Valdrie 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, hal/ fondly, half chidingly 
 " 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." 
 
 " VaMrie when I made you the promise you now think I can- 
 not keep, I spoke only from that conviction of power to promote 
 the happiness of a child which nature inplants 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 alwa3'S 
 won. Now I speak on yet surer ground. Before the year is 
 out you shall be the beloved wife of Alain cle Rochebriant. 
 Dry your tears, and smile on me, VaMrie. If you will not see in 
 me mother and father both, I have double love for you, mother- 
 less 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 recog- 
 nized, in him the cold saturnine Duplessis, his countenance
 
 THE PARISIANS. 379 
 
 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 PYance ; even in the most arid soil, even 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 protect- 
 ing 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 con- 
 verse, 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 0/ 
 one who beholds his happiness. You do not weep now 
 Valferie ! "
 
 38o THE PAR/SI A JVS 
 
 BOOK IX. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 On waking some morning, have you ever felt, read^^r, 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 sunshir»e, 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 conver- 
 sation with 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 — no ! 
 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 momnets 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 g>.i?s as 
 she stood before it smoothing back her long hair, muinuiring 
 sweet snatches of Italian love-song, and blushing with sw6SV?r 
 love-lhoughts as she sang I All that had passed in that year vo 
 critical to her outer life — the authorship, the fame, the pnl;l\c 
 career, the popular praise — vanished from her mind as a vapoi
 
 THE PARISIANS. 381 
 
 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 sittingf-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 per- 
 haps 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 be- 
 came troubled. She divined that Valerie had conceived some 
 jealous pain, which she lorded 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 at- 
 tempt to disguise. Not seeming to notice this, Isaura com- 
 menced 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 oi 
 appreciating excellence as M. de Rochebriant appears to be." 
 
 " You were talking to M. de Rochebriant of an absent 
 friend — ah ! vou 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 Made- 
 moiselle Cicogna, you found him very charming," 
 
 To her surprise and indignation, Valere here felt the arm of 
 Isaura tenderly entwining her waist, and her face drawn towards 
 Jsaura'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 
 candor of their unmistakable honesty, and, flinging herself on 
 her friend's bosom, kissed her passionately, and burst into 
 lears.
 
 382 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 The complete reconciliation between the two girls \\ias 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. VaMrie's was one of those im- 
 pulsive eager natures that long for a confidante. Not so Isaura's. 
 Only when Valerie had unburdened her heart, and been soothed 
 and caressed into happy trust in the future, did she recall 
 Isaura's explanatory words, and say, archly, " And your absent 
 friend .? Tell me about him. Is he as handsome as Alain t " 
 
 " Nay," said Isaura, rising, to take up the mantle and hat 
 she had laid aside on entering, " they say that the color of a 
 (lower 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 the 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 
 favor — do not on this point question me further. 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 yester- 
 day 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 Ameri- 
 cans 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 ascendency 
 of her sex, she felt a sort of grateful pride in the accomplish- 
 ments and growing renown of so youthful a member of the 
 oppressed sisterhood. But, apart from that sentiment, she had
 
 TFTE PARISIANS. 383 
 
 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 ^11 her asser- 
 tion of the strength and dignity of wonian,and all her opinions 
 as to woman's right of absolute emancipation from the conven- 
 tions 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 last winter, on his return 
 to Paris ; and she became convinced that some misunderstand- 
 ing, possibly some lovers' quarrel, was the cause of his portract- 
 ed 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 w'eek. 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, views, and intentions. If the Eng- 
 lishman, thus essayed, 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 markcet some nobler effigy in 
 purer gold. 
 
 " My dear child," said Mrs. Morley, in low voice, nestliug 
 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 color, the quivering lip, of the 
 girl thus abruptly appealed to, and she said, inly, " I was right 
 — she loves him ! " 
 
 " 1 heard of Mr. Vane last night — accidentally."
 
 384 
 
 THE PARISIAN'S. 
 
 " Is he coming to Paris soon ? " 
 
 " Not that I know of. How charmingly that wreath be- 
 comes you I 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 Hmit 
 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 apropos 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 
 sent a little note by Frank, inviting him to pay us a visit. We 
 have spare room 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 I He admired you so much before you were famous : 
 what will be his admiration now 1 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 ex- 
 hausted all the arts at his command for chaining her attention 
 could be no longer be 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 fas- 
 cinated her — a wreath which no prudent lady with colorings 
 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, ex- 
 tending her arms towards Isaura. " I must have one exactly like 
 It. 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 know- 
 ing that language, and was flattered to be addressed in it — while
 
 THE PARISIANS. 3g,: 
 
 J 
 
 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 
 screamer 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 I>er finger at 
 him coquettishly. " You are jealous ! Fie ! a man should ne\er 
 be jealous of a woman ; " and then, with a cynicism that might 
 have become a graybeard, 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 vil- 
 lains 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, retreated shaking hands with the Venosta, to the door. 
 
 " I shall have the wreath yet," said the Venosta, impishly, 
 " Z,a speranza e femmifta" (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 1 — ' 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 prelim- 
 inary questions and answers as to the health of Mrs. Morley, 
 the lenght of the Colonel's stay in London, what day he could 
 dine with Graham at Richmond or Gravesend, the Colonel
 
 386 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 expec- 
 tation 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 vour- 
 self of the offer. Without summarizing the points, I do so." 
 
 Graham glanced over the note addressed to him : — 
 
 " Dear Mr. Vane, — Do you forget how beautiful the en- 
 virons 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 arbors, with the Savarins and the 
 fair Italian and her incomparably amusing chaperon .-' Frank 
 has my orders to bring you back to renew those happy days, 
 while the birds are in their first song and the leaves are in their 
 youngest green. I have prepared your rooms chcz nous — a 
 chamber that looks out on the Champs Elysees, and a quiet 
 cabitiet 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, dr>ly. 
 
 *' 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 les recherches 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-humored smile — 
 
 "No man who has taste enough to admire the most beauti-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 387 
 
 ful city and appreciate the charm of the most brilliant society 
 n the world can dislike Paris." 
 
 ' My dear sir, I did not ask if you disliked Paris but if there 
 were anything that made you dislike coming back to it on a 
 visit.'' 
 
 " Wliat a notion ! and what a cross-examiner you would 
 have made if you had been called to the bar ! Surely, my deai 
 friend, you can understand that when a man has in one place 
 business which he cannot neglect, he may decline going to an- 
 other place, whatever pleasure it would give him to do so. By 
 the way, there is a great ball at one of the Minister's to-night ; 
 you should go there, and I will point out to you all those En- 
 glish notabilities in whom Americans naturally take interest. I 
 will call for you at eleven o'clock. Lord -, who is a connec- 
 tion 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 M 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 in- 
 quisitive 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 odor of tobacco ? " 
 
 Graham arose 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 pre- 
 liminary puffs with his head thrown back and his eyes medita- 
 tively 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
 
 ^88 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 tc 
 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 pro- 
 voke a laugh than a frown — ^retiring from the ground with the 
 honors due to a humorist. Accordingly, in his deepest nasal 
 intonation, and withdrawing his eyes from the ceiling he be- 
 gan— 
 
 " 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 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 perform- 
 ance, sir, age considered." 
 
 "Certainly I have read the book; it is full of unquestion- 
 able genius. Is Mademoiselle writing another t 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 voung man Gustave Rameau that the 
 publishers bid high for her brains considerable. Two transla- 
 tions 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." 
 
 Groham'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, sit 
 — clear grit, sir, and no mistake." 
 
 " 1 certainly more than once have said to Mrs. Morley thai 
 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 mis- 
 taken." 
 
 " He is the responsible editor of ' Le Sens Comvnui,' in which
 
 THE PARTSTANS. 389 
 
 talented periodical Mademoirselle Cicogna's book was first 
 raised." 
 
 " Of course I know that ; a journal wiiich, so far as I have 
 looked into its political or social articles, certainly written hy a 
 cleverer and an older man than M. Ranieau, is for unsettling 
 all things and settling nothing. We have writers of that kind 
 among ourselves. I have no sympathy with them. To me i( 
 seems that when a man says, ' Off with your head,' he ought to 
 let us kn-ow what other head he would put on our shoulders, and 
 by what process the change of heads shall be effected, iffon- 
 estly 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 
 Le Sens Co/nmun.' " 
 
 The Colonel here withdrew his cigar from his lips, lowered 
 his he-ad to a level with Graham's, and, relaxing into an arch 
 significant smile, said. " Start to Paris, and dissuade her your- 
 self. Start — go ahead — don't be shy — don't see-saw 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 Amer- 
 ica than at that moment ; but Graham curbed his first wrathful 
 impulse, and replied, coldly — 
 
 " It seems to me, Colonel, that you, though very uncon- 
 sciously, derogate from the respect due to Mademoiselle Cicogna. 
 That the counsel of a married couple like yourself and Mrs. 
 Morley sliould be freely given to and duly heeded by a girl de- 
 prived of her natural advisers in parents, is a reasonable and 
 honorable 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 
 sunn se which she would be justified in resenting as an impeiti- 
 nence." 
 
 " I deny both allegations," replied the Colonel, serenely, 
 " I maintain that a single man whips all connubial creation 
 when it comes to gallantizing a single young woman ; and that 
 no young lady would be justified in resenting as impertinent 
 my friendly suggestion to the single man so deserving of her 
 consideration as I estimate you to be, to solicit the right to ad- 
 vise her for life And that's a caution."
 
 3QO ^-^-^ PARISIANS. 
 
 Here the Colonel resumed his regalia, and again gazed in 
 tently on the ceiling. 
 
 " Ad^ ise her for life ! You mean, 1 presume, as a candidate 
 for her hand ? " 
 
 " You don't Turkey now. Well, I guess you ire not wide 
 Ci the mark there, sir." 
 
 " You do me infinite honor, 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 discussion 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 man- 
 ifestations. 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 can- 
 didate ; there are plenty of them who will run ; and as an elec- 
 tor must choose one representative or other, so a gal must 
 choose on£ husband or other. And then you only repent when 
 it is too late. It rs a great thing to be first in the field. Let us 
 approximate to the point ; the chances seem good — will you 
 nui ? — Yes or no ? " 
 
 " I repeat, Colonel Morley, that I entertain no such pre- 
 sumption." 
 
 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 honor ? " 
 
 " 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 
 vear — ^fact, you are soured on her, and fly off the handle. Such
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 391 
 
 things do happen. The same thing has happened to myself, sir. 
 In my days of celibacy, there was agal at Saratoga whom I gal- 
 lantized, and whom, while I was at Saratoga, I thought Heaven 
 had made to be Mrs. Morley. I was on the very point of tell- 
 ing 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 aflfairs, 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 sister's 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 mor- 
 tals — 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 instructions, ventilated the 
 ?^nglishman, 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 and a new suitor 
 on the ground, the better it would be for the young lady's hap- 
 piness in the only stat€ in which happiness should be, if not 
 found, at least sought, whether 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 illusion 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 wo- 
 markind who did 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 invi 
 tation, endeavor to ascertain whether the attachment which she
 
 392 THE PAKISTANS. 
 
 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 further effort on 
 Mrs. Morley's part to bring it to a prosperous issue. 
 
 She found Isaura at home and alone ; and, to do her jus- 
 tice, 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 felicitous- 
 ly 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 
 money-making." 
 
 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 au- 
 thor, she leaped to the conclusion that Graham had been seized 
 with no unnatural jealousy, and was still under the illusive 
 glamoury of the green-eyed fiend. ,She was confirmed in this 
 notion, not altogether an unsound one, when, asking with ap- 
 parent 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 — re- 
 plied, in a low voice, " 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 I To balls and 
 dinners, I suppose ; as if you were not much too clever to care 
 about these 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 393 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 honored you for doing 
 so. I know no 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 Hattery 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 coeiir oiivert. 
 
 " 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 I ' 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 
 mov^ement, 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 compan- 
 ion, with whom you could not converse on equal terms of intel- 
 lect, — 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 in- 
 nermost rellections if 1 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 t 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
 
 394 "J^ffP- PAKISIAKS. 
 
 as I might admire any other pretty accomplished girl, but it is 
 really noihing 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 ,n 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 diiTerence 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 con- 
 jectured by the tramp of his heavy boots to and fro all the 
 night long in his solitary chamber, heard below by his 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 nar- 
 rative in declining to put into words the conflict between love 
 and reason that tortured the heart of Graham Vane when, drop- 
 ping noiselessly the letter I have just described, 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 hsard all that sleepless night, passing to an -J fro, but 
 pausing oft, along his solitarj' floors. 
 
 Possibly love would have borne down all opposing reason- 
 ings, doubts, and prejudices, but for incidents that occurred 
 the following evening. On that evening Graham dined en 
 /amille with his cousins the Altons. After dinner, the Duke 
 produced the design for a cenotaph inscribed to the memory
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^gj 
 
 of his Aunt, Lady Janet King, whicli 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 ihe 
 question, it gratifies me to attest the claim of our family to a 
 daughter who continues to be famous for her goodness, and 
 made that 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 
 Uberis virtutis exetnplar ' " 
 
 Graham wrung his cousin's hand — he could not speak, 
 choked by suppressed tears. 
 
 The Duchess, who loved and honored Lady Janet almost 
 as much as did her husband, fairly sobbed aloud. She had 
 indeed, reason for grateful mernories 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 media- 
 tion 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 had exhibited since 
 Aristotle) that " Love is a sort of fever which does not last 
 beyond two years," than that between these eccentric speci- 
 mens of a class denounced as frivolous and heartless 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 in- 
 scribed 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 grace 
 ful 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
 
 39^ 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 within him asked, " Would that cenotaph be placed amid tlie 
 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 new 
 treasured as an heirloom not be a memory of gall and a sound 
 of shame ? " 
 
 He remained so silent after putting down the inscriptior; 
 that the Duke said modestly, " My dear Graham, I see thai 
 you do not like what I have written. Your pen is much more 
 practiced 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 rep- 
 resentativ^e 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 ^or 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 'nto her own private drawing-room, which, though others 
 migl- 1 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 397 
 
 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, 
 tliough 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 Pailia- 
 ment, I could trust him to say exactly what I would rather be 
 swallowed up by an earthquake than stand up and say for my- 
 self. 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 
 th<? desk and placed in Graham's hand, was in strange coinci- 
 dence 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 he should no longer delay that 
 change in life which, concen rating so much that is vague in 
 the desires and aspirations c f 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 in- 
 fluence over than this dear adopted son of mine. I do not feat 
 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 afifliction. 
 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. 1 know not how else to describe it. It is so inter-
 
 398 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 woven 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-deny- 
 ing 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 widi 
 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 in- 
 dividually, 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 S3mpathy would make him keep ever after- 
 wards 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 beautilul 
 
 Mrs. A or clever Mrs. B : can you fancy Graham 
 
 Vane in the reflected light of on i of those husbands ? I trem- 
 bled last year when I thought he was attracted by a face which 
 the artists raved about, and again by a tongue which dropped 
 bans mots that went the rounds of the clubs. 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, — Granam Vane will have pains sharp enough if he 
 live to be tafked 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. 
 1 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. ' 3^^ 
 
 comprehend my cause of fear, which is this — for in such 
 matters men do not see as we women do^-Graham al^hors, 
 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 re- 
 coil 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 we 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 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 Uuchess. 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 where- 
 about). 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 the companion to a well-informed man, but cer- 
 tainly not witty enough to supply bons mots to the clubs. Miss 
 Asterisk was one of those women of whom a husband might 
 feel proud, yet with whom a husband would be safe from be- 
 ing 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 ; prav 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."
 
 4.00 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 On leaving his cousin's house, Graham walked on, he scarce 
 knew or cared whither, the image of the belcve i dead so for- 
 cibly recalled the solemnity of the mission wi'h 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 hap- 
 piness 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 and 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 realize, in the fair creature 
 and creator of romance, his ideal of the woman to whom an 
 earnest, sagacious, aspiring man commits all the destinies in- 
 volved 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 distinction 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 those thoughts racked his mind, a kindly hand was 
 laid on his arm, and a cheer}' 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 1 I am going nowhere, except 
 to my own quiet rooms."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 401 
 
 " Pooh ! come in here, at least for a few minutes." And 
 Bevil drew him up the doorstep of a house close by, where, on 
 certain evenings, a well-known club drew together men wlio 
 seldom met so familiarly elsewhere — men of all callings ; a club 
 especially favored by wits, authors, and \\\^ flaneurs of polite 
 society. 
 
 Gf-alkim shook his hand, about to refuse, when Bevil added, 
 " I l.ave just come from Paris, and can give you the last news. 
 l^.k;rary, 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 tl>e music of a name, and foltowed 
 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 i* — 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 ever}' week (she has 
 her Thursdays), with no other chaperon than an old ci-devant 
 Italian singing-woman dressed like a guy — must set Parisian 
 tougues 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 circum- 
 stances. 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
 
 402 THE PARISIAN'S. 
 
 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 Cicognas rank among the oldest of Lombard fami- 
 lies), is not likely to want offers." 
 
 " Offers of marriage. — h'm — well, I daresay, from authors 
 and artists. You know Paris better even than I do : but I 
 don't suppose authors and artists there make the most desir- 
 able husbands ; and I scarcely know a marriage in France be- 
 tween a man author and a lady author which does not end in 
 the de.idliest 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 re- 
 stricted to the pale of authorship. Doubtless she has many ad- 
 mirers beyond that quarrelsome border-land." 
 
 " 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 re- 
 member some twenty-three years ago as the darling of wives and 
 the terror of husbands — Victor de Mauldon." 
 
 " Victor de Mauldon 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, 
 proscribe him. Ymi 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 Mauldon one of her 
 associates, her counsellor and friend, — ah I "
 
 THE PARISIANS. 403 
 
 " No, I didn't say that; on the contrar}', he was presented 
 to her for 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 Maule'on 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 daresay 
 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 honor 
 to make the acquaintance of this lady before she became a 
 ' celebrity,' and I have never met in my path 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 honor, my dear Vane," said Bevil, seriously (he 
 did not want for spirit), " I hardly know you this evening. It 
 is not because dueling is out of fashion that a man should allow 
 himself to speak in a tone that gives ofifence to another who in- 
 tended none ; and if dueling 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 unmeri- 
 ted insult."
 
 404 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Graham's cheek, before ashen pale, flushed into dark red. 
 " I understand you," he said quietly, " and will be at Uoulogne 
 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 thou- 
 sand 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 re- 
 tracted, every apology on either side made." 
 
 " Bevil, you disarm and conquer me, I spoke like a hot- 
 headed fool ; forget it — forgive. But — but — 1 can listen calmly 
 now — what is that on dlt V 
 
 " One that thoroughly bears out your own very manly up- 
 holding 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 wagei 
 compelled the Prince to confess the means he had taken to 
 succeed, and produced the evidence that he had lost or won. 
 According to this on dit, the Prince had written to Mademoi- 
 selle Cicogna, and the letter had been accompanied by a 
 pariire that cost him half a million of francs ; but the dia- 
 monds 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 a 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."
 
 THE PARFSIAXS. ^qt 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A FEW days after the date of the last chapter, Colonel IMor' 
 ley returned to Paris, He had dined with Graham at G.een. 
 wich, had met him afterwards in society, ar.d 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 h's "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 M dressed ? " 
 
 But when the Colonel had retired to what the French called 
 the cabinet de travail — and which he more accurately termed 
 his " smoke-den " — and there indulged m the cigar, which, de- 
 spite 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 re- 
 perused 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 dooi 
 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.
 
 4o(\ 
 
 TIJF. rARfSfAXS. 
 
 Poor Gustave is very ill — an attack of the lungs, and fever 
 vou know how delicate he is." 
 
 " I am sincerely grieved," said Isaura, in earnest tendei 
 rones. "It must be a very sudden attack: he was here last 
 Tluusday." 
 
 " 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 com- 
 panionship 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 sympathize 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 marriage lot was serenely happy to the last 
 was the greatest of English poetesses married to a great Eng- 
 lish 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 hrsband alone can give. My dear child, as the wife myself 
 of a man of letters, and familiarized 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 Sav- 
 arin'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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 407 
 
 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 popu- 
 larly respected as my bon homme, what must I feel to be es- 
 sential 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 ' Aladre' 1 I see how I 
 distress and pain you — I cannot help it. Listen. The other 
 evening Savarin came back from his favorite cafe in a state of 
 excitement that made me think he came to announce a revo- 
 lution. 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 sub- 
 mitted to sucli 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 can- 
 not 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 honor and the 
 nerve to fire a pistol : every Frenchman has those qualifica- 
 tions ! ' " 
 
 Here Isaura could no longer restrain her emotions ; she burst 
 into sobs so vehement, so convulsive, that Madame Savarin be- 
 came alarmed ; but when she attempted to embrace and soothe 
 her, Isaura recoiled with a visible shudder, and gasping out, 
 " 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 sickbed, and 
 in sharp struggle between life and death. It is difficult to dis- 
 entangle, one by one, all the threads in a nature so complex as 
 Rameau's ; but, if we may hazard s. conjecture, the grief of dis- 
 appointed 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 im- 
 patience of any trouble. Did love trouble him — love could be 
 drowned in absinthe ; and too much absinthe may be a more im-
 
 40» THE rARTSfAXS. 
 
 mediate cause of congested lungs than the love which the ab- 
 sinthe has lulled to sleep. 
 
 His bedside was not watched by hirelings. When tirst 
 taken thus ill — too ill to attend to his editorial duties — infor 
 mation was conveyed to the publisher of the " Sens Cofntnun,'- 
 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 MauMon, " Shall we call in a pro- 
 fessional nurse, or a sceur de charite ? " 
 
 De Maule'on replied, also in whisper, " Somebody told me 
 that the man had a mother." 
 
 It was true : Savarin had forgotten it. Rameau never men- 
 tioned 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 young author pushing his way 
 into the Chausse'e 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 1 " 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 Roche- 
 briant. 
 
 In the morning he received the notice of " «« coinmande- 
 merit iendant a saisie immobiliere" on the part of his creditor 
 M. Louvier ; in plain English, an announcement that his prop- 
 erty at Rochebriant would be put up to public sale on a certain 
 day, in case all debts due to the mortgagee were not paid be- 
 fore. An hour afterwards came a note from Duplessis stating
 
 TUF PAKISTANS. 
 
 4oq 
 
 thnl "he had returned fioin Bretagne or tlie previous even'ng, 
 and would he very happy to see the Marquis de Rochebriant 
 before two o'clock, it not inconvenient to call." 
 
 Alain put the '•'■ commandemait" into his pocket, and repair- 
 ed 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 honored the letter of introduction to 
 her which I owe to your politeness with the most amiable hospi- 
 talities ; she insisted on my removing from the auberge at which 
 1 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 an- 
 tiquarian enamoured of ruins." 
 
 " Pardon me, ' ruins' is an exaggerated ex])ression. 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. Hubert — 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 dr}'ly, '* 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 benev- 
 olent. 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 1 should be at liberty to make the improvements I desire, 
 and when the improvements be made, there should be a fair ar- 
 rangement as to the proportion of profits due to me as mortga- 
 gee 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 
 Hhe present revenues of Rochebriant. The woods have been
 
 ^ro THE PARIS rANS. 
 
 sadly neglected ; drainage alone would add greatly to their pro- 
 duce. Your orchards might be rendered magnificent supplies 
 to Paris with better cultivation. Lastlj', 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 
 
 suit able speculators for these last experiments. In a word, though 
 the market value of Rochebriant, as it now stands, would nor 
 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, witJi 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 tombs of my ances- 
 tors ! I'hank 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 gnari-d' heure.' Lend me that cominandement tendant 
 a saisie. I must be off to vs\y avoue\^\\h instructions. If you 
 have no better engagement, pray dine with me to-da.y and 
 accompany Valerie and myself to the opera." 
 
 I need not say that Alain accepted the invitation. How 
 happy Valdrie was thai evening!
 
 THE PAKISIAXS, ^ , , 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The next day Duplessis was surprised by a visit from At, 
 J.ouvier — 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 bnisqiierie and 
 opulent swagger. 
 
 '' Startled to see me, I daresay," began Louvier, as soon as 
 the door was closed. " I have this morning received a com- 
 munication 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 ])opinjay 
 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 1 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 am 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. Hdbert 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 favor, 
 you may be sure that he has the power to repay it. Let me
 
 4,3 ^'l£ t'AKlSIAiSS. 
 
 hnve my whim here, and ask anything you l.ke from me in 
 return ! " 
 
 " Dfsole not to oblige you, but this has become not only a 
 whim of mine, but a matter of honor; and honor, you know, my 
 dear M. Louvier, is the first principle of sound finance. 1 have 
 myself, after careful inspection of the Rochebriant property, 
 volunteered to its owner to advance the money to pay off your 
 hyfotJicque ; and what would be said on the Bourse if Lucien 
 Duplessis failed in an obligation ? " 
 
 " 1 think I can guess what will one day be said of Lucien 
 Duplessis if he makes an irrevocable enemy of Paul Louvier. 
 Corbleu I nion chcr, a man of thrice your capital, who watched 
 every speculation of yours with a hostile eye, might some beau 
 /our make even you a bankrupt ! " 
 
 "Forewarned, forearmed!" replied Duplessis, imperturb- 
 ably. •' ' Fas est ab haste doceri,''^ — I mean, • It is right to be 
 taught by an enemy;' and I never remember tlie 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 ! ba ! you had 
 your revenge there — that forest ! " 
 
 " Well, as a peace-ofifering, 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 
 favorites. Build a palace in your forest. Let me have Roche- 
 briant, and name your terms." 
 
 " A thousand pardons ! but T have already had the honor to 
 inform you that I have contracted an obligation which does not 
 allow me to listen to terms." 
 
 A.S a serpent that, after all crawlings and windings, rears it- 
 Be'.' 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 1 " 
 
 And Louvier strode to the door ; here he paused — "Take a 
 day to consider." 
 
 " Not a moment."
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^,3 
 
 *' Your servant Monsieur, — your very humble servant." Lou- 
 vier 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 \ 
 care to be rich .-* Vale'rie's dot, Valcfrie s happiness aie 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 appearance of ex- 
 haustion which betrays continued want of sleep ; her soft 
 eyes were dim, the play of her lips was gone, her light step was 
 weary and languid. 
 
 " My poor darling," cried Mrs. Morley, embracing her, "you 
 have indeed been ill ! What is the matter t — who attends you ? '• 
 
 " I need no physician : it was but a passing cold — the air cf 
 Paris is very trying. Never mind me, dear — what is the la:U 
 news ? " 
 
 Therewith Mrs. Morley ran glibly through the piincipal 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 al 
 leged conspirators against the Phnperor's life, which was fixed to 
 take placp towards the end of that month of June, — all mat- 
 ters of no slight importance to the interests of the empire. 
 Sunk deep into the recesses of her Jauteuil, Isaura seemed to
 
 4 1 ^ THE PARISIANS. 
 
 listen quietly, till, when a pause came, she said, in cold cleai 
 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 con\- 
 pliments." 
 
 " Compliments ! ah ! And so Mr. Vane has refused to come 
 to Paris; nevermind, 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 con- 
 trary ; but, from what I hear, he is not the person 1 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 color on her cheek mantlirg and 
 receding rapidly, and, fixing on her startled visitor ejes 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 1 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 stioi g 
 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 whicli 
 thftgirl now demanded. But then she had meant to break the 
 truth in her own gentle gradual way. Thus suddenly called up- 
 on, 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 m^in like him does not stoop to love for a
 
 THE PARISIANS. 4jr 
 
 woman who has known an insult. I do not blame him ; I honor 
 him the more : he is right." 
 
 " No — no — no ! — you insulted I 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 then 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 pro- 
 gress with 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, sad- 
 dened 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 m;iy 
 be the fault of my English rearing, it may rather be the fa alt 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 iri 
 its firmament for the use and enjoyment of all.' " 
 
 I thank you so much," said Isaura, calmly : " suspense 
 
 ((
 
 4i6 
 
 TlfE PA rj SI A AS. 
 
 nuikes a woman so weak — certainty so strong." Mechanically 
 she smoothed and refolded the letter — mechanically, but with 
 slow, lingering hands ; then she extended it to her friend, smit- 
 
 ing. 
 
 ' Nay, will you not keep it yourself V said Mrs Morley, 
 " The more you examine the narrow-minded prejudices, the 
 Knglish arrogant inati'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 learned 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 1 had set my ambition. 1 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 1 was mistaken. 
 All that perplexed me beforr m him is explained. I did not 
 guQss how foolishly I had deceived niyself 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 muse tell you what was said to me by 
 another friend of mine — a good friend, a wise and kind one. 
 Yet 1 was so angry when she said it that I thought 1 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 w^orld as 1 have done — be exposed 
 to risk of insult as I have been — until she had the shelter and 
 protection denied to me. And I, having thus overleaped the 
 bound that a prudent mother would prescribe to her child, have 
 become one whose hand men do not seek, unless they them- 
 selves take the same roads to notoriety. Do you not think she 
 was right V 
 
 " Not as you so morbidly put it, silly girl, — certainly not 
 right. But 1 do wish that you had the shelter and protection 
 which Madame Savarin meant to express ; 1 do wish that you
 
 THE PARISIANS. 4,7 
 
 were happily married to one very different from Mr. Vane — 
 one who would be more proud of your genius than of youi 
 beauty — one who would say, * My name, safer far in its endur- 
 ing nobility than those that depend on titles and lands — which 
 are held on the tender of the popular breath — must be honored 
 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 that 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 labors, 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 pres- 
 ent .'' One cannot any longer look behind ; the gaze is at- 
 tracted 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 the 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 riow — 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."
 
 4iS 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 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 re- 
 appearance in some commonplace drawing-room than I can tell 
 you what the Man in the Moon might feel if the sun that his 
 world reflects vvere blotted out of creation. 
 
 I can only say that when she reappeared in that common- 
 place drawing-room world there was a change in her face not 
 ver}' 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 
 tlark 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 line llircad-like line that in a few years would be a furrow 
 beiwceu the eyes; the voice was not so tenderly soft ; the step
 
 THE PARISIANS. 415 
 
 was haughtier. What all such change denoted it is for a woman 
 to decide — I can only guess. In the meanwhile, Mademoiselle 
 Cicogna had sent her servant daily to inquire after M. Rameau. 
 That, I think, she would have done, under any CLrcumstances. 
 Meanwhile, too, she had called on Madame Savarin — made it 
 ap 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 heen 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 Grant 
 mesnil unanswered. With Madame de Grantmesnil was con- 
 nected 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 fairyland 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. 
 
 G usTAVE 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
 
 20 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 absinthe— to preside at orgies in the Maison Doree. Regulate 
 yourself, and not after the fashion of the fabulous Don Juan, 
 jviarry — live soberly and quietly — and you may survive the 
 grandchi/.dren of viveurs. Go on as you have done, and before 
 the vear is out you are in Pere la Chaise.'^ 
 
 Ranieau 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 Done ; with parched lips thirsty for innocent tisane of 
 lime-blossoms, the thought of absinthe was as odious to him as 
 the liquid fire of Phlegcthon. If ever sinner became suddenly 
 convinced that there was a good deal to be said in favor 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 con- 
 demned 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 ordi- 
 nary 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 des- 
 perate. " 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 wh(na he 
 asked that. Madame Rameau hesitated. 
 
 These 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 phil- 
 osophy of life tells us to take other people, for what they are. 
 
 I do not think the domestic relations of the Parisian bour- 
 l^coisie are as bad as they are said to be in French novels. 
 Madame Rameau is not an uncommon type of her class. She
 
 THE PARISIANS. 4^1 
 
 had been, when she futJt married, singularly handsome — it was 
 from her that Gustavo inherited his beauty ; and her husband 
 was 2 very ordinary type of the French shopkeeper — very 
 plain, by no means iiitellectual, but gay, good-humored, de 
 voted ly attached to his wife, and with implicit trust in her con 
 jugol virtue. Never was trust better placed. There was not 
 a happier or a more faithful couple in the quartier in which 
 they resided, Madame Rameau hesitated when her boy, think- 
 ing of Julie, asked if no one had done more than send to in- 
 quire after him as Isaura had done. 
 
 After that hesitating pause she said, "Yes — a young lad) 
 calling herself Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin wished to install 
 herself here as your nurse. When I said, ' But I am his mother 
 — he needs no other nurse,' 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 Ma- 
 demoiselle Cicog.ia, why, then your father will take care that 
 the poor girl who loved you, not knowing that you loved an- 
 other, is not left to the ii'mptation of penury." 
 
 Rameau's pale lips withered into a phantom-like sneer. 
 Julie ! the resplendent J ulie ! — true, only a ballet-dancer, but 
 whose equipage in the Bois had once been the envy of duch- 
 esses ! — Julie ! who had sacrificed fortune for his sake — who, 
 freed from him, could have millionaires again at her feet I — ■ 
 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 I Ingrat I woe to thee ! Love is not 
 love, unless, when betrayed by love, it appeals to death. An- 
 swer 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, alasl 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
 
 ^22 T'/Zi^ PAR/STANS. 
 
 are not getting on so well as I had hoped ; the fever is gone: 
 but there is much to apprehend from the debility left behina- 
 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 Pari 
 sian 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-asy- 
 lum 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 amoicr 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, — work- 
 ing at some piece of embroider)' — a labor from which she had 
 been estranged for years ; but now she had taken writing, read- 
 ing, nmsic, 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 hither- 
 to kept unrevealed. And when a woman, still ver}' 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 look out her handkerchief in preparation for 
 sympaliii/.ing tears. 
 
 " Mademoiselle." said tlie visitor, halting, with eyes fixed
 
 THE PARISIANS. 423 
 
 on Isaura, " pardon my intrusion — my son has the honor to be 
 known to you. Every one wlio knows him must share m 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 mothei, 
 already drawn her to the seat from which she herself had 
 risen, and, bending over her, had said some words — true, con- 
 ventional 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 Rameavi swept her hand over her eyes, glanced 
 round the room, and, noticing the Venosta, in dressing-robe 
 and slijipers, staring with those Italian eyes, in seeming so 
 quietly innocent, in reality so searchingly shrewd, she whis- 
 pered pleadingly, " May I speak to you a few minutes alone t " 
 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 heart 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 
 sickbed 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."
 
 42 4 ^y/^ FAHJS/ANS. 
 
 " I do not — T 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 hcalino^ message from your lips. If I understand your 
 words rightly, I at least may say that you do not give to 
 another the hopes that 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 nothino 
 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 wliich you shrink. Only one w'ord more : you know that 
 jay husband and I are but quiet tradesfolk, not in the society, 
 nor aspiring to it, to which my son's talents have raised him- 
 self ; yet dare I ask that you will not close here the acquaint- 
 ance that I have obtruded on you 1 — 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 dis- 
 parities of station. Humble as our home is, slander never 
 passed its threshold." 
 
 "Ah, Madame, I and the Signora Venosta, whom in our 
 Italian tongue 1 call mother, can but feel honored 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 
 I leaven to bless you for that answer. The physician saj-s that 
 it may be long before my son is suflficiently convalescent to 
 difpense with a mother's care and resume his former life and 
 occupation in the world. It is everything for us if we can 
 c(\nx him into coming under our own roof-tree. This is diffi- 
 cult to do. It is natural for a young man launched into the 
 world to like his own chez lui. Then what will happen to Gus- 
 tave ? 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 awhile at our hearth. This is just the moment', once 
 Inst never to be regained, when soothing companionship, gen-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 tie 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 honor 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 vour 
 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 sobbings " 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." 
 
 CHArTER XV. 
 
 It needs no length of words to inform thee, my intelligen-. 
 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 intervievv with which 
 my last chapter closed. Gustave is removed to his parents' 
 house ; he remains for weeks confined within-doors, or, on 
 sunny days, taken an hour or so in his own carriage, drawn by 
 a horse bought from Rochebriant, into by-roads remote from 
 the fashionable world ; Isaura visits his mother, liking, respect- 
 ing, influenced by her more and more ; in those visits she sits 
 beside the sofa on which Rameau reclines. Gradually, gentlj 
 — 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 ani 
 mate its career towards those goals which are never basec 
 Wholly upon earth in the earnest eyes of genius, or perhaps ii 
 the yet naore upward vision of pure-souled believing woman. 
 
 And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stage, 
 of convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her ever,/ 
 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 p:esence, so
 
 426 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 sunless without it, that — well, need I finish the sentence ? — the 
 reader will complete what 1 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 w'ith locked doors. 
 
 Ah, poor child ! ah, sweet-voiced Isaura 1 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 those commonplace girls whose lips have said " Ay " when 
 their hearts said " No ? " — thou, O brilliant Isaura ! thou, O 
 poor motherless child I 
 
 She had sunk into her chair — her own favorite chair, — the 
 covering of it had been embroidered by Madame de Grant- 
 mesnii 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 Delhi 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 be- 
 wilderment — 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 ha\e I 
 done ? " 
 
 Three hours later you would not have recognized the same 
 face that you see now. For then the bravery, the honor, the 
 loyalty of the girl's nature had asserted their command. Mei 
 jjromise 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 treas- 
 ured note from Graham Vane ; of the hoarded newspaper ex- 
 tracts that contained his name ; of the dry treatise he had 
 published, and which had made the lovely romance-writer first
 
 THE PARISIANS. 4? 7 
 
 dftiire " to know something about politics." Ay, if the treatise 
 had been upon fox-hunting, she would have desired " to know 
 sowiething 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 re- 
 corded that happy hour in the arbor, and the walks of the for- 
 saken 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 
 I.ove — in dreams evermore over now
 
 4iS 
 
 THE PARIS FANS. 
 
 BOOK X. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Graham Vane had heard nothing for months from M, Re 
 rard, 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 re- 
 search 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 Djiival who survived in that of 
 Marigny. 
 
 " It was clear to me that the beau Monsieur who had visited 
 the false Duval must have been cognizant of this exchange of 
 name, and that, if his name and whereabouts could be ascer- 
 tained, 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 that concealment of facts which might, no doubt, have 
 been convenient at the time. The lover of the soi (/isarit Made- 
 moiselle 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 myste- 
 rious 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
 
 THE PARISIAN'S. 429 
 
 my expectations — and it is best to avoid disappointing an hon 
 orable 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 these circumstances, no doubt fresh in your recollection. 
 T 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 ascertain- 
 ing 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 myste- 
 rious Achille — Achille was, indeed, his noni de bapteine. 
 
 " A man of intrigue — a bonnes fortunes — of lavish expendi- 
 ture withal ; very tenacious of his dignity, and avoiding 
 any petty scandals by which it might be lowered ; just the man 
 who, in some passing afifair 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 in- 
 timacy grands seigneurs are not ashamed. They parade there 
 the bonnes fortujies they conceal elsewhere. Monsieur and the 
 grande dame were at Baden when the former died. Now, Mon- 
 sieur, 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 defunci 
 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 
 Jiad a favorite 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
 
 430 ^-^-^ PARISIANS. 
 
 small hotel at Genoa — a pleasant fellow enough ; and, aftei 
 friendly intercourse with him (of course I lodged at his hotel), 
 I easily led hini 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 affah- 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 and 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 ac- 
 quaintance with Madame Marigny, a natural daughter of high- 
 placed parents, by whom, of course, she had never been ac- 
 knowled<red, 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 a soldier with- 
 out fortune — who had served in Algiers with some dis- 
 tinction, should offer her his hand and add the modest 
 dof they assigned her to his yet more modest income. 
 They contrived also that she should understand the offer 
 must be accepted. Thus Mademoiselle ' Quelqiie chose'' became 
 Madame Marigny, and she, on her part, contrived that a year 
 or so later she should be left a widow. After her marriage, of 
 course, the parents washed their hands of her — they had done 
 their duty. At the time Don Juan made this lady's acquaint- 
 ance, 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 millinei 
 and butcher, and when they quitted Paris it was agreed thai 
 they should meet later at Aix-la-Chapelle. But when he resort- 
 ed to that sultry and, to my mind, unalluring spa, he was sui 
 prised 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 43, 
 
 name at the house to which I may send you with any note for 
 Madame Duval. 1 don't announce my name when I call. La 
 petite Marigny has changed her name for that of Louise Duval ; 
 and I find that there is a Louise Duval here, her friend, who 'vi 
 niece to a relation of my own, and a terrible relation to quarrel 
 with — a dead shot and unrivalled swordsman — Victor de Mau 
 leon." My master was brave enough, but he enjoyed l"fe, and 
 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 said to him one morning, look- 
 ing less gay than usual, ' It is finished with la 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 with la petite Marigny ; but la petite Celeste 
 is still alive.' Ah, Monsieur ! if only any man in France cou d 
 be as proud of his ruler as that Italian was of my countryman ! 
 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 110 Leporellos. 
 
 " After strenuous exertions on my part to recall to Lepor- 
 ello'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 else- 
 where — he rubbed his forehead, and drew from it these remi- 
 niscences : 
 
 " ' 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 recognize 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 dkl 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 t 
 
 " 'No — no7i vii 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
 
 422 "^fJE PARISIANS. 
 
 was dead ; and once I did venture to say, " Pardon me, Ex- 
 cellenza, but may I ask if that poor lady is really dead, since 
 I have to prepay this letter to her ? " " Oh," said he, " Ma- 
 dame 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, recognizes the representative 
 of mine as its head, and I am too bon prince not to acknowledge 
 and ser\'e 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 as- 
 certaining what became of the lady who took the name of 
 Marigny.' (I state this frankly, Monsieur, to show how diffi- 
 cult 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 somethmg 
 of that Victor de MauMon 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 Excel- 
 lency 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 Monseiur le Marquis de 
 Rochebriant ; and permit me to add that at this moment, as the 
 journals doubtless inform you, all Paris resounds with the 
 rumor of coming war, and I^Ionsieur de Rochebriant — who is, 
 as I have ascertained, now in Paris — it may be difficult to find 
 anvwhere on earth a month or two hence. I have the honor, 
 with profouiul consideration, etc. etc. " I, Renard."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 433 
 
 The day after the receipt of this letter Graham Vane was 
 in Paris. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Among things indescribable is that which is called " agita- 
 tion " 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 ; 
 '■ et, on the whole, there is little externally to show how loudly 
 die heart of Paris is beating. A traveller may be passing 
 through quiet landscapes, unconscious that a great battle is go- 
 ing on some miles off, but if he will stop and put his ear to the 
 ground he will recognize, 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 in- 
 dividual 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 gath 
 ered round him, eagerly questioning — 
 
 " What do you think, Duplessis ? Will any insult to France 
 puc a drop of warm blood into the frigid viens of that miserable 
 Ollivier ? " 
 
 " It is not yet clear that France has been insulted, Mes- 
 sieurs," replied Duplessis, phlegmatically. 
 
 " Bah ! Not insulted ! The very nomination of a Hohen- 
 zoUern to the crown of Spain was an insult — what would j Ju 
 have more ! " 
 
 ' I tell you what it is, Duplessis," said the Vicom(e de 
 Br^z^, 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 horse-
 
 ^34 ^^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 back. 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, Vicomte," said 
 Duplessis, " you indulge in a strange confusion of metaphors. 
 ]iut, pardon me, I came here to breakfast, and I cannot remain 
 to quarrel. Come, Leniercier, let us take our chance of a cutlet 
 at the Trois Frcres" 
 
 " Fox, Fox," cried Lemercier, whistling to a poodle thai 
 had followed him into the cafe, and, frightened by the sudden 
 movement and loud voices of the habitues, had taken refuge 
 uuder the table. 
 
 "Your dog ispoltron," said De Bre'ze " call him Nap." 
 
 At this stroke of humor there was a general laugh, in the 
 midst of which Duplessis escaped, and Frederic, having dis- 
 covered 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 F.nglish lady the most distinguished : the lady left me 
 — the dog remains." 
 
 Duplessis smiled grimly : " What a thorough-bred Parisian 
 you are, my dear Frederic ! I believe if the trump 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 say- 
 ing, ' liah ! as \i.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 Ics femfnesT 
 
 " 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 apologizing. 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 
 Ruff do Luuvier. Ah! is not that my English friend Grarm
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 435 
 
 Varn ? " Here, quitting the arm of Duplessis, Lemercier 
 stopped a gentleman who was about to pass him unno'.icir.g. 
 ^^ Bon jour, mon ami ! how long have you been in Paris ? " 
 
 " I only arrived last evening," answered Graham ; " and my 
 •-•" may be so short that it is a piece of good luck, my dear 
 
 ijrcier, to meet with you and exchange a cordial shake of 
 Liic hand." 
 
 " We are just going to breakfast at the Trois Freres — Du- 
 jilessis 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 per- 
 sons 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 belong to the Cabinet 
 and the Chambers. I presume that if Monsieur Gladstone ad- 
 vised Queen Victoria to declare war upon the Emperor of Rus- 
 sia, 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." 
 
 Th^ 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 favor- 
 able 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 clamor to undertake the responsibility of oppos- 
 ing it — they would resign. Where is the Emperor to find 
 another Cabinet ? — a peace Cabinet ? What and who are the 
 orators for peace ? — what a handful ! — who ? Gambetta, Jules 
 Favre, avowed Republicans. Would they even accept liic post
 
 436 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 of ministers to Louis Napoleon ? If they did, would not theii 
 first step be the abolition of the Empire ? Napoleon is there- 
 fore so far a constitutional monarch in the same sense as Queen 
 Victoria, that the popular will in the countr}' (and in France in 
 sucii matters Paris is the country) controls the Chambers, con- 
 trols 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 fraternize 
 w'.th no peace party. If war is proclaimed, let England blamf 
 it if she will — she can't lament it more than I should: but lei 
 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 it- 
 self 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 assert 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, con- 
 template a cordon of hostile states being drawn around her on 
 all sides, — German}^, in 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 king- 
 dom, already so alienated from the France to which it owes 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 the 
 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
 
 THE PARTSTAXS. 4^^ 
 
 IVois Freres, and Lemercier volunteered the task of inspecting 
 the memi 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 i^i/?^iun congratulated, uncaressed. Such 
 is fame at Paris ! here to-day and gone to-morrow." 
 " How did the man become famous t " 
 " 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 from the desire of human applause." 
 " You are a profound philosopher, M. Duplessis." 
 " 1 hope not — I have an especial contempt for aphilospher. 
 Pardon me a moment — I see a man to whom I would say a 
 word or two." 
 
 Duplessis crossed over to another table to a middle-aged 
 man of somewhat remarkable countenance, with the red ribbon 
 in his button-hole, in whom Graham recognized an ex-minister of 
 the Emperor, differing from most of those at that day in his Cab- 
 inet, in the reputation of being loyal to his master and coura- 
 geous against a inob. 
 
 Left thus alone with Lemercier, Graham said, — 
 " Pray tell me where I can iind your friend the Marquis 
 de Rochebriant. I called at his apartment this morn'ng, and 
 1 was told tliat he had gone on some visit into tlie 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. }3ut 
 Duplessis will be sure to know." Here the financier rejoined 
 tliem. 
 
 " ATon chtr, Grarm Varn wants to know for what Sabine 
 shades Rochebriant has deserted the * Jumumopes strepiHt7nque^ 
 of the capital." 
 
 " AJi ! the Marquis is a friend of yours. Monsieur .' " 
 *' I can scarcely boast that honor, but he is an acquaint- 
 ance whom I should be ver)' glad to see again." 
 
 " At this moment he is at the Duchesse de Tarascon's 
 comitry- house near Fontaincbleau : I had a hurried line from
 
 438 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 him two days ago stating that he was going there on her urgent 
 invitation. But he may return to-morrow ; at all events , he 
 (lines with me on the 8th, and I shall be charmed if 30U will do 
 me the honor 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 be- 
 tAveen Graham and the two Frenchmen. He left them smok- 
 ing 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 toward^ her carriage at the door. Glancing at 
 him with a slight inclination of her head in acknowledg- 
 ment of his courtesy the lady recognized his features. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Vane I " she cried, almost joyfully — '' you aie 
 then at Paris, though you have not come see to 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 }'ou 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 hotev 
 which is close by." 
 
 " Then you have no excuse for not taking a short drive 
 v/ith me in the Champs i^lysdes — come.' 
 
 'J'hus bidden, Graham could not civilly disobey. He handed 
 the fair American into her carriage, and seated himself t)y her 
 side. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 •_' Mu.Vane, I feel as if I had many apologies to make for 
 the interest in your life which my letters to you so indiscreetly 
 betrayed." 
 
 " Oh Mrs. Morley I you cannot guess how deeply that in- 
 terest touched me." 
 
 " I >hould not have presumed so far,"' continued Mrs.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 435 
 
 Morley, unheeding the interruption, ** if I had not been alto- 
 gcther in error as to the nature of your sentiments in a certain 
 quarter. In this ;you must blame my American rearing. With 
 us tliere are many tiiriations between boys and girls which 
 come to nothing ; but when in my coimtry a man Uke you 
 meets with a woman hke 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 veiy 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." 
 
 " J do not understand the metaphor." 
 
 " Lo\e colors our life, it should not chisel its form." 
 
 *' My dear Mr. Vane, that is very cleverly said, but the
 
 440 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 re- 
 signed your own, that thought would not somewhat deform the 
 very shape you would give to your life? Is it color alone that 
 vour life would lose? " 
 
 "Ah, Mrs. Morley, do not lower your friend into an ordi- 
 nary girl in whom idleness exaggerates the strength of any fancy 
 o\er which it dreamily broods. Isaura Cicogna has her occupa- 
 tions — her genius — her fame — her — career. Honestly speak- 
 ing, 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 pnde I felt humiliation. It 
 would be so ; I cannot help it: 'tis my nature," 
 
 " So be it, then. Wheii 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 tliere an agonizing spasm — liis 
 cheek, his ven,' lips were bloodless. 
 
 " I told \ou," he said bitterly, " that your fears of my in- 
 fluence 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 nevei 
 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 happi- 
 ness in another ? " 
 
 " Is it indeed so ? " murmured Graham. " Ay, I can con- 
 ceive it." 
 
 "And have yon 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, 
 failv.'rless, motherless ? No matter how pure her Ufe, can sb«
 
 THE PARISfAA'S. 44, 
 
 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 of dread your egotism as man con- 
 jures up ! Oh, forsooth, the equalities that charm and delight 
 the world are to unfit a woman to be helpmate to a man ! Fie 
 on you ! — fie ! " 
 
 Whatever answer Graham might have made to these im- 
 passioned reproaches was here checked. 
 
 Two men on horseback stopped the carriage. One was 
 Enjjuerrand de Vandemar the other was the Alsfcrine colone 
 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 farther 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 calcufate 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 sonriant 
 amerement^ says, ' It is the indignation of Paris at the apathy of 
 the government under insult to the honor of France;' and 
 Heaven only knows how rapidly French gamins grow into 
 giants when colonels talk about the indignation of Paris and 
 the honor of France ! " 
 
 " But what has happen'ed ? " asked Mrs. Morley, turning to 
 the Colonel. 
 
 " Madame," replied the warrior, " it is rumored that the 
 King of Prussia has turned his back upon the Ambassadoi 
 of France, and that the pekin who is for peace at any price — ■ 
 M. Ollivier — will say to-morrow in the Chamber that France 
 submits to a slap in the face." 
 
 " Please, Monsieur de Vandemar, to tell my coachmarx 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.
 
 ^42 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Engvierrand, wlio 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 recognize you at first. Once, in a visit at the chateau of 
 one of your distinguished countrymen, I saw two gamecocks 
 turned out facing each other : they needed no pretext for 
 quarrelling — neither do France and Prussia — no matter which 
 game-cock gave the first offence, the two game-cocks must have 
 it out. All tliat Ollivier can do, if he be wise, is to see that 
 the French cock has his steel spurs as long as the Prussian's. 
 But this I dx) say, that if Ollivier attempts to put the French 
 cock back into its bag, the Empire is gone in fort}'-eight hours, 
 'J'hat 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, Monsieur 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 w^onderful thing is this life of ours ! " said Enguer- 
 rand. " 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 coun- 
 try you will find the same thing. All individuals massed to- 
 gether 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 over- 
 rule 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 
 P>ench." 
 
 " I used 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,/^/ an feu, with 
 Frank and me." 
 
 " Channcd to do so," answered the cleverest and best-bred
 
 THE PARISIANS. 443 
 
 of all Parisian beau garcons ; " but forgive me if I quit you 
 soon. This poor France ! Jintre 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 apart- 
 ment. No false excuse had he made to Enguerrand ; this even- 
 ing 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 witli 
 sorrow, crush into graves ! 
 
 It was the day when the Due 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 enthusi- 
 asm with which that speech was hailed — the greater because the 
 warlike tone of it was not anticipated ; because there had been 
 a rumor amidst circles the best informed that a speech of pa- 
 cific 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 
 liandkerchiefs. Tall, stalwart, dark, with Roman features and 
 lofty presence, the Minister of France seemed to say, with Cat- 
 aline in the fine tragedy, " Lo ! where I stand, I am war ! " 
 
 Paris had been hungering for some hero of the hour — the 
 Due de Gramont became at once raised to that eminence. 
 
 All the journals, save the very few which were friendly to
 
 444 ^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 peace because hostile to the Kmperor, resounded with praise, 
 not only of the speech, but of the speaker. It is with a melan- 
 choly 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 Mau- 
 Idon and Savarin, who had been among the listeners, encoun- 
 tered. 
 
 " No chance for my friends the Orleanists now," said Sa- 
 varin. " 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 re- 
 turns a conqueror, bringing in his pocket the left bank of the 
 Rliine .? " 
 
 " None — when he does tliat. Will he do it .-' Does he him- 
 self think- he will do it ? I doubt " 
 
 " Doubt the French arniv 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 — Aus- 
 tria at our first successes must shake off her present enforced 
 neutrality." 
 
 " You have not been in Germany, and I have. What yes- 
 terday was a Prussian army, to-morrow will be a German pop- 
 ulation, 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 Ra- 
 mean ? " 
 
 " Still ver}' weak, but on the mend. You may have him 
 back in his office soon." 
 
 " Impossible ! even in his sickbed 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 
 reajijiear as the editor of '' Le S^ns Commun;' that in launching 
 his little firebrand he burned all vessels that could waft him back 
 to the port he had quitted. But I daresay 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."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 44^ 
 
 " What ! it has lost subscribers ? — gone oil 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." 
 
 " Mart)'rdoni is not my ambition. If Louis Napoleon be 
 defeated, what then ? Perhaps he may be the martyr ; and the 
 Fa\ res and Gambettas may roast their own eggs on the grid- 
 iron they heat for his Majesty." 
 
 Here an English gentleman, who was the very able corres- 
 pondent to a very eminent journal, and in that capacity had 
 made acquaintance with De Mauleon, joined the two French- 
 men ; 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 ora- 
 tors in the Chamber and their organs in the press would have 
 said that France was governed hy 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 govern 
 ment .'' " 
 
 " 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 country 
 man, whom I see yonder talking to the Secretary of your Em- 
 bassy .? " 
 
 " He ? — Mr. Vane — Graham Vane. Do you know him 1 
 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 intro- 
 duced 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
 
 446 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Graham another glance, keen and scrutinizing. " I have seen 
 that man before," he mattered : " 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 i* — why disguised ? — what can 
 he have to do with poor Louise ? Bah !— these are not ques- 
 tions 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 
 Chambre ! Perhaps I may be before the war is ended — the 
 Chavignys have great interest in their department." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GraV3j:m had left a note with Rochebriant's concierge, re- 
 questing 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 apart- 
 ment punctually at the hour indicated. 
 
 Alain was in high spirits : he burst at once into enthusi- 
 astic exclamations on the viftual announcement of war. 
 
 " Congratulate me, mon cher !" he cried — "the news was a 
 joyous surprise to me. Only so recently as yesterday morn- 
 ing I was under the gloomy apprehension that the Lnperial 
 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 times 
 of peace, such objections ceased on the moment when all dis- 
 tinctions 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 
 iJicn said that if war should break out it was the intention to 
 organize 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 — 1 know not, of course, from whom — evi*
 
 THE PARISIANS. 447 
 
 detitly from some high authority — tliat 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 th-e decision 
 of yesterday must have been a very sudden one. Ce cher Gra- 
 mont / 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 " 
 
 i' Oh, spare me your * biits ; ' the English are always too full 
 of them where their own interests do not appeal to them. TJiey 
 had no ' buts ' for war in India or a march into Abyssmia. ' 
 
 Alain spoke petulantly ; at that moment the French were 
 very much irritated by the monitory tone of the English jour- 
 nals. GraJiam prudently avoided the chance of rousing the 
 wrath of a young hero yearning for his epaulets. 
 
 *' I am English enough," said he, with good-humored cour- 
 tesy, " to care for English interests ; and England has no in- 
 terest 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 whicJi 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 conime 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 honor. But 
 all the researches to discover this lady which I have instituted 
 stop at a certain date with this information, — viz., that she cor- 
 responded 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 Gra- 
 ham 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 p()rtion of
 
 448 THE PARISIAN.^. 
 
 Uiem -^-ere from ladies — sorted and labelled, so that in srlancins 
 at any letter in each packet I could judge of the general tenor 
 of those 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 w^uld 
 destroy all letters which your father himself would have de- 
 stroyed 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 in- 
 stance, 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, those 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 to glance at the hand- 
 writing 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 pre- 
 served." 
 
 " 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 honor of 
 any woman of any family, for in that case I must have burned 
 them." 
 
 " Ah, Marquis,, shake hands there ! In such concord be- 
 tween man and man there is more entente cordiale between Eng- 
 land and France than there was at Sebastopol. Nv^w let me 
 compare the handwritings." 
 
 " The box that contained the letters is not here — I left it at 
 Kochebriant. 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 honor was concerned in 
 your request. Requests affecting honor between men comvieil^
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 449 
 
 faut is a ceremony, )f course, like a bow between them, (^ne 
 bows, the other returns the bow — no thanks on either side. 
 Now that we have done with that matter, let me say that I 
 tliought your wish for our interview originated in a very dif- 
 ferent 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, re- 
 tracted 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 for- 
 gotten 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 iiad put aside — this man, younger than himself, hand- 
 somer than himself, higher in rank .'' " 
 
 " I recollect that talk, Marquis. Well, what then ? " 
 
 " In my self-conceit 1 supposed that you might have heard 
 how muhh 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 chcz ////to-morrow), I have 
 since sought her society wherever there was a chance to find it. 
 You may have heard at our club, or elsewhere, how 1 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 out 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 t " 
 
 At the first I warned the reader how improved from his 
 old maiivaise hoiite 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 hav'^e vulgar- 
 ized 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 honor to be jealous, I am exceed- 
 ingly flattered. Speaking seriously, if I admired Mademoi- 
 selle Cicogna when you and I last met, the admiration is
 
 ^^o THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 Sv5 
 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 
 viauvaises langues.^'' 
 
 Graham caught Alain's hand and pressed it, but made no 
 an<;wer. 
 
 The young Marquis continued, — 
 
 " You will pardon me for speaking thus freely in the way 
 th; t I would wish any friend to speak of the ^t^wi^/i-f//*? who might 
 berome my wife. I owe you much, not only for the loyalty 
 wi<h which you addressed 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 pfoscrit 
 in my own land — filled me with a manly ambition, not stifled 
 apudst 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 cour Ruvert, as one friend to another. Has there 
 been any misunderstanding between you and Mademoiselle 
 Cicogna which has delayed your return to Paris 1 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 mis- 
 take 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 conjec- 
 ture 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 tt» 
 converse. I came to Paris on matters of business much com 
 plicated and which ought to absorb my attention. The day 
 after to-morrow, then, I will be with you at one o'clock."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 45 » 
 
 "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 an- 
 nounced. 
 
 These two men had naturally seen much of each other 
 since Duplessis had returned fromBretagne and delivered Alain 
 from the grip of Louvier. Scarcely had a day passed but 
 what Alain had been summoned to enter into the financier's 
 plans for the aggrandizement of the Rochebriant estates, and 
 delicately made to feel that he had become a partner in specula- 
 tions which, thanks to the capital and the abilities Duplessis 
 brought to bear, seemed likely to result in the ultimate free- 
 dom of his property from all burdens, and the restoration of his 
 inheritance to a splendor correspondent with the dignity of his 
 rank. 
 
 On the plea that his mornings were chiefly devoted to pro- 
 fessional 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 un- 
 asked — still, when appealed to, speaking with a modest good 
 sense which justified her father's confidence and praise; and apro- 
 pos of her book, she had taken Chateaubriand into peculiar favor, 
 Alain had respectfully presented to her beautifully bound copies 
 of " Atala " and " Le Genie du Christianisme ; " it was astonish- 
 ing 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
 
 452 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 reli^on 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 melan- 
 choly boyhood, an uncontaminated youth. 
 
 Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much 
 disturbed from its wonted saturnine composure. 
 
 " Marquis, what is this I have heard from the Duchesse de 
 Tarascon .'' Can it be? You ask military service in this ilb 
 omened war ? — you 1 " 
 
 " 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 
 those 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 sur- 
 prised 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 
 s_\nnpathy 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 descen- 
 dant of Henry IV. on his throne ? " 
 
 " I am not about to fight for my sovereign, but for my couii 
 try against the foreigner." 
 
 " An excellent answer, if the foreigner had invaded your 
 country ; but it seems tliat your country is going to invade the
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 453 
 
 foreigner — a very different thing. Chut ! all this is discussion 
 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 car- 
 ried into effect for six months : if the money be not then forth- 
 comino-, his hold on Rochebriant remains unskaken — the sum is 
 
 large." 
 
 Alas ! yes." 
 
 " The war must greatly disturb the money-market, affect 
 many speculative adventures and operations 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 intinitely 
 more ability." 
 
 " Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to He'bert : if you 
 wish to get your own cart out of the ruts, put your own shoulder 
 to the wheel." 
 
 Alain colored 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 pro- 
 fitable investment, and more than redeem the mortgage and the 
 sum you have paid Louvier on my account. Let it pass to you 
 irrespective of me. I shall console myself in the knowledge 
 that the old place will be restored, and that those who honored its 
 old owners prosper in hands so strong, guided by a heart to 
 generous." 
 
 Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple words ; they
 
 454 ^^-^^ PAKISIAA'S. 
 
 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 happen- 
 ed 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 your- 
 self 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 
 money-maker, 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 compli- 
 ment ! 
 
 Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, mur- 
 muring, " Listen to me. I love you ; I never had a son — be 
 mine ; Rochebriant shall be my daughter's ^6-/." 
 
 Alain returned the. embrace, and then, recoiling, said — 
 
 " Father, ycur first desire must be honor for your son. You 
 have guessed my secret — I have learned to love Valerie. See- 
 ing 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 2. gentilhomme ever lie ? And out of that love 
 for her has grown this innnovable desire to be something worthy 
 of her— something that may lift me from the vulgar platform o'f 
 men who owe all to ancestors, nothing to themselves. Do you 
 suppose for one moment that I, saved from ruin and penury by 
 Vale'rie's father, could be base enough to say to her, ' In return 
 be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant' t Do you suppose that 
 I whom you would love and respect as son, could come to you 
 and- say, ' I am oppressed by your favors— I am crippled with 
 debts— give me your millions and we are quits' > No, Duplessis ! 
 You, so well descended yourself — so superior as man among 
 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 
 twblcsse is subjected to ridicule and contempt, should so vilely 
 forgot the only motto which the scutcheons of all gentilhommei 
 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 aggran
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 45 S 
 
 dized 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 
 your 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 r.o 
 more in deprecation of Alain's martial resolves. 
 
 A Frenchman, however practical, however worldly, however 
 philosophical he may be, who does not sympathize with the 
 follies of honor — 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 com- 
 mon 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 forbodingly 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 hare laughed 
 at those who have said, ' The Emperor is ill, decrepit, done 
 up ' ! " 
 
 " Vive r E7npereur ! at last 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 Vale'rie'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 
 liave made a nobler choice ! " 
 
 Whether after these words, Valdrie slept well or not, 'tis 
 not for me to say ; but if she did sleep, I venture to guess 
 that her dreams were rose-colored.
 
 456 THE PARISIANS,: 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ai.L the earlier part of that next day Graham Vane remained 
 indoors — 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 for- 
 got the visions of Communism and Socialism and other " isms " 
 not to be realized 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 labor, — even Armand Monnier was found among 
 groups that were laying ifumortelles at the foot of the column in 
 tlie Place Vendome, and heard 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 1 He denied La Liberie^ but he gave La 
 
 Heeding not the stir of the world without Graham was com- 
 pelling 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. 
 
 ]kit now a new question was addressed to his conscience as 
 well as to his heart. What though he had never formally de- 
 clared 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 tha: 
 his luve 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 in- 
 different 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," 
 ia loo elastic to suffer the things' of real life to have lasting
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 457 
 
 h fluence over happiness or sorrow, — that in the pursuits in 
 which her thought and imagination found employ, in the ex- 
 citement they sustained and the fame to which they conduced, 
 Isaura would be readily consoled for a momentary pang of dis- 
 appointed 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 he was wholly mistaken ? What if, in previ- 
 ously 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 honor, 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 Isauia, 
 became weaker and weaker, as now, in an altered mood of re- 
 flection, he re-summoned and re-weighed 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 crochets of an insolent egotism ? 
 Was it not rather to the favor 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 honor 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 re- 
 solve 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 thai 
 world of romance of which he denied himself to be a 'iunizen !
 
 458 THE PARTSIANS. 
 
 Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied only by work- 
 men — it was under repair. No one could tell him to what 
 residence the ladies who occupied it the last 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 apologizing 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 Mor'.ir.r r was se7-ved. 
 
 " Mr. Vane," said Duplessis ' 7/1)' you take in to dinner 
 Mademoiselle Cicogna ? "
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 4S9 
 
 BOOK XI. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Among the frets and checks to the couise that " never cliil 
 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 whicJi 
 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 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 ab- . 
 sence 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 color 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 in- 
 telligence 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 recognize the
 
 460 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 old classic law which limited the number of guests where ban- 
 quets 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 
 mto solitude with your next neighbor. 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 Spiritual- 
 ism, 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 regie, gaz- 
 ing 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 sur 
 vived. 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 pleas- 
 ant 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 nunute were made, some- 
 times courteous, sometimes sarcastic, to the Englishman — prom- 
 ising 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 pro- 
 pitious moment for asking Isaura if she really were changed. 
 And certainly the honor 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 sym 
 pathy 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 etTect on the
 
 THE PARISIANS. 461 
 
 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, Eng- 
 land would have a right to offer any objection, — etc, etc. I do 
 not think that during that festival Graham once thought one-mill- 
 ionth 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 gen- 
 uine politician, cosmopolitan as well as patriotic, accustomed to 
 consider what effect every vibration in that balance of Euro- 
 pean power, which no deep thinker can despise, must have on 
 the destinies of civilized 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 gayety 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 neighbor 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 ?"
 
 ^62 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 per- 
 sonal 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. 1 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 words were forced 
 upon him by the temper in which the 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 con- 
 nection 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 so\'ereign under whose tranquil and prosperous reign 
 I have acquired, with no dishonor, 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 P'renchman 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 deli- 
 cate coatings of pearl-powder. " If every Frencbmanfelt as
 
 THE PARISIANS. 463 
 
 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 thrill 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 yon- 
 der : is not that a tableau of Youth in Arcady ? Words rage 
 around, and Love, unconcerned, whispers to Love " The 
 Duchesse here pointed to a corner of the adjoining room in 
 which Alain and Valdrie 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 in. 
 
 But in that small assembly there were two who did not at- 
 tract the notice of Duplessis, or 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 par- 
 tially with flowers, and overlooking the Champs Elys^es, 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 Mesmerizer, — Isaura obeyed that 
 summons. In a kind of dreamv submission she followed his 
 steps, and found herself on the balcony, flowers around her
 
 464 "^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 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 Avithdrawn its stars. Are there differences between us, 
 differences of taste, of sentiments, of habits, of thought ? Only 
 le: me hope that you can love me a tenth part so much as I 
 love you, and such differences cease to be discord. Love 
 harmonizes all sounds, blends all colors 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 ; <n one of 
 those voices which become so musical in summer nights under 
 starrv 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, mocker}'," she said then, with a smile half 
 bitter, half plaintive, on her colorless 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 45 £ 
 
 private life ? I felt you were so right ! Yes ! I am affianced 
 to one who tliinks 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 re- 
 morse 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 conve3-ed admira- 
 tion, 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 will teach myself to en- 
 courage, to share, to exult in it. Do you know what a differ- 
 ence there is between the absent one and the present one — be- 
 tween 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 hap- 
 piness." 
 
 "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 step 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 ex- 
 changing whispered words with Valdrie.
 
 ^66 ^'^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The next day, at the hour appointed, Graham entered 
 Alain's apartment. "I am glad to tell you,-' said the Mar- 
 quis, gayly, " 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 as- 
 cribed 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 Valeria — 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 is 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 vul- 
 garity 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^5^ 
 
 by the untranslatable words '■simplex mundifii'' \o 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 of Paris of whom an ill-fated admirei 
 
 '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 Gra- 
 ham's inspection a few epistles, in which the Englishman imme- 
 diately 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 sufhciently 
 for obtaining and remitting to me those certificates ? You are 
 too aware of the unhappy episode in my life not to know how in- 
 estimable is the service you render me. I am saved all further 
 molestation from the man wfio 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 dishonor 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 — Oh, 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 nie dead, yet 1 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 1 possess I could 
 maintain myself as a teacher or governess in sonie German fam. 
 ily. At ail events, I will write to you again soon, and I entreaj
 
 468 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 /.) 
 
 "Augsburg. 
 
 " De-^r 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 nexr week. 
 When you hear more of my uncle, direct to me at the Countess 
 von Rudesheim, Schloss N M , 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. 
 
 {BePiveen three and four years after the date of the last^ 
 
 '• You startled me indeed, dear M. le Marquis. My uncle said 
 to have been recognized in Algeria, under another name, a sol- 
 dier in the Algerine army ? My dear, proud, luxurious uncle ! 
 Ah! I cannot believe it, any more than you do; but I long ea- 
 gerly 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 mar- 
 ried. Nothing can exceed the amiable kindness I have received 
 from the Ruacsheims since I have been in their house. Foi
 
 THE rAKISIANS. 
 
 4^9 
 
 the last year especially I have been treated on eqiuil 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 for- 
 tune too great to make a marriage with the French widowed 
 governess a 7Hesalliance. 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 deci- 
 sively authentic of my uncle's fate, write me a line at any time, 
 
 directed, as before, to Madame M , inclosed 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 Roche- 
 briant." 
 
 To this letter the late Marquis had appended, in pencil, 
 " Of course a Rochebriant never denies the claim of a kins- 
 woman, 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 dis- 
 covery that her mother was noble. In one form or other, 
 every woman has the same disease — vanity. Name of her in- 
 tended 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 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 post- 
 mark on the envelope — evidently sent by hand. 
 
 The last note, dated i86i, March 20, was briefer than its 
 predecessor. " I have taken your advice, dear Marquis, and
 
 470 T!^^ PARISIAiXS. 
 
 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 mj/ 
 poverty had become urgent. Yours with inalienable grati- 
 tude. 
 
 This last note, too, was without post-mark, and as 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 pre- 
 served 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, judg- 
 ing not only by his own pencilled note, or by ihe writer's con- 
 dition as a governess, but by lier 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 mv family, whom I could identify witli the writer of these 
 letters." 
 
 " I may hold them a short lime in my possession ? " 
 
 " Pardon me a preliminar}' 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 direction." 
 
 " Foi de gentilhomme ? " 
 
 " Foi de gnitilhoi7ime I " 
 
 " Take them. When and where shall we meet again ? " 
 
 ** Soon, I tnist ; but I must leave Paris this evening. I 
 am bound to Berlin in quest of this Countess Von Rudes- 
 heim ; and I fear that in a very few days intercourse bet^veen 
 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.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 471 
 
 It was with an interest languid and listless indeed com- 
 pared with that which he would have felt a day before, that 
 Graham mused over the remarkable advances towards the dis- 
 covery 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 mar- 
 riage 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 in 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, stub- 
 born 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 mar- 
 riage 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 sur\'ived, reduced his fortune to a 
 modest independence, Isaura, was equally lost to him, and 
 fortune became valueless. But his first emotions on recover- 
 ing 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 1 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 ardor of his soul, rejected, no matter why or 
 wherefore, by the woman by whom he had cause to believe
 
 472 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 he himself vvas beloved ; and though Graham's standard of 
 honor was certainly the reverse of low, yet man does not view 
 honor in the same light as woman does, when involved in analo- 
 gous difficulties of posi*^ion. Graham conscientiously thought 
 that if Isaura so loved him as to render distasteful an engage- 
 ment to another which could only very recently have been con- 
 tracted, it would be more honorable frankly so to tell the ac- 
 cepted 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-honor. 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-de- 
 pendent amid the trials and perils of life, then possibly the 
 woman's honor might find excuse in escaping the penalties 
 of its pledge. But the poor, ailing, infirm, morbid boy-poet, 
 w'ho 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 a woman impossible ; and he returned to his old prejudiced 
 notion that there is no real depth and ardor 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 impend- 
 ing war yet necessitated special passports for Germany. 
 
 " Bon-jour, chcr 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 
 
 evenmg." 
 
 " So soon ? The war frightens you away, I suppose. Which 
 way are you going now .^ " 
 
 " To the British embassy." 
 
 " Well, I w'ill go with you so far — it is in my own direction. 
 I have to call at the charming Italian's with congratulations — 
 on news I only heard this morning." 
 
 " You mean Mademoiselle Cicogna — and the news that de- 
 mands congratulations — her approaching marriage ! " 
 
 " Afon Di<ul when could you have heard of that ? " 
 
 '* Last night, at the house of M. Duplessis." 
 
 " Farbleu " I shall scold her well for confiding to her new
 
 THE PARISIANS. 473 
 
 friend VaMrie 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 ? Ibat part of 
 the secret I did not hear." 1 
 
 " Can't you guess .'' " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Gustave Rameau." 
 
 " Ah ! " Graham almost shrieked, so sharp and >jhrill was 
 his cry. " Ah ! I ought indeed to have guessed that ! " 
 
 " Madame Savarin, I fancy, helped to make up the mar- 
 riage. I hoi^e 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 
 daresay. Adieu, my dear Savarin ! Here we are at the em- 
 bassy." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 That evening Graham found himself in the coupe of the ex- 
 press train to Strasbourg. He had sent to engage the whole 
 coupe to himself, but that was impossible. One place was be- 
 spoken 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 farther cor- 
 ner, 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 come 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 a French accent, " Would you object, sir, to my 
 lighting my little carriage lantern ? I am in the habit of read- 
 ing 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 your 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, faraway from the pkce and the
 
 474 ^^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 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 sun' 
 dr)' newspapers and pamphlets. Graham flung himself back, 
 and in a minute or so again came his sigh. " Allow me tc 
 offer you these 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 — Gralaam with 
 his travelling-cap drawn over his brows, and 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 oi 
 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 whal 
 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 condescended to seek my acquaintance in 
 disguise ? " 
 
 " Monsieur le Vicomte de MauMon, when you talk of dis- 
 guise, is it too much to inquire why my acquaintance was ac- 
 cepted by Monsieur Lebeau ? " 
 
 " Ha ! Then you confess that it was Victor de Mauldon 
 whom you sought when you first visited the Cafe Jean Jacques V 
 
 " Frankly I confess it." 
 
 Monsieur Lebeau drew himself back and seemed to reflect 
 
 " I see ! Solely for the purpose of learning whether Victo> 
 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 thivt 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 fore-
 
 THE rARTSTANS. 
 
 475 
 
 head, and stamped his boot 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 : first, 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 ex- 
 tended his hand. 
 
 " Perfect openness," answered Graham, s-^ftened into sud- 
 den 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 Maule'on 
 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, knov- 
 ing through the police that Victor de Mauleon, a writer they 
 had no reason to favor, had been in so humble a position, should 
 never, even in their oftlcial journals, have thought it prudent tc 
 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 earn- 
 est a friend of the people, and Jean Lebeau is the editor of 
 Le Sens Covifiiun." ' Why, that assertion would have made 
 Victor de Mauleon the hero of the Reds, the last thing a pru- 
 dent government could desire. 1 thank you cordially for youi 
 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
 
 476 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 resi- 
 dence 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. Duvai, 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 pecu- 
 niary aid. My father, though by no means rich, consented 
 to allow him a yearly pension, on condition that he never re- 
 vealed 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 circumstances, 
 and from female curic^sity, 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 feu Vicomte de Maule'on, aud 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 other man give to her but to make the best of what had 
 happened, and live with her husband ? But then she started
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 477 
 
 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 innocence 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 hus 
 band was not cognizant of the French law, and a legal mar- 
 riage could with his assent be at once solemnized. Monsieu: 
 Vane, I cannot find words to convey to you the joy that pool 
 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 honor 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 
 mesalliance 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 rgedical student — she would rather 
 throw herself into the Seine. All she desired was to find some 
 refuge, some hiding-place for a time, whence she would 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 re- 
 turn to his own country and be effaced from her life. And 
 then, her story unknown, she might form a more suitable alli- 
 ance. 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 _/> ne sais qiioi of stateii- 
 ness 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 in- 
 duced a female relation of her mother's, an old lady living at 
 Versailles, to receive her, stating her birth, but of course con- 
 cealing her illegal marriage. 
 
 *' From time to time I went to see her. But one day I
 
 4^5 THE PARISIANS 
 
 found this restless bright-plumaged bird flown. Among the 
 ladies Avho 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 to an apartment at Paris, and in- 
 vited 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 hus 
 bard, 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 grat- 
 ify 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 with 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 rem- 
 nant of my inheritance — this man saw her at the opera in com- 
 pany with Madame Marigny, fell violently in love with her, 
 and, ascertaining her relationship to me, besought an introduc- 
 tion. 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 coctinue 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 il- 
 legal marriage. It did not damp his ardor. 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 su]-)plied 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 aflairs
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 479 
 
 so seriously preoccupied 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 ascer- 
 tain her address ; but I could give him no other clue to it than 
 that she said she was going to Brussels, but should soon re- 
 move to some quiet village. It was not a long time — I can't 
 remember how long — it might be several weeks, perhaps two 
 or three months, when I received a short note from her stating 
 that she waited for a small remittance, the last she would ac- 
 cept 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 restiinte, Aix-la-Chapelle. I sent her the 
 sum she asked, perhaps a little more, but with a confession re- 
 luctantly wrung from me that I was a ruined man ; and I urged 
 her to think very seriousl}^ before she refused the competence 
 and position which a union with M. Louvier would insure. 
 
 " This last consideration so pressed on me that, when Lou- 
 vier called on me, I think that day or the next, I gave him 
 Louise's note, and told him that, if he were still as much in 
 love with her as ever, ies absents otit 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 ir- 
 regular marriage into which her childlike youth had been de- 
 coyed. 
 
 " 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 af- 
 fliction 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 com- 
 menced 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
 
 480 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Louise was necessarily associated with his. I called on hira 
 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 
 erelong bring my name very noisily before the public — 
 Louise cannot fail to hear of my existence and my where- 
 abouts ; 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 honor. Any 
 letter with which you may favor me had better be directed 
 to my London address ; here is my card. But, M. le Vi- 
 comte, 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 advan- 
 tageous, 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 t " 
 
 " That idea did not strike me until you asked me if she 
 had a child. Should 3'our conjecture be correct, it would 
 obviously increase her repugnance to apply for the annul- 
 ment 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 
 supjjosing that this sdi-disani 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 ? "
 
 THE PARISIANS. 481 
 
 " 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 
 du Mauieon." 
 
 " 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 
 yooi 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 by-word. Well, a man sometimes plays chess more 
 skilfully for having been long a mere bystander. He under- 
 stands 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 kins- 
 folk 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 v/hat is their real strength, and what 
 would be the prospects of success if Victor du Mauieon offered 
 himself as depute at the next election. Wish him joy, M. 
 Vane ! If he succeed, you will hear of him some day 
 rowned 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 voyaged'
 
 452 
 
 THE PARISIANS 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Graham continued his journey to Strasburg. 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 
 Isuara'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 ninety 
 and a hundred, 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 pocket-book, 
 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 VIIL 
 
 When the news of the disastrous daj at Sedan reached 
 Paris, the first effect was that of timid consternation. There 
 were a few cries of Dkheance ! fewer still of Vive la Rcpublique t 
 among the motly 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 Lcgislatif—ux^^cd Pnlikao to accept the temporary dicta- 
 torshin which the War Minister declined with equal politeness.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 483 
 
 In both these overtures it was clear that the imp-alse of the pro- 
 posers, was toward any form of government rather than republi- 
 can. The scrgens de ville were sufhcient that day to put down riot, 
 they did make a charge on a mob, which irimediately ran 
 away. 
 
 The morning of that day the Council of Ten were summoned 
 by Lebeau — minus only Rameau, who was still too unwell to at- 
 tend, and the Belgian, not then at Paris ; but their places were 
 supplied by the two travelling members, v/ho 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 up- 
 wards had done little else than conspire. Following the dis- 
 creet plan pursued elsewhere throughout this humble work, I 
 give their names other than they bore. One, a very swarthy 
 and ill-favored man, between forty and fifty, I shall 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 bramble-bush, 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 vehe- 
 ment 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 in 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 Paris- 
 iam mob. The instructions given to these members of the 
 Council by Lebeau were brief ; they were summed up in the one 
 woi d Decheance. The formidable nature of a council apparently 
 so meanly constituted became strikingly evident at that mo- 
 n»ent — first, 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 pur- 
 pose ; 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
 
 484 ^^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 and about two hours afterwards the effects were visible. Froa' 
 Montmartre and Belleville and Montretout poured streams of 
 om'riers with whom Armand Monnier was a chief and the 
 Median des Fauvres 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,among whom 
 glided the Italian champion of humanity. The cry of Dechcanct 
 became louder. But as yet there were only a few cries of Vive 
 Republique .^— such a cry was not on the orders issued by Le- 
 beau. At midnight the crowd round the hall of the Corps 
 la Lfgislatif \s7y% large : cries of La Decheance loud — a few cries, 
 very feeble, of Vive la RepiiHique ! 
 
 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 and the Italian radiant ; Grimm and Ferrier much excited 
 and rather drunk ; the Medecin des Fauvres thoughtful ; and Ar- 
 mand Monnier gloomy. A rumor 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 equally 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 
 marr)' another man's wife, getting rid of his own, and to legal- 
 ize a participation in the property of his employer ? — and now 
 he is no better off than before. " There must be another re- 
 volution," he whispers to the Atheist. 
 
 " Certainly," whispers back the Atheist : " he who desires 
 to better this woild 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 
 you confreres — you have disobeyed or blundered my instruc- 
 tions. On such an occasion disobedience and blunder ar0 
 crimes equally heinous " 
 
 Angry murnuus.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 485 
 
 " 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 Legislatif. You, Loubisky, not even a Frenchman, 
 dare to mount the President's rostrum and brawl forth your 
 senseless jargon. You, Edgar Ferrier, from whom I expected bet- 
 ter, 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 I Com- 
 rades, he wants to sell us ! " 
 
 "I have a right to %^V^ you, at least, for I bought you, and 
 a very bad bargain I made," said Lebeau, in a tone of wither- 
 ing sarcasm. 
 
 " Liar ! " cried the Pole, and seized Lebeau by the left hand, 
 while with the right he drew forth a revolver. Farrier and 
 Grimm, shouting '''■ A has le renegai ! ''' would have rushed for- 
 ward in support of the Pole, but Monnier thrust himself be- 
 tween 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 vigor which no one could have expected from the seeming 
 sexagenarian, Lebeau had caught the right arm of his assailant, 
 and 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 
 Loubisky 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 ann arrested, and said quietly, " Mon 
 sieur, have the goodness to open that window." Ferrier mechan- 
 ically obeyed. " Now, hireling," continued Lebeau, addressing 
 the vanquished Pole, "choose between the door and the win-
 
 486 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 dow." " Go, my friend," whispered the Italian. The Pole did 
 not utter a word, but, rising nimbly, and rubbing his ann, 
 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 
 C')uncil 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 
 ahva3's 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' efface, 
 Au plaisir, fnais 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 doorwav 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," stam- 
 mered he, " but do I understand that you have sent the 
 Council of Ten to the devil .' " 
 
 " I ? Certainly not, my good Marc ; I dismiss them to go 
 where they like. If they prefer the discretion you name, it is 
 their own choice. I decline 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 jnit 
 into her soup ? " 
 
 " Not so bad as that ; I have just paid the rent of the 
 haraque for three months in advance, and there is your quar- 
 ter's pay, in advance also. My kind regards to Madame, and 
 tell her to keep your skin safe from the schemes of these luna- 
 tics." Thrusting some pieces of gold into the hands of the 
 porter, Lebeau nodded his adieu, and hastened along his way. 
 
 Absorbed iu his own reflections, he did not turn to look
 
 THE PARISIANS. 487 
 
 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 watcliful 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 slank away, whispering to each other. Grimm 
 reproached Terrier for deserting Loubisky and obeying Lebeau. 
 Terrier 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 lines, the Medeciii 
 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 with- 
 out 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 be- 
 come 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 ' assassins ' 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 pr^ended 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 eacii 
 become free to choose his own way towards his own after- 
 objects." 
 
 " Yes," answered Armand, reluctantly ; " he said that to
 
 488 THE PARISIa/VS. 
 
 me privately, with still greater plainness than he said it to tlie 
 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 hlro, cannot 
 in safety stand still or retreat when the next step is to be 
 taken. It is V« avant ' or ^ a /a lai'ierne.' 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 hos- 
 tile to the opinions he roused into action, — say to me, ' Give 
 yourself up to destroy the first obstacle in the way of securmg 
 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 J 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 
 wilh 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 counte- 
 nance 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 re- 
 appear it will be in some other form. Did you notice that in 
 the momentary struggle his flaxen wig got disturbed ? and be- 
 neath 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 unlo 
 another. There are such nien." 
 
 Before Monnier, who seemed struck by these conjectures, 
 collected his thoughts to answer, a tall man in the dress of a 
 ious-lieukuant stopped under a dim gas-lamp, and, catching
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 489 
 
 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 ab- 
 stinent 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 ofif, 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 thuu 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 re- 
 plied. "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 compas- 
 sionate 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 defer- 
 ence 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 larger 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 other- 
 wise commonplace. Charles passed for a deep thinker in hb 
 own set, which was a very different set from Armand's — not 
 among workmen, but small shopkeepers. He had risen in '.ife 
 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
 
 49 o THE PAK/S/AXS. 
 
 below. Needless to add that he had no sympathy wxih his 
 brother's socialistic opinions. Still, he loved that brother as 
 well as he could love anyone except himself And Arinand, 
 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 ha\-e known the most violent antagonist of the 
 landed aristocracy — himself a cobbler — who interrupts a dis- 
 course 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 mat- 
 ters, and to think if merit had fair play he should be a Cincin- 
 natus 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 trai- 
 tors ; 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, m on petit Ar- 
 mand — 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 thousand at any given 
 point in the vast circumference of the capital. Any fool musl 
 grant that — thou must grant it, eh ? " 
 
 " It seems just." 
 
 " Of course. Well, then, we proceed by sorties of two hun- 
 dred thousand men repeated every other day, and in twelve days 
 the Prussians are in full flight.* The country rises on their 
 
 • Chnrles Monnier seems to have indiscreetly blabbed out his " idea," 
 loi it was plagiarized afterwards at a meeting of the National Guards in the
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 49 1 
 
 flight — they are cut to pieces. I depose Trochu — the National 
 Guard elects the Saviour of France. I have a place in my eye 
 foi thee. Thou art superb as a decorator — thou shalt be Min- 
 ister des Beaux Arts. But keep clear of the canaille. No more 
 strikes then — thou wilt be an employer — respect thy future 
 order.' 
 
 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 prop- 
 erty. 
 
 " Don't talk of strikes, Charles. What is done is done. I 
 was lead into heading a strike, not on my own account, for I 
 was well paid and well off, but for the sake of my fellow-work- 
 men. I may regret now what I did, for the sake of Marie and 
 the little ones. But it is an affair of honor, and I cannot with- 
 draw the cause till my order, as thou namest my class, has its 
 rights." 
 
 " Bah ! thou wilt think better of it when thou art an em- 
 ployer. Thou has 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 f " 
 
 " Thou wert a true prophet — he has duped me. But in mov- 
 ing me he has set others in movement ; and 1 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 
 
 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 honor which, unhappily for his country, 
 the citizen had the modesty to decline.
 
 , 4Q2 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 violent. Marie had been silting 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 tiung 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 civilizing 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 Commu- 
 nists, on the day when half a dozen Incapables, with no more 
 claim to repres>ent the people of Paris than half a dozen mon- 
 keys would have, were allowed to elect themselves to supreme 
 power, and in the very fact of that election released all the ele- 
 ments of passion and destroyed all the bulwarks of order. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 No man perhaps had more earnestly sought and more pas- 
 sionately striven for the fall of the Empire than Victor de Mau- 
 Idon ; and perhaps no man was more dissatisfied with and dis- 
 appointed 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 dis- 
 content of the artisans, the eloquence of the press and of pop- 
 ular 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 de-! 
 stroyed. 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 
 throufrh the lower strata of societv ; he was also in confidential 
 communication with men emment for wealth station, and poli- 
 tical 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 4^3 
 
 himself to the Liberal party, were no hot-blooded democrats. 
 Most of them were in favor of constitutional monarchy ; all of 
 them for forms of government very different from any republic 
 in which socialists or communists could find themselves upper- 
 most. Among these politicians were persons ambitious and 
 able, who in scheming for the fall of the Empire had been pre- 
 pared to undertake the task of conducting to ends compatible 
 with modern civilization 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 the 
 ablest minds and paralyzed 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 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 in- 
 compatible with the absolute power either of a sovereign or a 
 populace, and resolutely opposed to experiments on the founda- 
 tions of civilized 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 be- 
 wilderment 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
 
 494 ^^^^' J'AI?ISIAI\rs. 
 
 necessary to lose no time in using the revolutionary part of the 
 populace for that purpose. I assisted in doing so ; my excuse 
 in 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 of no excuse. 1 relied on 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." 
 
 Inxognito. — " 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 mili- 
 tary 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 popu- 
 larity. 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 
 recognized as legitimate at home or abroad, accept service un- 
 der 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-box, and reappear 
 as the travesty of a Venetian oligarchy, composed of half a 
 dozen of its mort 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 
 llie nation against the invaders. But, if that were his honest 
 desrre, 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
 
 THE PARiS.^ANS. 
 
 495 
 
 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, pro- 
 claimed by a Parisian mob for a nation in which sincere demo- 
 cratic 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 ardor in the population from which armies 
 are to be gathered in haste, at the beck of usurpers 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 MauMon. " 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 ex- 
 pedite the establishment of such a constitution as we have med- 
 itated and planned — a constitution adapted to our age and our 
 reople, not based wholly on untried experiments, taking the 
 Dest from nations that do not allow Freedom and Order to be 
 the sport of every popular breeze. From the American Re- 
 public we must borrow the only safeguards against the fickle- 
 ness of the universal suffrage which, though it was madness to 
 concede in any ancient community, once conceded cannot be 
 safely abolished, — viz., first, 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 per- 
 manence, and that concomitant love for institutions which is en- 
 gendered 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
 
 4^6 'TtJE PARISIANS. 
 
 that Senate should be fornied, 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 rash- 
 ness of counsel incident to a democratic Chamber; av.d it 
 is still more essential to France, with still more favorable ele- 
 ments for its creation. From England we must borrow the 
 great principle that has alone saved her from revolution — that 
 the head of the Senate 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, are questions of minor importance, impossible now to 
 determine ; but in which I heartily concur, with you that hered- 
 itary monarchy is infinitely better adapted to the habits of 
 Frenchmen, to their love of show and of honors — and infinitely 
 more preservative from all the dangers which result from con- 
 stant 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 fun- 
 damental doctrines for the regeneration of France I think we 
 are agreed. And I believe, when the moment arrives to pro- 
 mulgate them, though 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 preva- 
 lence of common sense 1 have a faith which I refuse to medie- 
 valists who 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 Terray 
 
 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 importance of which we see to-day with a general in 
 command of the military force, but by conceding to France its 
 proportionate share of her power now monopolized by Paris. 
 All this system of centralization, equally tyrannical and corrupt, 
 must be eradicated. Talk of examples from America, of which 
 I know little — from England, of which 1 know much, — what can
 
 THE PARISlANii. 
 
 497 
 
 we more advantageously borrow from England than that diffu- 
 sion of all her moral and social power which forbids the con- 
 gestion of blood in one vital part ? Decentralize ! decentralize ! 
 decentralize ! 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 iufluences over the destinies of 
 France than London has ovgr 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 
 joropose to do yourself ?" 
 
 De Mauldon 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 ad- 
 vice 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 role. The issue of events is uncertain ; 
 but, whatever it be, the men in power cannot conduct a pros- 
 perous war nor obtain an honorable 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, 'ihough in accepting it I feel unutteraby saddened. 
 Still, you, the calmest and shrewdest 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 ! aud 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 Frenchman 
 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
 
 498 THE PARlt-TAN^. 
 
 who are not Intern ationnlists. The ypro'^ss an!yto love human- 
 ity, by which, if they mean anything pncticpl, they mean a rise 
 in wages." 
 
 Incognito (rousing himself, and with a half-j\r\le.)" Ahvays 
 cynical, Victor — always belying yourself. But notv 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. Ycurs is 
 made — mine yet to make. But for this war I think I c<)uld 
 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 tc my social grade, and the repute I hac? 
 made as an Orleanist, inclined them to forget my youthfuJ 
 errors and to assist my career. But the Chamber ceases f) 
 exist. My journal I shall drop. I cannot support the govesn 
 ment ; it is not a moment to oppose it. My prudent course is 
 silence." 
 
 Incognito. — "But is not your journal essential to yobt 
 support?" 
 
 De MauLeon. — " Fortunately not. Its profits enabled m« 
 to lay by for the rainy day that has come ; and, having reim- 
 bursed you and all friends the sums necesssary to start it, J 
 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 ? 
 writer } " 
 
 De Mauleon. — " You forget that I have fought in Algeria. 
 1 n a few days Paris will be in a state of siege ; and then — and 
 tlien," 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.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 4^^ 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Victor diessed 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 Haussmann " and 
 substituting for Haussmann " Victor Hugo." 
 
 Suddenly De Mauleon came on a group of blouses inter- 
 spersed 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 in- 
 creased. " 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, or 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," shiiekei 
 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 Maule'on 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 humors of a Parisian mob 
 can comprehend the suddenness of popular change, or the mag- 
 ical mastery over crowds which is effected by quiet courage and
 
 ^oo THE rARISIAXS. 
 
 a rcadv jo"ke. The group was appeased at once. Even the 
 virago laughed ; 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 wav safely now. 
 
 " M.'De Maule'on," said Duplessis " I know not how to thank 
 you. Without your seasonable aid I should have been in great 
 danger of my 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 mill- 
 ions he ought to share with all by giving a sou to one. Mean- 
 while, take my advice, M. Duplessis, and quit Paris with your 
 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 Vale'rie 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 hear such good news for the head of my house. 
 But Alain himself— is he not with the prisoners of war 1 " 
 
 " No, thank Heaven. He went forth as an officer of a regi- 
 ment of Parisian Mobiles— went forth full of confidence; he 
 came back with his regiment in mournful despondency. The 
 indiscipline of his regiment, of the Parisian Mobiles generally 
 appears incredible. Their insolent disobedience to their offi- 
 cers, their ribald scoffs at their general — oh, it is sickening to 
 speak of it. Alain distinguished himself by repressing a mutiny, 
 and is honored 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 organizing a corps of Mobiles in his neighborhood 
 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 pleaseil, for he is terribly frightened. 
 "Friirht is one of llie great eniovments of a Parisian. Good day
 
 THE PARISIAN'S. 
 
 SGI 
 
 Your path to your hotel is clear now. Remember me kindly to 
 Alain." 
 
 De Mauleon continued his way through the streets, some- 
 times 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 masterly retreat, is almost at 
 GUI gates with eighty-thousand 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, sal- 
 utation to Victor, entered XS\& porte-cochere. 
 
 " Your brother seems out of spirits, — a pleasing contrast to 
 the uproarious mirth with which the 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 oui 
 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 
 Sceiirs 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 ? "
 
 C02 ^t^E PARISIANS. 
 
 " 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 counte- 
 nance seemed changed. The crest rose ; the eyes sparkled ; 
 the fair and delicate beauty which 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 forever from eft'eminate 
 companionship at the sight of the weapons of war. De 
 Maul^on gazed on him admiringly. We have seen that he 
 shared the sentiments uttered — had resolved on the same 
 course of action. Eut it was with the tempered warmth of a 
 man who seeks to divest his thoughts and his purpose of the 
 ardor of romance, and who in serving his country calculates 
 on the sfains 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 be dipped only in red ink, and common 
 sense never writes in that color ; as for the sword, I have 
 passed tlie 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 o. 
 Paris." 
 
 " My brave dear Vicomte, if you are past the age to serve, 
 you are in the ripest age to command ; and with the testi- 
 monials 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. Eft 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 Pckins nourished on absinthe and self con-
 
 THE PARISIANS. 2 03 
 
 ceit, 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 subu. ban 
 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. It ventured to suggest that the people of 
 France should have some choice in the form of their govern- 
 ment." 
 
 " That was veiy 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 Na- 
 tional 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 Madamoiselle 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
 
 504 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 Enguer- 
 rand. 
 
 " A woman like her," answered De Maul^on, " always finds 
 a fascination in self-sacrifice." 
 
 " I think you divine the truth," said Savarin, rather mourn- 
 fully. " But I must bid you good-by. May we live to shake 
 hands rcuiiis sous des jneilleurs 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 dechared 
 he did not war on Frenchman, but on the Emperor; the Em- 
 peror gone, the war was over. A democratic republic was in- 
 stituted. 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, ex- 
 horting the Pandours to fraternize 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 for- 
 tresses — an inch of her territory ? She would pardon the in- 
 vaders, and not march upon P>erlin ! " 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 harbor such pleasing illusions, amusing itself with 
 piously laying crowns at the foot of the stutue of Strasbourg, 
 swearing " they would be worthy of their Alsatian brethren." 
 till on the igth of September the last telegram was received, 
 and Paris was cut off 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."
 
 THR PARISTAI^, 
 
 505 
 
 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 Rudesheim. He was, however, saved the prosecu- 
 tion 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 Ger- 
 man 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 sanc- 
 tioned his departure, Graham took his way to Rheims, un- 
 certain, 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 gayety about the place, as 
 in an English town in which some popular regiment is quar- 
 tered. The German soldiers thronged the shops, buying 
 largely ; lounged into the cafes ; here and there attempted 
 Hi rtations with the ^m^/Z^x, who laughed at their French and 
 blushed at their compliments ; and in their good-humored, 
 somewhat bashful cheeriness there was no trace of the inso- 
 lence of conquest. 
 
 But as Graham neared the precincts of the cathedral his 
 ear caught a grave and solemn music, which he at first sup- 
 posed 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
 
 5o6 
 
 THE PAKISfANS. 
 
 sun cast its calm lingering rays. They were chanting, in 
 voices not loud but deep, Luther's majestic hx-mn, " Nun 
 dankct alle Gott.'' The chant awed even the raso:ed bes-srar- 
 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 un- 
 clasped his hands and beckoned to one of the officers to whom 
 approaching he whispered a word or two, and passed on to- 
 wards 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 fol- 
 lowed 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, though an ante- 
 room in which sat two young men, subaltern officers, appar- 
 ently 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 wai 
 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
 
 THE FARTSIANS. 
 
 507 
 
 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 ? " 
 
 " C'ertainly, He was a cadet of a very noble hou^e, and 
 disowned by relations too patriotic to forgive him for accept- 
 ing 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 tllink, 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 wou-ld he do so if the French people would 
 let him. But it must be through a French government legally
 
 5o8 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 
 tlie 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 intrusted 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 forever 
 won, lost to him now forever "i Could Isaura Cicogna be the 
 child of Louise Duval by Richard King t 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 in- 
 quiries could gain him no satisfactory answers to the all-impor- 
 tant questions as to Ludovico Cicogna's family. His political 
 alienation from the Italian cause, which was nowhere more 
 aulently espoused than at Verona, had rendered him ver}^ un- 
 popular. He visited at no Italian houses. Such society as he 
 had was confined to the Austrian military within the Quadrilat- 
 era. 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 bov several years
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 509 
 
 younger than the girl ; but whether she was the child of the 
 Signora by a former marriage, or whether the Signo^a 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 kept only 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 English- 
 man whom Louise Duval had married after Cicogna's death. 
 It would be no difficult task, surely, to ascertain where he 
 had residexrl. 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 in- 
 vested — cut off from all communication with the world be- 
 yond. 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. I'hey said 
 her manners were very haughty, her temper very violent ; that 
 she led the Ingkse 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 Sig- 
 nora'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 favorite — 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 short- 
 ly after his death the Signora left the place and never returned 
 to it ; that it was a 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
 
 5 1 o THE PARISIANS. \ 
 
 his own child. Her Christian name was Isaura, tTie 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 in- 
 formation as to what had become of his wife. Since the death 
 of her boy that lady had become very much changed — her spir- 
 its 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, dry- 
 ly ; " there are plenty of them, but they are all under ground." 
 
 On which remark the wife tried to box his ears. The con- 
 tadifio had become a free-thinker 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, Ecctiienza, is that the 
 priest did all the mischief." 
 
 " What mischief .? " 
 
 " Persuaded the Signora to leave her husband. The /«• 
 glese 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 tri- 
 um]ih when the Signora was gone." 
 
 Graham mused. The peasant's supposition was not im- 
 probable. A woman such as Louise Duval appeared to be — 
 of vehement passions and ill-regulated mind — was just one ot 
 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 hy 
 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
 
 THE PARTSTANS. 
 
 5" 
 
 subsequent career on the stage the cognoscenti had formed No 
 one knew an3'thing 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 
 whetner 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 had 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. Mor- 
 ley, inclosing his letter to the Minister of the United States at 
 the Court of St. James, and while still at Naples received an 
 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 for- 
 mer marriage, or of his second wife by him. I cannot answer. 
 I don't even know whether iSignor Cicogna ever had a former 
 wife. Isaura Cicogna never spoke to me of her parents. Per- 
 mit me to ask, what business is it of yours now ? Is it the Eng- 
 lish pride that makes you wish to learn whether on both sides 
 she is of noble family ? How can that discovery alter your re- 
 lations towards the affianced bride of another ? " 
 
 On receipt of this letter Graham quitted Naples, and short- 
 ly afterwards found himself at Versailles. He obtained per- 
 mission 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
 
 5^2 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 tliose at Versailles believed that the Parisians would endure it 
 much longer. Surely they would capitulate before the bom- 
 bardment, which the Germans themselves disliked to contem- 
 plate 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 shf 
 herself had so designated the girl. A dispassionate confidant, 
 could Graham have admitted any confidant wliatever, 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 honor imposed on him. 
 And now that there was the probability that he must convey 
 to Isaura this large inheritance, the practical difficulty of in- 
 venting 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 ^{^200,000 in trust for her, 
 without naming any one so devising it ? Still more, how consti- 
 tute himself her guardian, so as to secure it to herself, inde- 
 pendently of her husband ? Perhaps Isaura was too infatuated 
 with Rameau, or too romantically unselfish, to permit the for- 
 tune so mysteriously conveyed being exclusively appropriated 
 to lv;rself. 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 be- 
 come the secret Graham sought to conceal ! Such a secret. 
 atTecting the memory of the sacred dead, affixing a shame on 
 the scutcheon of the living, in the irreverent hands of a Gustave 
 Ramedu, — 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 respon- 
 sible ? Yet, torturing as were these communings with himself, 
 they were mild in their toi ture compared to the ever-growing
 
 TflE PARISIANS. 
 
 5^3 
 
 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, !n 
 what terrible danger ! Famine within the walls of the doomed 
 cit}' ; 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 intel- 
 lect, all his wealth, so powerless ! 
 
 CHAPTER Xlir. 
 
 Tt 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 gayety 
 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 hungerpinched, 
 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 con- 
 quest of the Bismarck fiend.
 
 . J , THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " Lemercier," cried the Vicomte de Breze, approaching the 
 cafe, "I scarcely recognize you in that martial guise. You look 
 magiiifiqiie — the galms became you. Pcste ! an officer al- 
 ready ? " 
 
 " 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 Maule'on has had 
 experience and won distinction in actual service, and, from all 
 1 hear, is doing wonders with his men — has got them not only 
 (o 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 Enguerrand de 
 Vandemar ! " 
 
 "You forget that Enguerrand received a military educa- 
 tion — an advantage denied to you." 
 
 "What does that matter .? Who cares for education nowa- 
 days ? 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 ccla : it is indeed hard work on the ramparts. 
 Infandum dolorem quorum pars magua fui. Take the day duty. 
 What with rising at seven o'clock, and being drilled between a 
 middle-aged and coquilent 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 in- 
 supportable, if I did not take a pack of cards with me and en- 
 joy 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 ex- 
 pressly not to be waterproof, like the groves of the Muses, — 
 
 ' per 
 Quos et aquae subeant et aurae.'
 
 THE FARISIAXS. r i ; 
 
 A fellow-companion of mine tucks himself up in 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, cXvi^^iy gamins, coming to see that all 
 is safe in the camp, strike up the Marseillaise. Ah, the work! 
 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 stanch re- 
 publican, and jobs by rights divine. May I ask if you have 
 dined yet ? " 
 
 •' Heavens ! no ; it is too early. But I am excessively hun- 
 gry. I had only a quarter of jugged cat for breakfast, and the 
 brute was tough. In reply to your question, may I put an- 
 other — 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 sympathize 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 
 nngrateful restaurants will not give me credit. They don't be- 
 lieve in better days." 
 
 " How C2lXs. 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 com- 
 pany shares. I had one thousand 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 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 two hundred francs left. I have despatched four 
 letters to Duplessis by pigeon and balloon,entreating him to send 
 me twenty-five thousand francs by some trusty fellow who aHI 
 pierce the Prussian lines. I have had two answers — ist, that 
 lie will find a man ; 2d, that the man is found and on his way. 
 Trust to that man, my dear friend, and meanwhile lend me two 
 hundred francs." 
 
 " Mon cher desole to refuse ; but I was about to ask you to 
 share your two hundred francs with me, who live chiefly by iny
 
 ^i6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 pen ; and that resource is cut off. Still, ilfautvivre — one must 
 dine." 
 
 "That is a fact, and we will dine together to-day at my ex 
 pense ; 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 Boule- 
 vard. On their way they encounter Savarin. " Why," said 
 De Br^zd, " I thought you had left Paris with Madame." 
 
 " So 1 did, and deposited her safely with the Morleys at 
 Boulogne. Those kind Americans were going to England 
 and they took her with them. But / quit Paris ! I ! No ! 1 
 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, ^ II faut etre la I' I returned be- 
 fore the Vandals had possessed themselves of our railways, the 
 cotivoi overcrowded with men like myself, who had removed 
 wives and families ; and when we asked each other why we 
 went back, ever)' answer was the same, ' // 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 Mademoi- 
 selle 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 kind- 
 hearted 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 
 ana 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 1 Wlv^n he sought \m\ I had my co!//>r, my opera-box
 
 TIJE PARIS fANS. 
 
 5'7 
 
 my cac/iemtres, my jewels. The Russians — the Knglish— vied 
 tor my smiles. But I loved the man. I never loved before : I 
 shall never love again ; and after the sacrifice 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 ad- 
 dress." 
 
 " 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 1 " 
 
 " 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, 7na 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 many me, and I will support him I " 
 
 " You 1 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 ban pour moi M. Savarin ! 
 do say where I can find moti ho7nme I " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " That is your last word } " 
 
 " It is." 
 
 The girl drew her thin shawl round her and hurried ofll. 
 Savarin rejoined his friends. " Is that the way you console 
 yourself for the absence of Madame ? " asked De Brez^, dryly. 
 
 "Fie!" cried Savarin, indignantly ; "such bad jokes are 
 ill-tinied What strange mixtures of good and bad, of noble 
 and of 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 a 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 
 Jo cats, who shall predict immunity to dogs .'' Qtiid mtadiun 
 nefastl Unguimus ? Nothing is sacred from the hand of rapine." 
 
 The church of the Madeleine now stood before them. 
 Moblotz were playing pitch-and-toss on its stejDS. 
 
 " 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 Roche- 
 briant, and I know I shall find him there." 
 
 *' Praving .'' " again asked Ue Br^ze, 
 
 " 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 
 fervor 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 were men of all ages — young, 
 middle-aged, old, with heads bowed down and hands clasped, 
 pale, grave, and earnest. Most of them were evidently of the 
 superior grade in life — nobles and the higher bourgoisis; few 
 of the ouvfier class, ver)' few, and these were of an earlier gen- 
 eration. 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 Brdzd and Savarir 
 looked at each other with solemn eyes. I know not when 
 either had last been within a church ; perhaps both were star- 
 tled 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 
 — a.'-e of the classes that are dominated over and obscured 'n
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 2 I (J 
 
 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 sol- 
 dier," writes the patriot Pyat. 
 
 Lemercier knelt down quietly. The other two men crept 
 noiselessly out, and stood waiting for him on the steps, watch- 
 ing the Moblots (Parisian Moblots) at play. 
 
 " I should not wait for the rotiirier if he had not promised 
 me a ;v//," 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 am free to depart. 1 
 must go and look up a form(;r 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 Lemer- 
 cier emerged from the church with Alain. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " I KNEW I should find you in the Madeleine," said Lemer- 
 cier, " and I wished much to know when you had news from 
 Duplessis. He and your i-ear Jia?icee 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 messengci 
 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 twenty-five thousand francs — the thieves." 
 
 " I hope not, but in case of delay, Duplessis tells me, I 
 am to remit to you two thousand francs for your present wants 
 I will send them to you this evening,"
 
 ^20 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " How the deuce do you possess such a sum ? " 
 
 " I came from Brittany with a purse well filled. Of course 
 1 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 com- 
 mand of a Breton company." 
 
 " True. Come and dine with me and De Brez^." 
 
 " Alas ! I cannot. I have to see both the Vandemars be- 
 fore I return to the camp for the night. And now — hush- 
 come this way " (drawing Frederic farther from De Bre'ze) • 
 " 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 water-course to convoy them to Paris. The in- 
 cidents 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 c/ieri,^' said Lemercier, as he walked to- 
 wards the Cafe Riche with De Bre'ze'; "thou shalt have a 
 festln de Balthasar under the protection of Heaven." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 On leaving Lemercier and De Br^z^, 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 qtiartier Chaussee 
 d'Antin, and, gaining a small neat house with a richly-orna- 
 mented yJzr^^/f, mounted very clean well-kept stairs to a third 
 story. On one of the doors on the landing-place was nailed a
 
 TITE PAKTSIAXS. 
 
 521 
 
 card, inscribed, " Gustave Rameau, komme de letfres.'" Cer- 
 tainly 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 designa- 
 tion " homme de kttres " ; Did not the heir to one of the loftiest 
 houses in the peerage of England, and who was also a firstrate 
 amateur in painting, inscribe on his studio, when in Italy, 
 
 " , artiste "; Such examples, no doubt, were familiar to 
 
 Gustave Rameau, and '■'■ homme de letttes" 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 
 costCime, designed after portraits of the young Raffaeile ; that 
 costume he had preserved — he wore it now. It looked very 
 threadbare, and the poiirpoint 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. Gray 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 re- 
 served 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 al- 
 ready become very dear. 
 
 " Gustave," said Savarin, " are you in a mood favorable 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 : [, 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,
 
 ^32 TV/^- PAR IS/A. VS. 
 
 journals, articles, very eloquent, no doubt, but which would 
 most seriously injure you in the eyes of quiet orderly people, 
 and compromise your future literar}' career for the sake of a 
 temporar)' flash in the pan during a ver}- evanescent period 
 of revolutionary' excitement. You scoraed 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 1 
 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, jnon pauvre garcon, it 
 would grieve me very much if, when she comes back, Iliad to 
 sav to her, ' Gustave Rameau has thrown awav the chance of 
 redemption and of happiness which you deemed was secure to 
 him.' A PcBil inalade 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 z.gano?i 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 dr\'lv. *' You mav well color and trv 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 entiui under the parental roof. But if there vou 
 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 thai 
 'tself begin to be wearisome ?" 
 
 "No," cried Gustave eigerly, "it was not wearisome, 
 but " 
 
 "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 PARISIAXS. ^2x 
 
 " TTie calm, cold, sister-like affection of a childish undevel- 
 oped nature, which knew no passion except for art, and was 
 really so little emancipated from the nursery as to take for se- 
 rious truth all the old myths of religion — such companionship 
 may be very soothing and pleasant when one is lying on ore's 
 sofa and must live by rule ; but when one regains the vigoi : £ 
 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 vigor of which I myself have 
 no recollection, what happens ? " 
 
 " The thirst for excitement, the goads of ambition, the ir- 
 resistible claims which the world urges upon genius, return." 
 
 " And that genius, finding itself at the North Pole amid Cim- 
 merian 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 1 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 evei 
 cou d. Allez. I go in for your generation. I abandon Guizol 
 and Thiers. Do condescend and explain to my dull understand- 
 ing, 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 ol 
 dmb tion — what ambition .?" 
 
 " A new social system is struggling from the dissolving ele- 
 ments 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. Be 
 hold the excitment that allures me, the ambition that goads."
 
 ^24 "^^^^ r.-lKISIAXS. 
 
 " Thank you," said Savain, meekly. " I am answered, ] 
 recognize the dwarf perched on the back of the giant. Quit- 
 ting these lofty themes, I venture to address to you now one 
 simple matter of fact question — How about Mademoiselle Cicog- 
 na ? 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 J 
 am opposed to the existing superstitions that incumber 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 be- 
 comes distasteful to either. But 1 am perfectly aware that such 
 theories would revolt a young lady like Mademoiselle Cicogna. 
 I have never even named them to her, and our engage- 
 ment holds good." 
 
 " Engagement of marriage ? No period for the ceremony 
 fixed ?" 
 
 " That is not my fault. I urged it on Isaura with all earnest- 
 ness before I left my father's house." 
 
 " That was long after the seige had begun. Listen to me. 
 Gustave. No persuasion of mine or my wife's, or 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 honor 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 
 yourinother said to her — I heard the words — ' 'Tis not for his 
 bodily health I could dare ask you to stay, when ever}' 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 Farisienne. She believes in those old 
 myths which you think fatal to sympathize 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 for- 
 sake him when told by his mother that she is necessary to the 
 health of his mind and his soul. Stay. Before you interrupt 
 nie, let me finish what I have to say. It appears that, §0 soon as 
 your bodily health was improved, you felt that your niiud and 
 soul could take care of themselves ; and certainly it seems to
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^2C 
 
 ■ne that Isaura Cicogna is no longer of the smallest use 'o 
 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 Isauia a 
 very much less desirable /(^r//^ 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 to income 
 for the moment (and Heaven only could 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 com- 
 menced. 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 elegajice 
 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 armour-ptopre. He had always felt that her affec- 
 tion for him was not love ; and though he could reconcile him- 
 self to that conviction when many solid advantages were at- 
 tached to the prize of her love, and when he was ill, and peni- 
 tent, 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 tninns 
 all the et cetera which had previously been taken into accouni
 
 e26 ^^^^" PARISIANS. 
 
 — thi! want of adoration for himself very much lessened hei 
 value. 
 
 Siil , though he acquiesced in the delayed fulfilment of the 
 engageinent 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 ccntrarv', 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. Made- 
 moiselL Caumartin conceived for me a passion — a caprice 
 — which was very flattering for a time, but which latterly became 
 verv' 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 car- 
 riage-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 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 importu- 
 nities.' " 
 
 " Honestly speaking, I doubt if 1 have the nerve to do that, 
 and I doubt still more if it would be of any avail. It is very 
 ennuyant to be so passionately loved; but, que voiiles vous ? It 
 is my fate." 
 
 " Poor martyr! I condole with you : and, to say the truth, 
 it was chiefly to warn you of Mademoiselle Caumartin's perti- 
 nacity that I called this evening." 
 
 Here Savarin related the particulars of his rencontre with Julie, 
 and concluded by saying : " I sujjpose I may take your word 
 of honor that you will firmly resist all temptation to renew a
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^27 
 
 connection which would be so incompatibfe with the respect due 
 to yom fiancee ? Fatherless and protectorless as Isaura is, I 
 feel bound to act as a virtual guardian to one in whom mv wife 
 rakes 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 
 fhicerely 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 by ballet nymphs in parti- 
 cular." 
 
 " There is no chance of so disagreeable a duty being incum- 
 bent on you, M. Savarin. Of course, what I myself have told 
 you in confidence is sacred." 
 
 " Certainly. There are things in the life af 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 this night before you. Do the Red journalists 
 for whom you write pay enough to keep you in these terribly 
 dear times ? " 
 
 " Scarcely. But I look forward to wealth and fame in the 
 future. And 3'ou ?" 
 
 " 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 engage- 
 ment 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
 
 528 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 pluitie, he w'as 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 per- 
 haps 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 forever 
 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 doc- 
 trine 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 
 m 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 civilization has estab- 
 lislied in this world, and the blank negation of all that patient 
 hope and heroic aspiration which humanity carries on into t.ie 
 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 sympatliy
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^29 
 
 in the \\'oman his choice singles out from her sex — deference 
 to his opinions, sympathy with his objects, as man So, too, 
 Gustave's sense of honor — 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 
 dissinmlator to the girl for whose opinions he had the pro- 
 foundest 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 ab- 
 sorbed in ambitious projects for turning the pyramid of society 
 topsy-turvy, if he shrank more and more from the companion- 
 ship 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 com- 
 passionated 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 ex- 
 plain 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 
 R'it is ever apt to treat what it terms German mysticism. 
 According to him, duty must always be a hard and difficult 
 stiuggle ; and he said laughingly, 'Whenever a man says, 
 " 1 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
 
 .,o THE PARISIANS. 
 
 calm, where any approach to the content of achiev.ement i 
 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 
 m\ heart that question ? 
 
 " Madame Rameau is ver\' angry with her son for hi? 
 neglect both of his parents and of me. I have had to lake 
 his" part against her. I would not have him lose their love. 
 Poor Gustave ! But w^hen Madame Rameau suddenly said 
 to-day, ' I erred in seeking the union between thee and Gus- 
 tave.' 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 con- 
 science 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 despond- 
 ence at mv 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 w^as beloved and sought by 
 anothe'r, and from that moment I lost the strength I had 
 before, — strength to silence the voice of 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 'the National Guard, the Abbe courteously addressed 
 to him some questions as to the possibility of checking the ter 
 rible 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 canti»es on 
 the rampart be more limited ? Gustave answered with rude- 
 ness and bitter sarcasm, ' Before priests could be critics in
 
 THE I'AJ^JSJAAi>. 
 
 531 
 
 military matters, they must undertake military service them- 
 selves.' 
 
 "The Abbe replied with unalterable good humor, ' 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 weakness and 
 inconsistencies that secure to him a certain tenderness of in- 
 terest. I think he never could be judged without great indul- 
 gence by women ; there is in him so much of the child, — way- 
 ward, irritating at one moment, and the next penitent, affec- 
 tionate. 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 re- 
 gard to subjects I hold most sacred drew forth from me words 
 which startled him, and which may avail to save him from the 
 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 enter- 
 tained, and put forth in defiance of Heaven itself, we were 
 separated forever. I told him how earnestly, in the calamities 
 of the tiinp my own soul had sought to take refuge in thoughts
 
 532 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 and hopes beyond the earth, and how deeply many a senti- 
 ment that in former days passed by nie 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 1 had hitherto sought the purest air, the loftiest goal, 1 
 owed to intercourse with minds like those of the Abbd 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 recog- 
 nized as bcmfactors. 
 
 " 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 at- 
 tempt 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 honor ; and I, knowing my weakness, had terror lest 
 I should yield. 
 
 " So Gustave did not comprehend from my voice, my man 
 ner, how gravely I was in earnest. But, himself softened, af- 
 fected to tears, he confessed his own faults — ceased to argue, 
 in order to praise ; and — and — uttering protestations seeming- 
 ly 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 in- 
 fluence 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 in- 
 clination and duty, we transfer all the passion and fervor of 
 fiur troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the Divine 
 Live; seeking to rebaptize 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-day 
 world in the garden-land of Art. Now. Art had grown unwel- 
 come to her, almost hateful. Gone was the spell from the 
 gnrden-land ; its flowers were faded, its paths were stony, its
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 
 
 533 
 
 sunslilne 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 — among 
 whom were the Comtesse de Vandemar and the Contessa di 
 Rimini — though it necessarily included others of station less 
 elevated. To this society, at the request of Alain de Roche- 
 briant and of Enguerrand, Isaura had eagerly attached herself. 
 It occuf ied 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 our- 
 selves — but seeks to be that something in ways not akin to, 
 but remote from, the wa3^s in which we seek it. WTien this 
 contact happens, either one nature, by the mere force of vvill^ 
 subjugates and absorbs the other, or both, while preserving 
 their own individuality, apart and independent, enrich them- 
 selves by mutual interchange ; and the asperities which differ- 
 ences 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 recognize as Divine. 
 
 Perhaps, had these two persons met a year ago in the or- 
 dinary intercourse of the world, neither would have detected 
 the sympathy of which I speak. Raoul was not without the 
 prejudices against artists and writers of romance, that are 
 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
 
 234. THE PARISIANS. 
 
 Ikit now, amid the direful calamities of the time, the beauty o( 
 both natures became visible to each. To the eyes of Isaura, 
 cenderness became predominant in the monastic self-denial oi 
 Rnoul. To the eyes of Raoul, devotion became predominant 
 in the gentle thoughtfulness of Isaura. Their intercourse wag 
 in ambulance and hos]atal — 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 it appears on the surface ; and 
 in revolutionary times it is the verj' worst of Paris that ascends 
 in scum to the top. But descend below the surface, even in that 
 demoralizing suspense of order, and nowhere on earth might 
 the angel have beheld the image of humanity more amply vindi- 
 cating its claim to the heritage of heaven. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The warning announcement of some great efifort 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 theBoulevards 
 stopped to gaze on the long defiles of troops and cannon, 
 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 capi- 
 tal. They soon proved themselves the most notable contrast 
 to that force which Pa-is 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 Parisian. 
 
 At 'ast burst forth upon Pat.s the proclam'ations of Gea 
 eral Ti jchu 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 en- 
 thusiasm, not unsupported by military statistics, in the four
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 535 
 
 hundred cannon, two-thirds of which were of the largest calibre 
 that no material object could resist ; more than one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand soldiers, all well armed, well equip- 
 ped, abundantly provided with munitions, and all(yV« a 
 /' espoir) animated by an irresistible ardor. " For me," con- 
 cludes the General, " I am resolved. I swear before you, be- 
 fore the whole nation, that 1 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 be- 
 came once more popular ; even the Communistic or atheistic 
 Journals refrained from complaining that he attended mass and 
 invited his countr\TTien to trust in a God. Ducrot was more 
 than popular — he was adored. 
 
 The several companies in which De Maul^on and Enguer- 
 rand served departed towards their post early on the same 
 morning, that of the 28th. All the prevous night, while 
 Enguerrand was buried in profound slumber, Raoul remained in 
 his brother's room, sometimes on his knees before the ivory cruci- 
 fix which had been their mother's last birthday gitt 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 quere/le, mes afnis,^' 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, wrap- 
 ping 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 dress. 1 must be tres beau to-day.
 
 536 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 I shall joivi thee at breakfast, mafnan. Early for such repast 
 but /' 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 Syiie. " But his gayety was checked 
 when Raoul, taking from his breast a holy talisman which he 
 habitually wore there, suspended it with loving hands rounl 
 his brother's neck. It was a small cr}'stal 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 fer\'or. " 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 those 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 sortis. One 
 or two of the latter, indeed, were disabled from fighting by 
 wounds ii: former fields ; they left their sickbeds to bid him 
 good-by. 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, 
 ai:d passed with light steps 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 ^lobiles 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 Maule'on.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 53,; 
 
 No pious friend prayed beside his couch, no loving kiss waked 
 him from his slumbers. At the gray 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 jet before him, he rapidly 
 revisited pigeon-holes and drawers, in which might be found by 
 prying eyes anything he would deny to their 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 througout 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 high-born 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 
 tjiat 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 honor 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 himself, " 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 
 tt'fe had I been worthy of her ? She is doubtless now another's ; 
 or, if dead — honor never dies." He pressed his lips to the 
 letters with a passionate, lingering, mournful kiss ; then, rak- 
 ing 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 ;
 
 538 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 judg- 
 ment), he had an intense conviction. He glanced rapidly ovei 
 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 
 battlefield, placed next to his heart, — significant of a French- 
 man's love of honor 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 XVni. 
 
 The streets swarmed with the populace gazing on the troops 
 as they passed to their destination. Among those of the Mo- 
 biles 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 companv, 
 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 gayety was 
 forced. Many of them were evidently not quite sober ; and 
 there was a disordery want of soldiership in their mien and 
 armament which inspired distrust among such vieux inoustaches 
 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 mous- 
 taches impulsively touched each other. They recognized tjie 
 march of well-drilled men, the countenances grave and seveie, 
 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 ? "
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^^q 
 
 " Don't you know ? " said a bourgeois. " Victor de Mau- 
 leon. He won the cross in Algeria for bravery. I recollect him 
 when I was very young ; the very devil for won^en and fight- 
 ing." 
 
 " I wish there were more such devils for fighting and fewer 
 for vvomen," growled again kvieiix 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, " 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, Rossney, and the batteries 
 of Mont Avron, had an hour before noon carried the village 
 of Chambigny and the first echelo7i of the important plateau of 
 Villiers, and were already commencing the work of intrench- 
 ment, when, rallying from the amaze of a defeat, the German 
 forces burst upon them, sustained by fresh batteries. The 
 Pi'ussian pieces of artillery established at Chennevieres and of 
 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 Engfuerrand 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 out 
 
 * The " Populace" had been contributed to the artillery, sou a sou by the 
 woi king-class
 
 54° 
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 
 
 mothers and wives say of us if we fly 1 Vive la France /-—On ! " 
 Among those of the better class in that company there rose a 
 shout of applause, but it found no spiipathy among the rest. 
 They wavered, they turned. " Will you suffer me to go on 
 alone, countr\'men ? " cried Enguerrand ; and alone he rushed 
 on towards the Prussian line, — rushed, and fell, mortally wound- 
 ed by a musket-ball. " 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 Annand 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 Mau- 
 leon, and shot the man dead. 
 
 His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, and by 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: 
 " cnleves 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 obser\'atory on which the cele- 
 ebrated inventor Bazin had lighted up, with some magical 
 electric machine, all the plain of Gennevilliers from Mont Val- 
 ^rien to the Fort de la Briche ! The splendor 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 scapulas Acroceraunia, the " thunder crags" of the 
 heights occupied by the invading army. 
 
 Lemercier, De Brezd, and the elder Rameau — who, despite 
 h'« peaceful habits and gray hairs, insisted on joining the aid 
 of la patrie — were among the National Guards attached to the
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 541 
 
 Fort de la Briche and the neighboring emincTice, and they met 
 in conversation. 
 
 " What a victory we Iiave had ! " said the old Rameau. 
 
 " Ratlier mortifying to your son, M. Rameau," said Lemer- 
 cier. 
 
 '* Mortifying to my son, sir ! — the victory of his countrymen. 
 What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I had the honor to hear M. Gustave the other night at the 
 club de la VengeanceT 
 
 " Bon Dieu I do you frequent those tragic reunions ? " asked 
 De Brdzd. 
 
 " 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 govern- 
 ment (he called them les charletans de l' Hotel de Villi) were im- 
 beciles. 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 forever — all 
 mankind could not go to cafes and theatres. It was idle to ex- 
 pect 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 Cosmopohte Dem- 
 ocratique. should be sent at once into all the States of the civil- 
 ized 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, ±e ap- 
 plauses 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 arisfd' 
 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. Ram-sau
 
 542 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 prooeeded, quitting mankind in general, and arriving at the 
 question in particular most interesting to his audience — the 
 mobilization 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 hvce en masse. If one did not compel everybody 
 to fight, why should anybody fight ? ' Here the applause agrin 
 became vehement, and Fox again became indiscreet. I sub- 
 dued Fox's bark int.- a squeak by pulling his ears. ' What ! ' 
 cries your poet-son, ^ la levee en masse gives us fifteen million of 
 soldiers, with which we could crush, not Prussia alone, but the 
 whole of Europe. (Immense sensation.) Let us, then, resolve 
 that the charletans of the Hotel de Ville are incapable of deliv- 
 ering us from the Prussians ; that they are deposed ; that the 
 Ligue of the 'Democratic Cosmopolite is installed ; that meanwhile 
 the Commune shall be voted the Provisional govfemment, 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 atten- 
 dants 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 attending the wounded and dead, but in truth murder- 
 ous plunderers, to whom the dead and the dying were equal 
 harv-ests. Did the wounded man attempt to resist the fou. 
 hands searching for their spoil, they added another wound moie 
 immediately mortal, grinning as they completed on the dead the 
 n;bbery 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 quartet 
 remote from that in which his brother had fought and fallen. 
 When those troops, later in the day, were driven from the
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 543 
 
 Montm^dy plateau, which they had at first carried, Raoul liad re- 
 passed towards the phiteau at ViUiers, 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 thent. 
 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 Freres 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 succor. He sprang forward and seized a hid- 
 eous-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 recognized 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. Enguer- 
 rand 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 ram- 
 parts 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 conveyance of the ambu- 
 lances 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, — • 
 on .vards, onwards, till it reached the Hotel de Vandemar, and 
 a woman's cry was heard at the entrance — the motlier'i 
 cry, " My son ! my son ! "
 
 S44 
 
 THE PARISIANS,' 
 
 BOOK XII. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The last book closed with the success of the Parisian sortie 
 on the 5'oth of November, to be followed by the terrible engage- 
 ments, no less honorable to French valor, on the 2d 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 invest- 
 ment ; — belief rudely shaken by Ducrot's proclamation of the 
 4th to explain the recrossing of the Marne and the abandon- 
 ment 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 succor ; and even 
 after the desperate and fruitless sortie against Le Bourget on 
 the 2ist, 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 li.'deous aspects of the Parisian population showed them- 
 selves at the worst, so all its loveliest, its noblest, its holiest 
 characteristics — unnoticed by ordinary observers in the pros- 
 perous 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 noble con- 
 trast to tliDse assigned them by the enemies of aristocracy. Their 
 sons had been foremost among those soldiers who never calum- 
 niated a leader, never fled before a foe ; their women had been 
 among the most zealous and the most tender nurses of the ambu- 
 lances they had founded and served ; their houses had been freely 
 opened, whether to the families exiled from the suburbs, or in
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 545 
 
 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 be- 
 gun to demoralize 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 27 th 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 
 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 con- 
 valescent, — 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 realize a franc, the title 
 deeds to various investment's being in the hands of Duplessis
 
 - ^5 '^^^ PARISIANS. 
 
 — tlie most trustworthy of friends, the most upright of men, but 
 who was in Bretagnc 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 two thousand francs borrowed 
 from Alain (not ignobly, but somewhat ostentatiously, in feast- 
 ing 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-mouthed pipes, — all that had 
 made the envied garniture of his bachelor's apartment, — 
 Frederic Lemercier was, so far as concerned the task of keep- 
 ing 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 their 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 priKlence to a 
 seigneur of the faubourg like Alain de Rochebriant, stooping 
 to apply for the wages of thirty sous. Rations were only 
 obtained by the wonderful patience of women who had chil- 
 dren, 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 ambu- 
 lance. Even if he could have been got at, he had probably 
 nothing left to bestow upon Lemercier. 
 
 Lemercier gazed on the announcement of the bombard- 
 ment, and, the Parisian gayety, which some French historian of 
 the siege calls douce philosophic, 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 
 ai -i 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 t ' ' Monsieur,' says the gendarme, ' it is 
 the Prussian Krupp guns.' I look at the proclamation, and 
 my fears vanish, — my heart is relieved. I read that the bom- 
 bardment 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 547 
 
 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, movirg inch by inch, the 
 female procession towards the bakery in which the morsel oi 
 bread for their infants was doled out, 
 
 " Hist, tnon 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 e^iotions not to recognize 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 mar- 
 tial form at his side, and to recognize 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, oris now wrestling for mangled remains of life 
 in the ambulances. And the new recruits with whom I tcok 
 the field on the 21st are not likely to cover themselves with 
 glory, or insure to their commander the baton of a marshal." 
 
 '' Ay, I heard when I was in the hospital that you had pub- 
 licly 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 caje, from the interior of which 
 came the sound of loud bravos and clappings of hands. Lemer- 
 cier'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, mak- 
 ing 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 
 ds Lemerc ier, overboard the question, and answered pcilitely •
 
 548 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " No, Monsieur : she has been reciting verses, and really de" 
 claims ver}- well, considering it is not her vocation. She has 
 given us extracts from Victor Hugo and De Musset, and 
 crowned all with a patriotic hynui 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 i+ 
 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. Le'onie — she married a M. Surville, a sill} 
 bourgeois gentilhomtne, 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 in- 
 fluence to get her an appointment in the ballet ; and there she 
 did as most girls so circumstanced do — appeared under an as- 
 sumed 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. " Bo7i-jour.^ M. Frederic ! 
 Ah., moji Dieu I how thin you have grown ! You have been 
 ill?" 
 
 " The hardships of a military life, Mademoiselle ! Ah for 
 the beaux jours and the peace we insisted on destroying under 
 the Empire which we destroyed for listening to us ! But you 
 tiirive 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 legend- 
 ary House of Glass."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 5 45 
 
 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 shall never 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 Gus- 
 tave is well and happy, even if he forgets me. Au revoir ! Stop ; 
 you do look, my poor Frederic, as if — as if — pardon me, Mon- 
 sieur Leniercier, is there anything I can do .-' Will you conde- 
 scend 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 — renfiery 
 
 '•'• Bien ! and if you see Gustave, you will not forget." 
 
 " Rely on me. Come away," he said to De Maule'on. " I 
 don't want to hear that girl repeat the sort of bombast the 
 poets indite nowdays. 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 over- 
 heard 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 proces- 
 sion a poor woman known to me in better days." 
 
 De Mauleon walked toward 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 a cough, " I 
 don't know vou, Monsieur." 
 
 " Poor woman ! " he resumed, walking beside her as she 
 moved slowly on, while the eyes of other women in the pro-
 
 550 THE PARrSIJTNS. 
 
 cession 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 
 arc 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 c^omfortable 
 apartment, and the healthful happy children at piay on the 
 floor. The mortality among the little ones, espec.ally in the 
 quartier occupied by the working-classes, had of late been ter- 
 rible. 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 1 " 
 
 The woman made no answer, but hung down her head. 
 She was stifling a sob. Till then her eyes seemed to have ex- 
 hausted the last source of tears. 
 
 " He lives still ? " continued Victor, pityingly : " he is not 
 wounded ? " 
 
 " No : he is weU — in health. Thank you kindly, Mon- 
 sieur." 
 
 " 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 ter- 
 rible 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 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 
 j: aver." 
 
 " You would curse the strike, or the master who did not 
 forg-ve 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 Lcbeau. If you were a poor man, 1 should 
 say, ' Shun liim.' "
 
 THE PARISIANS. 551 
 
 '' 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 hiKij 
 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 Van- 
 demar — my poor Armand beat me ! " 
 
 De Maule'on 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 — militaiy men, wo\A^%, 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 vigor and sagacity with which he had op- 
 posed the war, he seemed certain when peace and order be- 
 came re-established, of a brilliant position and career in a fu- 
 ture administration, — not less because he had steadfastly kept 
 aloof from the existing government, which it was rumored, 
 rightly or erroneously, that he had been solicited to join, and 
 from every combination of the various democratic or discon- 
 tented 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 worst specimens of the Afoblots and National Guards, 
 mostly drunk, and loudly talking, in vehement abuse of gen- 
 erals 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 recognized as the comman- 
 der 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 foi
 
 552 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 mutiny and cowardice. He made a drunken plunge at his 
 former chief, shouting " A bas rarisio ! Comrades, this is the 
 coquin De Mauldon who is paid by the Prussians for getting us 
 killed : a la lantcnic ! "' " A la laiiterne ! " stammered and hio 
 coughed 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 reck- 
 less, 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 whis- 
 per 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 dishonor the best part of his comrades." 
 
 " The man was no coward. He was an enlightened French- 
 m in, and worth fifty of such arisios 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 1 
 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 J
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 553 
 
 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 gripped him by the 
 arm, and looked him into 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 shct 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 meet- 
 ings of the ' Clubs rouges' I have heard you speak, and natu- 
 rally asked your name. Bon-soir, M. Monnier ! When you re- 
 flect in cooler moments, you will see that if patriots excuse 
 Brutus for first dishonoring and then executing his own son 
 an officer charged to defend his country may be surely pardon- 
 ed for slaying a runaway to whom he was no relation, when in 
 slaying he saved the man's name and kindred from dishonor, 
 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 Maule'on 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 wineshop and asked sur- 
 lily for more wine. 
 
 Could you have seen him then as he leant swinging himseli 
 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 oi 
 brt":, And Nature made the mind of Armand Monnier king- 
 like ; endowed it with lofty scorn of meanness and falsehood 
 and dishonor, 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
 
 ^^4 ^'^^^' PARISIANS. 
 
 rarely falls from its own constitutional fault. 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 worse, had discrowned this mechanic ? 
 
 " A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." 
 
 says the old-fashioned poet. " Not so," says the modern phil- 
 osopher ; " 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 apply to human kind in general. But there 
 is a period, as there is a class, in which a little knowledge tends 
 to terrible demoralization. And Armand Monnier lived in 
 that period and was one of that class. The little knowledge 
 that his mind, impulsive and ardent, had pffcked 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 Blanc'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 \\^t. 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 
 At^ if seized as articles of creed by fanatics ! But thrice woe 
 to the artisan, who makes himself the zealot of the Dogma ! 
 
 Poor Armand acts on the opinion 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 him- 
 self, 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 555 
 
 enough to the fanatic : he persists in being dupe and victim. 
 He, this great king of labor, 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 specii 
 lations — 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 foi 
 the adventurer's frigid purpose, much as the lawyer-government 
 of September used the Communists, — much as, in every revolu- 
 tion 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 New- 
 ton 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 be- 
 comes 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 a hospital. All manner of diseases then had 
 combined to form the pestilence which filled the streets with 
 unregarded hearses — bronchitis, pneumonia, small-pox 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 humor, which their very breath on 
 meeting sufficed to kindle up into jubilant sparks of rapid 
 flashes. 
 
 There are two consolations," said Savarin, as the friends 
 strolled, or rather crawled, towards the Boulevards — " two 
 consolations for the gounnet and for the proprietor in these
 
 gjG THE PARISIANS. 
 
 days of trial for the gourmand, because the price of truffles 
 is come down." 
 
 " Truffles ! " gasped De Breze, with watering mouth ; '* im- 
 possible ! 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. " Grcesus ! 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. 1 promise myself 
 a delicious biftek of horse. She gains the succursale, and the 
 employe 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 Dreze, and you shall share the banquet." 
 
 De Bre'ze 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 honor 
 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 ambu- 
 lance 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 appro- 
 priate it.' Thus you see how imperishable is the instinct ol
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 557 
 
 property. No sooner does it disappear as yours, than it reapn 
 pears 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 Brdzd had the reputation of being the most selfish of 
 men. But at that moment, when a generous m.an 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;"! 
 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 Brdzd, 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 fifty 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 fifty francs — a dish for a king. Adieu, my dear Frederic. 
 Allans, 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 excel- 
 lent 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 civilized man.' Paris can do without oread : Paris 
 still retains Polichinello." 
 
 He pointed to the puppet-show, round which a crowd, not of 
 children alone, b it of men — middle-aged and old — were col-
 
 2^8 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 lected ; while sous were dropped into the tin handed round by 
 a squalid boy. 
 
 " And, mon avii." whispered De Brezc to Lemercier, with 
 the voice of a tempting fiend, " observe how Punch is without 
 his dog." 
 
 It was true. The dog w^as gone, its place supplied by a 
 melancholy emaciated cat. 
 
 Frederic crawled towards the squalid boy. " What has be- 
 come 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. 
 
 " Oh, 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 ttie 
 laugh of the idlers round the punch without a dog. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 While De Brdz^ 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 re- 
 turn. It was true that in that street ihe 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 " ronian," 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 appar- 
 ent. I>ut even' the provident mind of the Venosta h* 1 never 
 foreseen that the siege would endure so long, or that the prices 
 of all articles of necessit} wDuld rise so high. And mean-
 
 iHH PARISIAN'S. 559 
 
 while 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 pro- 
 visions 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 ardor which had first induced the elder Ra- 
 meau 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 com- 
 pelled 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 engagement and was sup- 
 posed to do work on the ramparts and maintain order in the 
 city. 
 
 In that duty, so opposed to his tastes and habits, Gustave 
 signalized 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 labors, Gustave found leis- 
 ure 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 Socia- 
 list. 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 Cummunists 
 becoming rampant as most of the Parisian tradesman were. 
 Madame Rameau, on her side, though she had the dislike to 
 aristrocrats 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
 
 560 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 not but be shocked by the opinions of Gustave, though she 
 little knew that he was the author of certain articles in certan-: 
 journals, in which these opinions were proclaimed with a vehe- 
 mence far exceeding that which they assumed in his conversa^ 
 tion. 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 opportunitv ol 
 ■'nsulting his pride and depreciating his wisdom. 
 
 Partly to avoid meeting his pai'ents, partly became he recoiled 
 almost as much from the enmti of meeting the other visitors at 
 her apartments — the Paris ladies associated with her in the 
 ambulance, Raoul de Vandemar, whom he especially hated, and 
 the Abbe' Vertpre, who had recently come into intimate friend- 
 ship with both the Italian ladies — his visits to Isaura had be- 
 come 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, and the Abbe Vertpre, who was attached as con- 
 fessor 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 reckless 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 philos- 
 ophy of France has never been able to dissever. 
 
 " It is growing late," said Madame Rameau ; " I am be- 
 ginning to feel uneasy. Our dear Isaura is not yet returned." 
 
 " You need be under no apprehension," said the Abbe. 
 " The ladies attached to the ambulance of which she is so ten- 
 der and zealous a sister incur no risk. There are always brave 
 n:en related to the sick and wounded who see to the safe re- 
 turn 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 dis- 
 figured ? He was so handsome ; it is only the ugly warrior 
 whom a scar ©n the face improves." 
 
 " Don't be alarmed, Signora ; the Prussian guns spared his 
 face. His wounds iu themselves were not dangerous, but no
 
 THE PARISIANS. c6l 
 
 lost a good deal of blood. Raoul and the Christian broihers 
 found him insensible among a heap of the slain," 
 
 " M. 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 charit}', 
 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 Enguer- 
 rand 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, hum- 
 bly, while the Venosta burst into tears. 
 
 The Abbe, though a most sincere and earnest enthusiastic, 
 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 specially singled out by 
 name as a pestilent inlermeddler in the affairs of private house- 
 holds. I am said to set the woman against the brave men who 
 are friends of the people, and am cautioned by very truculent 
 threats to cease from such villanous practices." And here, 
 with a dry humor that turned into ridicule what would other- 
 wise have excited disgust and indignation among his listeners, 
 he read aloud passages replete with a 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 exe- 
 cration, but Raoul de Vandemar, though not expressly named, 
 was clearly indicated as a pupil of the Abbd'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 inspir-
 
 562 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 ed the Rameaus. Her simple Italian mind was horror-stricken 
 by language which the Abbd treated with ridicule. 
 
 " Ah ! " said M. Ranieau, " I guess the author — that fire- 
 brand 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 Van 
 demar since his brother's death. The lines about the mouth 
 had deepened, the cheeks had lost their rounded contour and 
 grown somewhat hollow. Bnt the expression was as serene as 
 ever, perhaps even less pensively melancholy. His whole as- 
 pect was that of a man who had 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 candor as to his own predilection for a monas- 
 tic life. " The wordly avocations that open useful and honor- 
 able careers for others have no charm for me. I care not for 
 riches nor power, nor honors 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 oLier 
 men, have cherished dreams of human love, and felicity 'n 
 married life, but for the sort of veneration with ^vfiich I e- 
 garded 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 gradual
 
 THE PARISIANS. 5O3 
 
 ly associated me with her acts of benevolence, and from her 
 I learned to lov'e God too well not to be indulgent to his crea- 
 tures. I know not whether the attachment I felt to her could 
 have been inspired in one who had not from childhood con- 
 Cf'ived a romance, not perhaps justified by history, for the ideal 
 images of chivalr}'. My feeling for her at first was that of tlie 
 pure and poetic homage which a young knight was permitted, 
 san^ reproche, to render to some fair queen or chatelaine, whose 
 Cfilors he wore in the lists, whose spotless repute he would 
 have periled 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 rever- 
 ence. She has often urged me to marry, but I have no bride 
 on this earth. I do but want to see Enguerrand happily mar- 
 ried, 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 attached 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 in- 
 tense desire to see M. de Mauleon, whom she declares to be 
 her uncle and her only surviving relative. The laws of the 
 1 on vent are not too austere to prevent the interview she seek.s 
 in such a case. I should add that I am not acquainted w'.ih 
 her previous history. I am not the confessor of the sister- 
 hood ; he, poor man, was badly wounded by a chance ball a 
 few days ago when attached to an ambulance ow 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 Mau- 
 leon was at Paris, and had promised to ascertain his address.
 
 c64 ^^^^ PARIS/A.rs. 
 
 His wound had prevented his doing so, but he trusted to me to 
 procure the information. I am well acquainted with the Supe 
 rieure of the convent, and I flatter myself that she holds me in 
 esteem. I had therefore no difhculty 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 Maule'on's address and entreating him to visit her. Lest he 
 should demur, I was to give him the name by which he hati 
 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 Mauldon's apartment. I there learned that he was from 
 home, and 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. 
 
 De 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 En- 
 guerrand'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 hazardmg 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 Abbd Vertprd 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 religicuse ! 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 VandCmar, for the trouble you have so 
 kindly taken. This poor nun is related to me, and I will a1
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 5^5 
 
 once obey the summons. But this convent des I am 
 
 ashamed to say I know not where it is. A long way off, i sup- 
 pose ? " 
 
 " Allow me to be your guide," said Raoul ; " I should take 
 it as a favor 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 coh* 
 vent on the other side of the Seine. 
 
 Victor commenced the conversation by a warm and heart- 
 felt tribute to Enguerrand's character and memory. " I 
 never," he said, " knew a nature more rich in the most endear- 
 ing qualities of youth ; so gentle, so high-spirited, rendering 
 ever}^ virtue more attractive, and redeeming such few faults or 
 foibles as youth so situated and so tempted cannot wholly es- 
 cape, with an urbanity not conventional, not artificial, but re- 
 flected from the frankness of a genial temper and the tender- 
 ness of a generous heart. Be comforted for his loss, my kins- 
 man. 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 
 five 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 Maul^on 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 a 
 stately step and solemn visage, De Maule'on recoiled, and ut- 
 tered 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«
 
 566 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 fields ? — this the one, the sole one, whom m 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 Maule'on," said the Superieure, calmly, " I grieve 
 to sadden you by very mournful intelligence. Yesterday even- 
 ing when the Abbe undertook to convey to you the request of 
 our sister Ursula, although she was beyond mortal hope of re- 
 covery — as otherwise you will conceive that I could not have 
 relaxed the rules of this house so as to sanction your visits 
 there was no apprehension of imn.ediate danger. It was be 
 lieved that her sufferings would be prolonged for some days. I 
 saw her late last night before retiring to my cell, and she seem- 
 ed 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 con- 
 veyed to him. " I cannot, then even learn why she so wished 
 to see me once more, — oi 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 x\bbe' Vertprd, 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 the 
 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 ad- 
 mitted 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 con- 
 dition. Do I make myself understood ?" 
 
 "Certainly, Madame, — and the letter?"
 
 THE PARISIANS. cgy 
 
 " 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 m/ 
 intention to point this out to our sister at morning, and tell her 
 that passages must be altered before I could give 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 to 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 Sup^rieure, and, as he bent to receive it, lifted 
 towards her eyes eloquent with a 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 
 forever, 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 honor 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 honor 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, 
 f ontinue 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. Me- 
 chanically, as a man does when the routine of his life is present- 
 ed to him, from the first Minister of State to the poor clown at a
 
 568 
 
 Tllh FANJSJAA'S. 
 
 surburban theatre, dooined 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 Mauleon went his way towards the ramparts, 
 at a section of which he daily drilled his raw recruits. Pro- 
 verbial for his severity towards those who offended, for the cor- 
 d.'ality of his praise of those who pleased his soldierly judg« 
 ment, no change of demeanor 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-bound ob- 
 jects 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 pas- 
 sion, 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, who disburied from her grave, smote the 
 brilliant noble who became the stern reformer of La Trappe. 
 While thus gloomily meditating, the letter of 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 of kin. Well, had 
 she not forgotten, put wholly out of her mind, all that w-as 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 w^ould 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 strong- 
 est reason why she had refused the hand of Louvier, her knowl- 
 edge that she should in due time become a mother ; a fact con-
 
 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 569 
 
 cealed from Victor, secure that he would then urge her not to 
 annul her informal marriage, but rather insist on the ceremo- 
 nies 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 neighborhood 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 agent of her easy-tempered kinsman, the 
 late Marquis de Rochebriant, and her subsequent domestica- 
 tion 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 Sig- 
 nor 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 ; esuch intelligenc 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 dis- 
 tracted, 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 cir- 
 cumstances, 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 profes- 
 sional 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 se- 
 cluded 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 
 i-. r as a daughter. In this the imperative condition was, that 
 the child should never be resought 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 nie 
 for no reference, 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 seekth*
 
 ^-jo THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 walk- 
 ing with the infant towards the railway station, imagine my dis 
 may when suddenly I met the man who had been taught to bo 
 lieve 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 retracing 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 ' Alatnan,' and said", ' Thy real mother is here.' Free 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. 1 became a harsh stepmother ; and Ludovico's re- 
 proaches, 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 I 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 ir- 
 come was derived from a post in the Austrian dominion in 
 Italy, and ceased with it. He received a small pension in coiu- 
 peusation ; 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 Verono, offered me his hand. He had taken an ex- 
 traordinary liking to Isaura, Cicogna's daughter by his first
 
 THE PARISIANS. jy, 
 
 marriage. But I think his proposal was dictated partly by 
 compassion for me, and more by affection for her. For the 
 sake of my ba\- 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 con- 
 fesscjr. 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 penalt}' 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, ^^'hen M. Selby found that he 
 could not shake my resolution, he lent himself to it with the 
 forbearance and generosit}' 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 lifCj 
 and he undertook the charge of my stepdaughter Isaura, and 
 secured to her all the rest he had to leave ; such landed prop- 
 erty as he possessed in England passing to a distant _relative. 
 
 " So we parted, not with hostilit}' — 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 neighborhood 
 of Paris, but she was then no more — her death accelerated liy 
 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 cou'd 
 tell me whither ; but, from such hints as I could gather, the 
 poor child, thus left destitute, had been betrayed into siuful 
 courses.
 
 572 
 
 THE PARTSTANS. 
 
 " Probably I might yet by searching inquiry have found hei 
 out ; you will say it was my duty at least to institute such in- 
 quiry. 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 tne 
 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. Exaggera- 
 ting the simple cause assigned to it in the priest's letter, they 
 represented me as quitting a luxurious home and an idolizing 
 husband rather than continue intimate intercourse with the 
 enemy of my religion. This new sort of flattery intoxicated 
 me with its fumes. I recoile4 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 w'ould be impossible for me to own her im- 
 possible for me to give her the shelter of my roof. Nay, if 
 discovered to hold any commune with such an outcast, no ex- 
 planation, 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 rela- 
 tives. 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 mesalliance which wounded the 
 family pride ? That pride, alas ! was in my ttir-od — my sole 
 inheritance from the family I sprang from. 
 
 " Thus it went on, till I had grave sym?/Vr<c.s of a disease 
 which rendered the duration of my life u/.<jjiUln. My con- 
 science awoke and tortured me. I resolved lo lake the veil. 
 Vanity and pride again ! My resolution vvaj applauded by 
 those whose opinion had so swayed my nuiid ar,d my conduct. 
 Before I retired into the convent from wiiich I write, I made 
 legal provision as to the bulk of the fortune vJjch, by the 
 death of M. Selby, has become absolutely at my d.^posal. One 
 thousand pounds amply sufficed for the donation to die con- 
 vent ; the other four thousand pounds are given iii Ut.St to the 
 eminent notary, M. Nadaud, Rue . On appl)i.ij^ to him
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^y^ 
 
 you will find that the sum, with the accumulated interest, is be 
 queathed to you, — a tribute of gratitude for the assistance >ou 
 afforded me in the time of your own need, and the kindness 
 with which you acknowledged our relationship and com- 
 miserated my misfortunes. 
 
 " But, oh, my uncle, find out — a man can do so with a 
 l3cilitynot 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 tempta- 
 tion. In doing so, I know you will respect my name : I would 
 not have it dishonor 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 inter- 
 view 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, bewil- 
 dered, pitiful wonder. Well might the Superieure have 
 hesitated to allow confessions, betraying a mind so little regu- 
 lated 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 under- 
 standing ! 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 recjaim the child 
 for whose errors if she had erred, the mother wlio 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 Mauleon have wondered had he
 
 574 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 known those points of similarity in character, and on the 
 nature of their final bequests, between Louise Duval and the 
 husband she had deserted. By one of those singular coinci- 
 dences which, if this work be judged by the ordinary rules 
 presented to the ordinar}^ 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 honor 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 indi- 
 vidual 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 honored wife. The conduct of 
 Louise admits no such excuse ; she dies, as she had lived, an 
 Egoist. 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 them- 
 selves, 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 Aloblots, 
 with flowers wreathed round their gun-barrels. " If," said one 
 of them gayly, " 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, 
 ra^ed dress, who had stopped to listen to the singers. At 
 his sharp cr}-, 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 Maule'on, 
 shrugged his shoulders and muttered, " Past help ! " The 
 suflferer turned his haggard eyes on the Vicomte, and gasped 
 out, " M. de Mauleon ?""
 
 THE PARISIANS, 57 c 
 
 "That is my name," answered Victor, surprised, and not 
 immediately recognizing the sufferer. 
 
 " Hist, Jean Lebeau ! — loolc at me : you recollect me now 
 — ^Marc le Roux, concierge to the Secret Council. Ay, I 
 found out who you were a long time 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 Maule'on, 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 
 Loubisky and other members of the Secret Council, The 
 Italian Raselli was there too, but, subtler than his French 
 confrei'es, he divined the fate of the Communists, and glided 
 from it — safe now in his native land, destined there, no 
 doubt, to the funereal honors 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 Loubisky, " 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 Paiivres. 
 " You remember poor Le Roux, who kept the old baraqtu 
 where the Council of Ten used to meet t 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 I " 
 
 Gaspard Le Noy smiled sarcastically, "So much the 
 worse for you if you did. A muscular and a ruthless fellow 
 is that Jean Lebeau 1 " Therewith he turned to the drunken 
 sleeper and woke him with a shake and a kick.
 
 576 
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " Armand — Armand Monnier, I say, rise, rub your eyes 
 What if you are called to your post ? What if yon are shamed 
 as a deserter and a coward ? " 
 
 Armand turned, rose with an effort from the recumbent to 
 tr.e sitting posture, and stared dizzily in the face of the Mcdecin 
 dci Patvres. 
 
 " I was dreaming that I had caught by the throat," said Ar- 
 mand, wildly, "the arista \\\\o shot my brother; and lo, theie 
 were two men, Victor do 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 her- 
 self 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 support- 
 ed themselves now as they could on the meagre rations accord- 
 ed ly the government. Still Isaura attended the ambulance 
 to wr.ich she was attached. From the ladies associated with 
 her she could really 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 con- 
 cealed from the parents of Gustave Rameau, until, one day, 
 Madame Rameau, entering at the hour at which she general!)', 
 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 be- 
 come the substitute for bread. 
 
 Isaura was absent on her duties at the ambulance hospital, 
 — purposely absent, for she shrank from the bitter task of mak- 
 ing clear to the friends of her betrothed the impossibilty of 
 continuing the aid to their support which their son had neg-
 
 llih PARISIAN'S. py., 
 
 lected to contribute ; and still more from the comment vvhieli 
 she knew they would make on his conduct in absenting liim- 
 seif so wholly of late, and in time of such trial and pressure, 
 both from them and from herself. Truly, she rejoiced at that 
 absence so far as it affected herself. Ever}^ hour of the day 
 she silently asked her conscience whether she were not now ab- 
 solved 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 mani- 
 fested. On the contrary, she hailed it as a sign that the annul- 
 ment 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 illness and 
 repentance. She had resolved to seize the first opportunity he af- 
 forded 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 around her with an emotion too 
 deep for immediate utterance, her husband entered with an ex- 
 pression 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 de- 
 termination. 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 ac- 
 cents 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 brafta festin.' " 
 
 " Oh, Madame ! and oh, my poor Isaura ! " cried Madamo 
 Rameau, bursting into tears, "So we have all this time been a 
 burden on you, — aided to bring such want on you ! 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 unex 
 pected dignity, " by a word to imply that we would stoop tc sue 
 for support to our ungrateful child. No, we will not sta.'vn ! 
 I am strong enough still to find food for you. I will apply for ; e- 
 storation to the National Guard. They have augmented the pay 
 to married men ; it is now nearly two and a half francs a day to a 
 ^ere {fe/ami/le and on thsit pay we all can at least live. Courage 
 my wife ! I will go at once for employment. Many older men
 
 578 ; THE PARISIANS. 
 
 than I are at watch on the ramparts, and will march to the battle 
 on the next sortie." 
 
 " It sliall not be so," exclaimed Madame Rameau, vehement- 
 ly, 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 Jac- 
 ques ! Madame," she continued, turning to 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 if — 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 w^as deceived. A man so heartless to his 
 parents, so neglectful of his affianced, is not to be re- 
 deemed. 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 
 made her, though, in 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, as far as I could, my poor Ficcolas 
 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 indiiiference 
 and neglect. His health is very delicate ; perhaps he may be 
 again dangerously ill. He serves in the National Guard; per- 
 haps, ' — sne 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 <he last word she dropped into a seat and her whole frame 
 sh; ok with 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 .s to be 
 found." 
 
 " You do, and concealed it from me 1 Oh, Jacques ' "
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^^n 
 
 " Listen to me, wife, and you too, INIadame ; 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 him- 
 self 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 intiict 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 all clue to his discovery by that pertinacious Made- 
 moiselle Julie." 
 
 Rameau had here sunk his voice into a whisper, intended 
 only for his wife ; but the ear of the Venosta was fine enougii 
 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 wuh true Parisian safig-froid as to such matters of moral- 
 ity, " a trifle not worth considering. Of course a good looking 
 garcon like Gustave must have his little affairs of the heart be- 
 fore he settles for* life. Unluckily, among 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
 
 580 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 silly scandal, if on.y out of respect to the dignity -of \va 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 I The good 
 Abbe Vertpre' was telling us of the writings with that name 
 attached to them. The Abb^ himself is denounced by name 
 as one of those meddling priests who are to be constiained 
 to serve as soldiers or pointed out to the vengeance of the 
 canuille. \%z.\xx?i ?, 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 Jie bigoted prejudices of his 
 parents and his fiancee^ and tlat if genius, like fire, would 
 find its way out, he could not heiu it ; that a time was rapidly 
 coming when his opinions woui'i be uppermost; that since 
 October the Communists were gaining ascendency, and only 
 waited the end of the siege to pit down the present govern- 
 ment, and with it all hypocrisies ai d shams, religious or social. 
 My wife, he was rude to me, i isulting ; but he had been 
 drinking- -that made him incaut! )us ; 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 O'lt of my obsolete notions'.' 
 You may go to him, wife, now, if jou please. I will not, nor 
 will I take from him a crust of bread. I came hither, deter- 
 mined to tell the young lady all this, if I found her at home. I
 
 THE PARISIANS. rSi 
 
 should be a dishonored man if I suffered her to be cheated intc 
 misery. There, Madame Venosta, there ! Take that journal, 
 show it *o Mademoiselle, and report to her all I have said." 
 
 M. kameau, 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 salu- 
 tation 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 t'hat section ot 
 the many-faced capital in which the beau fnonde was held in 
 detestation or scorn ; still the house had i ertain pretensions, 
 boasting a courtyard and a porter's lodge. Madame Rameau, 
 instructed to mount au second, found the door ajar, and, enter- 
 ing, 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 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 exi>er\ment 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 fol- 
 lows intoxication. She did not attempt to disturb him. She 
 placed herself quietly by his side, gazing 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
 
 582 THE PARISIANS: 
 
 words, in which fragments of his own delicately worded verse 
 were incoherently mixed up with ribald slang addressed to im- 
 aginary 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, lit 
 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 exhaus- 
 tion, 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 des- 
 titution in which he had deserted his parents and his affianced. 
 In his present mood Gustave was deeply affected by these re- 
 presentations. He excused himself feebly by dwelling on the 
 excitement of the times, the preoccupation of his mind, the ex- 
 ample 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 tran- 
 quil sleep ; and Madame Rameau, quite worn out, slept also in 
 the chair beside him, her arm around his neck. He awoke be- 
 fore 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 foi 
 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 gayly, " 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."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 SS3 
 
 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 brokei 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 as- 
 cended with weary steps to the sitting-room. There she seated 
 herself quietly, looking with abstracted eyes round the bare dis- 
 mantled space by the light of the single candle. 
 
 When the Venosta re-entered, she was followed by the ser- 
 vants, bringing in a daintier meal than they had known for 
 days — a genuine rabbit, potatoes, marrons glaces, a bottle ol 
 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 re- 
 mitted to the two Italian women-servants, and another log 
 been thrown on the hearth, that the Venosta opened the sub- 
 ject which was pressing on her heart. She did this wirh a 
 joyous smile, taking both Isaura's hands in her own, and strok- 
 ing 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 com- 
 pressed lips and varying color, 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.
 
 584 THE PARISIANS, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 When, a little before noon, Gustave was admitted by the 
 -servant into Isaura's salofi, 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 bum ; there were only two or three chairs in the 
 room ; even the carpet, which had been of gayly-colored Au- 
 busson, was gone. His teeth chattered ; and he only replied 
 by a dreary nod to the servant, who informed him that Madarne 
 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 ele- 
 gant surroundings, — a pretty boudoir, a cheery hearth, an easy 
 faufeuil. In the absence of such attributes, '^ fitgit 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 tout les diables, quel 
 c/iien 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 
 sxpect grave displeasure and a frigid reception. But the ex- 
 pression of Isaura's face was more kindly, more gentle, more 
 tfcnder, than he had seen it since the day she had accepted nis 
 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 enlight- 
 ened ; 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, led her to one 
 of the few remaining chairs, and seated himself beside her.
 
 'JIIE PAK/S/ANS. 3S5 
 
 " 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 govern- 
 ment, and the cowardice, or rather the treachery, of our gen- 
 erals, have 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 'ntellectual la- 
 l)(jrs that have absorbed all such moments as my military 
 drudgeries left to the talents which, even at such a moment, 
 paralyzing 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 Gus- 
 tave, with a fervor 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 posi- 
 tions 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 na- 
 ture 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 with- 
 hold 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 1 Your own ! I understand now. You did not love 
 me ? " 
 
 " I never said that I loved you in the sense in which you
 
 S86 
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 
 
 use the word. I told 3'ou that the love which you have de- 
 scribed in your verse, and which," she added, falteringly, with 
 heightened color and with hands tightly clasped, " I have con- 
 ceived possible in my dreams, it was not mine to give. Yoii 
 declared you were satisfied with such affection as I could be- 
 stow. 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, in 
 this time of trial and 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 sweet- 
 ness and fervor of its devout expression, — " Isaura, I merit your 
 censure, your sentence of condemnation ; but do not ask me to 
 give you 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, 
 ol 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—
 
 THE PARISIANS. 5S7 
 
 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 impas- 
 sioned 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 advo- 
 cate ; 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 art honest at this moment, 
 my poor friend ; but could I believe thee to-day, thou wouldst 
 laugh to-morrow at what woman can be made to believe." 
 
 Stung to the quick by th-e truth of Isaura's accusation, 
 Gusta-ve 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 the 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 ard 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.
 
 588 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 In vain persons, be they male or female, there is a com 
 placent 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 piti- 
 ful B , although by that achievement she incurs the immi- 
 nent 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 dis- 
 carded him. But, as he wandered abstractedlv in the bitins: 
 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 thirty sous a day as a 
 National Guard — thirty 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 poli- 
 tics," grumbled between his teeth the enthusiastic advocate ol 
 Women's Rights on all matters of love. " And," he con- 
 tinued, soliloquizing, "it is not as if the girl had any large oi 
 decent dot ; it is not as if she said, ' In rewirn for the sacrifice
 
 THE PARISIANS. 5S9 
 
 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 al- 
 luring ; and the girl herself is not so pretty as she was — grown 
 very thin. Sur man ame, I think she asks too much — far more 
 than she is worth. No, no ; I had better have accepted her 
 dismissal. Elle 71' est pas digue 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 
 arm. 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 ! seiil honime 
 au monde a mon cceur, Gustave, cheri adore ! I have found thee 
 ■ — at last — at last ! " Gustave gazed upon her, stupefied. In- 
 voluntarily 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 mendi- 
 cant for alms who thus reminded the shivering Adonis of the 
 claims of a pristine Venus. He stammered out her name — 
 "Julie ! " — and then he stopped. 
 
 " Old, ta Julie ! Petit tttgrat ! how I have sought for thee ! 
 how 1 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 i " 
 
 '• 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 3-ou married ? " 
 
 " No, no. Hark ! Take care — is not that the hiss of an 
 
 " What then ? Let it come. Would it might slay us both 
 while my hand is in thine ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " muttered Gustave, inwardly, " what a difference !
 
 ^QO THE PARISIANS. 
 
 This is love ! No preaching here ! Elle est plus digne de mot 
 gue Tautre." 
 
 " No," lie 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 or my effect as an orator not de- 
 spised in the Salle Favre. Since. I have withdrawn from that 
 arena. But as a journalist I flatter myself that I have had a 
 beau sucessJ' 
 
 "Doubtless, doubtless, my Gustave, my Poet! Wherevei 
 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 dis- 
 covered me under my 7wm de i>lume.^' 
 
 " Pardon me — I was always bete. But, oh ! for so many 
 weeks I was so poor — so destitute. I could go nowhere, ex- 
 cept — don't be ashamed of me — except " 
 
 "Yes? Goon." 
 
 " 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 heavy as lead, I 
 danced and declaimed. My heart was not so heavy when I 
 recited thy songs." 
 
 " My songs! Pauvre ange f" exclaimed the Poet. 
 
 " And then, too, I thought, ' Ah this dreadful siege I He, 
 too, may be poor — he may know want and hunger ; ' and so all 
 I could save from Madeleine I put into a box icn 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 '/lonneur /'"' 
 
 " Parole dWtonneur/ What does that matter ? " 
 
 " Everything ! Ah ! I am not so mechante, so fnaiivaise fete, 
 as I was some months ago. If thou wert 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, whoevei
 
 THE rARISIAiXS. eg, 
 
 she be ? or does she love thee so well that it would he sin in 
 thee to talk trifles to Julie ? Speak as honestly as if thou werl 
 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 
 ai range 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 didst, and still dost. And — ah ! well — now that 
 we meet again — now that I look m 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 "i " 
 
 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 an- 
 swered as a Parisian sceptic, not ill bred, naturally would an- 
 swer — • 
 
 " My dear friend, my dear child " (the Parisian is very fond 
 of the word child or enfanl in addressing a woman), " I have 
 never seen thee so beautiful as thou art now ; and when thou 
 tellest me, that thou art 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, mo7i homme ! mon /lomme / thou art very spirtiuel, 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 chezmoi ; 
 come and let me explain all. Only — only, let me repeat, if an- 
 other 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 J ulie, 
 amidst the distant boom of the besiegers' cannon, while the short 
 clay 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,
 
 592 
 
 THE FAKISIANS. 
 
 said, " There is no reason why I should refuse to attend thee 
 home and listen to the explanations thou dost generously con- 
 descend 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 acquaint- 
 ance, the apartment no doubt had been infinitely more 
 splendid, more abundant in silks and fringes and fiowers and 
 nicknacks ; but never had it seemed so cheery and comfort- 
 able and home-like as now. What a contrast to Isaura's dis- 
 mantled • 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 inno- 
 cent ! 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. 
 
 " Causotis" 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 Caf^ , and was putting on my shaw', 
 
 when a tall Monsieur, y^r/ bel homme, with the air of a. gixviJ. 
 seigneur, entered the cafe, and, approaching me politely, said, 
 'I think I have the honor to address Mademoiselle Julie Can 
 martin?' 'That is my name,' I said surprised; and, looking 
 at him more intently, I recognized 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 smik, ' I shall startle you when I say that
 
 THE PARISIANS. ^^3 
 
 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. Allo\' me to request that you will accompany me 
 
 to Monsieur N , the avoue. It is not very far from this ; 
 
 and by the way I will tell }ou some news that may sadden, and 
 some news that may rejoice.' 
 
 " There was ai. 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 wo 
 walked, he told me in a 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, where 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 my name. She then entered a nunnery, but, before 
 doing so, assigned a sum of one hundred thousand 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,' con- 
 tinued the Monsieur, ' to go with me to Monsieur N 's, be- 
 cause 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 Monsieur N 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 inter- 
 ruption, till now — when he looked up, and said, with his 
 customary sneer, " Did your Monsieur, fort bel hotnme, you 
 say, inform you of the value of the advice, rather of the com- 
 mands, 5^ou were implicitly to obey ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Julie ; " not then, but later. Let me go on. 
 
 We arrived at Monsieur N 's, an elderly grave man. He 
 
 said that all he knew was that he held the money in trust fof 
 the Monsieur with me, to be given to him, with the accumu-
 
 ^g^ THE PARISIANS. 
 
 lations 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 the 
 money to buy that smart dress and these furs. Bah ! mon 
 t'ufani, why try to deceive me ? Do I not know my Paris .-* 
 A fort bel homme does not make himself guardian to a forte 
 h'lle file 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 hast 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 recognize what 
 was good in me — would never reproach me for — for — the 
 past. I then said my heart was thine : I could never marry 
 any one but t.iee." 
 
 " Marr)' me ! " faltered Gustave — " marr}' ! " 
 
 " 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 46 
 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 lovesrme, 
 and " He approached again, seeking to embrace her. 
 
 She recoiled. " No, Gustave, no. I have sworn — sworn 
 solemnly by the memory of my lost mother — that I will nevei
 
 TI/I-: FAKISIAXS. ^g^ 
 
 sin again. I will never be to thee other *,han 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 'he 
 threshold, and his brow contracted. 
 
 " So you have already broken faith with me. Made- 
 moiselle ? " 
 
 "No, Monsieur, I have not broken faith," cried Julie, pas- 
 sionately, " I told you that I wc-ald not seek to find out Mon- 
 sieur 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 
 Mauldon's gaze. 
 
 " I^eave 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 in- 
 terest 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 !he future. I do not ask }-ou to see her in either with my eyes. 
 I r.ay frankly that it is my intention, and, I may add, my resolve, 
 that the ward thus left to my charge shall be henceforth satfe 
 from the temptations that have seduced her poverty, her inex- 
 perience, her vanity if you will, but have not yet corrupted her 
 heart. Bref, I must request you to give me your word of honor 
 that you will hold no further communication with her. T can 
 allow no sinister influence to stand between her fate and hohor."
 
 ^g6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " You speak well and nobly, M. le Vicomte," said Rameau, 
 " and I give the promise yol^exact." He added, feelingly, '* It 
 is true her heart has never been corrupted. That is good, 
 affectionate, unselfish as a child's. J''ai I honneur de voiis saluer. 
 M. le Vicomte." 
 
 He bowed with a dignity unusual to him, and tears were \v 
 his eyes as he passed by De Mauleon and gained "he ante-room 
 There a side-door suddenly opened, and Julie's face, anxious, 
 eager, looked forth. 
 
 Gustave paused : '■' Adieu, Mademoiselle ! 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 Mauldon, who, following 
 Gustave into the anteroom, 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 Gustavo, still 
 lingering by the outer door. 
 
 " You will pardon me. Monsieur," he said to the Vicomte, 
 
 " but in fact I feel 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 strengih to keep my prom- 
 ise." 
 
 De Mauleon remained a few minutes musing. Then he said 
 in a whisper, " Come back into the salon. Let us talk frankly."
 
 THE PAKIS/AKS. cqj 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " M. Rameau," said De Mauldon, 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 favors 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 sui-table : 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 
 a reproach as to her antecedents. Her dot would suffice to 
 enable him to realize his own wish of a country town in Nor- 
 mandy. * And in that station Paris and its temptations wou' a 
 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 im- 
 mediate 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 
 marrv 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 demoiselle like the 
 Signora Cicogna, in a time of such dire calamity and peril, 
 could scarcely allow himself to be tempted to accept the in- 
 vitation of one so beautiful, and so warmly attached to him, 
 as is Mademoiselle Julie ; and, on witnessing the passionate 
 strength of *h=it attachment, say that he cannot keep a prom- 
 ise not to repeat his visits. But if I mistake, and you are still 
 betrothed > the Signorina, of couise all discussion is at an end."
 
 598 THE PARISIAA'S. 
 
 Gustavc hung his head in some shame, and in much be- 
 wildered doubt. 
 
 l"he practised observer of men's characters, and of shift- 
 ing phases of mind, glanced at the poor poet's perturbed counte- 
 nance 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 one hundred and twenty thousand 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 an)' 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, 
 Internationlists, or whateversect would place the aged societies 
 of Europe in Medea's caldron of youth. At a mor/.ent 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 — Dii meliora. Think 
 over all I have thus frankly said. Give me your answer within 
 forty-eight hours ; and meanwhile hold no communication with 
 ray ward. I have the honor to wish you good-day."
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 S99 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 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 difhculties between their ancient intercourse 
 which her unexpected scruples and De Maul^on's guardian- 
 ship interposed. A witty writer thus defines une passion, ''• une 
 caprice viflammee par des obstacles^ In the ordinary times of 
 peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring to reputable position in 
 the beau mondc, would not have admitted any considerations to 
 compromise his station by marriage with Apiguta/itt'. But now 
 the wild political doctrines he had embraced separated his 
 ambition from that beau moftiie, and combined it with ascendency 
 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 tempta- 
 tion 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 
 lsaura''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 Maule'on, 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 Mauldon'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 Maul^on's ward had those 
 advantages. 
 
 While thus meditating, Gustave turned into one of the
 
 t)00 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 caniines 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 willingfy 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 marr)' a girl who had been a ballet dancer, 
 and who had come into an unexpected heritage ? " £s-iu fou 
 d'en douter ? " cried Edgar. " What a sublime occasion to 
 manifest thy scorn of the miserable banalites of the bourgeoisie 1 
 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 complam 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 ex- 
 citable 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, ab- 
 sorbed in prayer. 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 Three days after the evening thus spent by Gustave 
 Rameau, Isaura was startled by a vi^it from M. de Mauldon. 
 She had not seen him since the commencement of the siege,
 
 THE PARISIANS. 60 1 
 
 and she did not recognize him at first glance in nis 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 
 fathei'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 re- 
 ligion 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 atone- 
 ment, she left to my charge, as a kinsman distant indeed, 
 but still, perhaps, the nearest with v/hom she was personally 
 acquainted — a young ward. In accepting that trust, I find 
 myself strangely compelled to hazard the risk of offending 
 you." 
 
 " Ofifending 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 ot 
 the suit he had pressed on you, in consequence of his en- 
 treaties, 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 engage- 
 ment — that in honor and in conscience I am free ? " 
 
 " I see," answered De Maul^on, smiling, " that I am par-
 
 6o2 T^fl' PARISIANS. 
 
 donecl 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 "i 
 Have you influence over him. M. de Mauleon ? If so, will 
 you not exert it for his good 1 " 
 
 " 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 oaly 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 some- 
 thing, no matter what, no matter by whom — that is the Par- 
 isian'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 review- 
 ing 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 balder- 
 dash, — 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 to 
 you. I have done so purposely, that I might convince myself 
 that you welcome that release which your too delicate sense ol 
 honor shrank too long from demanding." 
 
 Here he took forth and placed a letter in Isaura's hand,
 
 THE PARISIANS. 603 
 
 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 doubled that before, 
 your words when we last met sufficed to con\Mice me. In iny 
 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 
 'ree. 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 hence- 
 forth 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 his desire." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, accept my congratulations. My condo- 
 lences are for the poor girl left to my guardianship. Unhappily, 
 she loves this man ; and there are reasons why I cannot with- 
 hold 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 blooi^ 
 of her youth seemed suddenly restored. Round he.r 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 loua, 
 as a bird that escapes from the cage and warbles to the heaven 
 it regains the blissful tale of its release.
 
 6o4 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 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 falsehoods. 
 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 at Louvier's). " Ay," cries 
 a National Guard, " read extracts from ' La Liberte.' The bar- 
 barians are in despair. Nancy is threatened, Belfort freed. 
 Bourbaki is invading Baden. Our fleets are pointing their can- 
 non 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 bombard- 
 ment 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 mag 
 nanimous 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 Prus- 
 sian 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 labor, 
 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 th'' 
 terror which the Communists already began to inspire among the 
 bourgeoisie that no one volunteered a reply. Savarin linked his 
 arm in De Brdz^'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 Bi^z^, in 
 bollow accents. " It is twenty-four hours since I spent my las<
 
 THE PARISIAXS. 60- 
 
 fiUy 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 con- 
 dition," haid Savarin, with a ghastly attempt at his old j)leasant 
 laugh. " See how I am shruken ! 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 hard- 
 ships ; and, being above the age, obtained my exemption. As 
 to pay, I was then too proud to claim my wage of one franc 
 twenty-five 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 tatter- 
 demalions 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 newspapers. 
 But then newspapers are not subjected to cannon-balls." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " answered De Br^ze. 
 
 " 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 prepara- 
 tions are being made for a great sortie. Most probably the 
 announcement will appear in a proclamation to-morrow, 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, — 
 among 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 Bre'ze', 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 I ask of me what is possible. I will give thee three 
 however, if I survive and regain my rentes. But to-day I have 
 not even a mouse to share with Fox." 
 
 " Fox lives, then ? " cried De Br^z^, with sparkling hungry 
 eyes. 
 
 " Yes. At present he is making the experiment how long 
 an animal can li\e without food."
 
 6o6 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 " Have mercy upon him, poor beast ! Terminate'his pangg 
 by a noble death. Let him save thy friends and thyself from 
 starring. For myself alone I do not plead ; I am but an ama- 
 teur in polite literature. But Savarin, the illustrious Savarin, 
 — in criticisni the French Longinus — in poetry the Parisian 
 Horace — in social life the genius of gayety in pantaloons, — 
 contemplate his attenuated frame i Shall he perish for want 
 of food while thou hast such superfluity in thy larder 1 I ap- 
 peal 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 any- 
 thing, however nauseous, even thy flattery, De Bre'zc. 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 mem- 
 ory blest ! " 
 
 " Thou dost look very lean, my poor Savarin ! And how 
 hospitable thou wert when yet plump! " said Frederic, pathet- 
 ically. " 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 Brezd. " We are 
 close by thy rooms. Excuse me for a moment : I will run in 
 and instruct thy bonne P 
 
 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 whim- 
 pering, " Stay ; I shall fall like an empty sack, without the sup- 
 port of thine arm, young hero. Pooh ! of course De Bre'ze 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 
 liave ^fcstin de Balthasar." 
 
 " 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 fourteen francs a pound. A pullet is excellent, but it 
 is thirty francs. Trust to De Brezd ; we shall have donkey 
 and pullet, and Fox shall feast on the remains." 
 
 Before Frederic could reply, the two men were jostled and
 
 THE PAKISlAiXS. Coj 
 
 swept on by a sudden rush of a noisy crowd in tlieir 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 forgot Fox. As they were hurried on, they learned 
 that there was a report of a complete defeat of the Prussians 
 by FaiJherbe near Amiens, — of a still more decided one on the 
 Loire by Chanzy. These generals, with armies flushed with tri- 
 umph, were pressing on towards Paris to accelerate the de- 
 struction 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 formallv 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 ^z//;" 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, min- 
 gled 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 Lemer- 
 cier, — 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 
 ben', downwards. He did not seem to listen to his companion, 
 who was talking with quickness and vivacity, her fair face radi- 
 ant with smiles. Lemercier looked after them as they passed 
 by. " ..Sz/r mo/i ame," muttered Frederic to himself, "surely 
 that is /a belle Julie ; and she has got back her truant poet at 
 last!" 
 
 While Lemercier thus soliloquized, 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 apol-
 
 6o8 ^^^^ FARISIAA'S. 
 
 og)', when Julie felt the arm on which she leant tremble nerv- 
 ously. Before him stood Isaura, the Countess de Vandemar by 
 her side ; her two other companions, Raoul and the Abbe' Vcrt- 
 pre, a step or two behind. 
 
 Gustave uncovered, bowed low, and stood mute and still 
 for a moment, paralyzed 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 li-fe 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 
 step-child of Louise Duval, — each so deserted, each so left 
 alone and inexperienced amid the perils of the world, with fates 
 so dift'erent, 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 Ramcau, 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 a doubt 1 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 oi 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 passion- 
 ately, she said, " And that is the demoiselle thou hast resigned 
 for me I 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 I "
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 609 
 
 Savaiin 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 
 Vanderaar, 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 lUterroga- 
 tives. I have a story to tell ; but I keep it for dinner. Let 
 us hasten to thy apartment. De Brdzd is doubtless there await- 
 ing 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 
 Brezd and the cojicierge of the house in which Lemercier had 
 his apartment. Recognizing 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 / " &]diC\x\dXcd De Brdzd, "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 y>^\ws, fn'casser the shoulders, 
 and roast the rest. The rog7ions and the head accept for your- 
 self as a perquisite." Here he transferred Fox to the arms of 
 the coficiet'ge, adding, " Vite au besogJte, mon amiy 
 
 " 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 pre- 
 cisely — I am famished." 
 
 The concierge disappeared with Fox. De Brdzd then 
 amused himself by searching into Frederic's cupboards and 
 buffets, from which he produced a cloth and utensils necessary
 
 6io THE PARISIANS. 
 
 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 Frederic 
 entered the salo7i ; and at their sight De Brdze 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 perceiv- 
 ing him, began to call out, " Fox ! Fox ! where hast thou hiddea 
 thyself ? " 
 
 " Tranquillize yourself," said De Br^zd. " Do not suppose 
 that I have not .... 
 
 Note by the Author's Son.* — 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 arc now irrevocably buried the humor 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 
 sympathizing reader recognize all that is dramatic in the conflict between 
 hunger and affection ; let him recall to mind the lachrymose Icving-kindness 
 of his own post-prandial emotions after blissfully breaking some fast, less 
 mercilessly prolonged, wc will hope, than that of these besieged banqueters ; 
 and then, though unaided by the fancy which conceived so quaint a situation, 
 he may perhaj^s imagine what tearful tenderness would fill the eyes of the 
 kind-hearted Frederic, as they contemplated the well-picked bones of his 
 sacrificed favorite on the platter before him : which he pushes away, sighing, 
 " Ah, poor Fox ! how he would have enjoyed those bones I " 
 
 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 al- 
 most 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 doubt- 
 less' 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. Among 
 the few other pages of the book which have been left unwritten we must 
 also reckon with regret some page descriptive of the reconciliation between 
 Graham Vane and Isaira Cicogna ; but, fortunately for the satisfaction of 
 every reader who may have followed thus far the fortunes of " The Paris- 
 ians," 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 those 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 narra- 
 tive 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 M. Gustave Rameau in 
 
 * See prefatory note.
 
 THE PARTSrANS. 61 1 
 
 prcrmanent possession of his ill-mcritcd and ill-ministercd fortune, 'fhat 
 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 savors 
 of the domestic /('Artw-yiv/, even when spiced with pungent whiffs of repu- 
 diated disreputability, to any selSsh Ijctrayal of the cause of universal social 
 emancipation from the personal proprieties. If poor fulie Caumartln has 
 perished in the siege of Paris with all the grace of a self-wrought rcdem))- 
 tion still upon her, we shall doubtless deem her fate a happier one than any 
 sl-.e 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 dc Maulc'on 
 (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 dis- 
 appear, 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 " Valdc ct phutdite ! 
 
 CHAPTER THE LAST. 
 
 Among the refugees which the convoi from Versailles dis- 
 
 gorged 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. 
 
 " Bo7i-jout\ 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 
 jllink me your enemy ? " 
 
 '•'• I remember your threats." 
 
 '■'• A propos oi 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 Madeinoiselle Valerie." 
 
 " I know not that yet. It is true that all the financial opera- 
 tions attempted by my agent in London have failed. But I 
 may recover myself yet, now that I re-enter Paris. In the
 
 6l2 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 meantime, 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 weic 
 afraid .... 
 
 L'ENVOI. 
 
 The intelligent reader will perceive that the story I relate 
 is virtually closed with the preceding chapter ; though I re- 
 joice to think that what may be called its plot does not find 
 its denouement amidst the crimes and the frenzy of the Guerre 
 des Communeaiix. Fit subjects these, indeed, for the social an- 
 nalist 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 civiTization of Europe has 
 its basis — worship, property, and marriage — in order to recon- 
 struct a new civilization 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 All-good ; that in the wildest illusions by which multitudes 
 are frenzied, there may be detected gleams of prophetic truths ; 
 that in the fiercest crimes which, like the disease of an epi- 
 demic, characterize a peculiar epoch under abnormal circum- 
 stances, there might be found instincts or aspirations towards 
 some social virtues to be realized 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
 
 THE PARISIANS. 6l, 
 
 of a divine Tliouglu wliich 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 Comminists. 
 
 " Dear and distinguished Englishman, whose name I honor 
 but fail to pronounce, accept my cordial thanks for your inter- 
 est in such remains of Frederice Lemercier as yet survive the 
 ravages of Famine, Equality, Brotherhood, Petroleum, and the 
 Rights of Labor. I did not desert my Paris when M. Thiers, 
 '•paninda noii bme relic ta,^ 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 can- 
 non. I felt spellbound by the interest of the sinistre mclodraftu:'' 
 with its quick succession of scenic effects and the metropolis 
 of the world for its stage. Taught by experience, I did not as- 
 pire 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-jioir 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 Vande- 
 mar is irrmovably convinced of the restoration of the Bour- 
 bons. Savarin is meditating a new journal devoted to the 
 cause of the Count of Paris. De Breze and the old Count de 
 Passy, having in turn espoused and opposed every prev.ous 
 form of government, naturally go in for a perfectly novel ex- 
 periment, and are for constitutional dictatorship under the Due 
 d'Aumale, which he is to hold at his own pleasure, and ulti- 
 mately 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 Due's adniinistration were successful, the
 
 6i4 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 French would insist on keeping it ; and if the uncle were un- 
 successful, 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 
 favor ; and so many of the Priesthood, abhorring the Republic, 
 always liable to pass into the hands of those who assail reli- 
 gion, — 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. Lib- 
 erie., Egalite, Fraternite are gone quite out of fashion ; and 
 Mademoiselle has abandoned her great chant of the Mar- 
 seillaise, and is drawing tears from enlightened audiences by 
 her pathetic delivery of ' O Richard ! O mon roif 
 
 " 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 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 Comrnu- 
 neaux. 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 desper- 
 ately in love with a girl who disappeared from his life, and whom 
 he believed to have been seduced by the late Marquis de Roche- 
 briant. It was in revenge for this supposed crime that he 
 had made himself the principal mortgagee of the late Mar- 
 quis, and, visiting the sins of the father on the son, had, un- 
 der the infernal disguise of friendly interest, made hinisclf 
 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 Roche- 
 briant was to be VaMrie's dot on her marriage with Alain. 
 The Prussian war, of course, supended all such plans, pecu- 
 niary and matrimonial. Duplessis, whose resources were terribly
 
 THE PARISIANS. 615 
 
 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 baflled. 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 deter- 
 mined both to seize the Breton lands and to complete the ruin 
 of Duplessis ; when he learned from De Maule'on 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 in- 
 stallments at the convenience of Duplessis. Alain's marriage 
 with Vale'rie is to take place in a few weeks. The founiis- 
 senrs are already gone to tit up the old chateau for the bride, 
 and Louvier is invited to the wedding. 
 
 " I have all this story from Alain, and from Duplessis him- 
 self. 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 skeptical as to the unalloyed amiability of 
 sudden conversions. And I suspect that Louvier was no lon- 
 ger in a condition to indulge in the unprofitable whim of turn- 
 ing 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 Commiineaux ; and I can de- 
 tect 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 establish- 
 ing 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, [ 
 have promised to visit him next week. Raoul de Vandemar 
 IS still at Paris with his mother, saying there is no place where 
 tme Christian man can be of such service. The old Count 
 declines to come back, saying there is no place where a philos- 
 opher 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 Vic-
 
 6i6 THE PARISIANS 
 
 tor de MaulJon , 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 vi^orst 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 offense, would have certainly shared the fate of that gen- 
 eral. Though elected a deptite, 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 Nation- 
 al Guard, to take prompt and vigorous measures to defend 
 the city against the Communists. Indignant at their pusillani- 
 mity, 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 par- 
 ty. 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 Maule'on had seized ujoon 
 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 i ' 
 
 "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 Mcdecin 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 ail 
 injure the reputation he has left behind of a very remarkable 
 man — of great courage and great abilit}' — who might have had 
 a splendid career if he had survived. But, as Savarin says 
 truly, the first bodies which the car of revolution cushes down 
 arc those which first harness themselves to it.
 
 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 617 
 
 " Among De MauMon's papers is the programme of a con 
 stitution fitted for France. How it got into Savarin's hands I 
 know not. De Maule'on 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. lliey 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, ist, No law affecting 
 the Constitution can be altered without the consent of two- 
 thirds of Congress. 2d, 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. 3d, The chief of the State, having elected his 
 government, can maintain it independ^it 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 per- 
 sonal 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 Eng- 
 land. Some day I shall accept them, viz., whenever I decide 
 on domestic life, and the calm of the conjugal foyer. I have 
 a pencha?tt 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 moralizing journals 
 tell us, that, sobered by misfortune, 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, etc., under the Empire, 
 we shall be just the same under any form of government — the 
 bravest, the most tiniid, the most ferocious, the kindest-hearted,
 
 6i8 THE PARISIANS. 
 
 the most irrational, the most intelHgent, the most contradictory, 
 the most consistent people whom Jove, taking counsel of Venus 
 and the Graces, Mars and the Furies, ever created for the de- 
 light and terror of the world; — in a word the Parisians. — Votre 
 tout devoue, 
 
 " Frederic Lemercier.' 
 
 It is a lovely noon on the bay of Sorrento, towards the 
 close of the autumn of 187 1. 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 Chris- 
 tian heroism has ever combined elevation of thought with 
 silvery delicacies of speech, had charmed her childhood, re- 
 clined 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 colored 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 rocklet, Graham 
 reclines at her feet, his face upturned to hers with an inex- 
 pressible wistful anxiety in his impassioned tenderness. " You 
 are sure you feel better and stronger since we have been 
 here ? " 
 
 TKS END.
 
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