entered the shop, Madame la Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve and shewed her Maximilien Longueville seated inside the counter, busied in counting out with mercantile grace the change for a piece of gold to the milliner with whom he seemed in conference. The handsome stranger held in his hand some patterns, which left no doubt as to his honourable profession.

Emilie was seized with an imperceptible cold shiver; yet, owing to the thorough savoir vivre of good society, she perfectly dissembled the rage she felt in her heart, and replied to her sister, "I knew it," with a richness of intonation and inimitable accent, which might have been envied by the most celebrated actress of the day. She advanced to the counter; Longueville looked up, put the patterns into his pocket with most annoying grace and coolness, bowed to Mademoiselle de Fontaine, and approached her with a penetrating glance.

"Mademoiselle," said he to the milliner, who had followed him with a very anxious look, "I will send to have this account receipted; my house wills it so. But," said he in a whisper to the woman, and slipping a note for a thousand francs into her hand, "take this; it will be an affair between ourselves.'

"You will forgive me, I hope, mademoiselle," said he, turning to Emilie; "you will have the goodness to forgive the tyranny exercised by business."

an

"It appears to me, monsieur, that it is very indifferent to me,' swered Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him with an assurance and an air of sneering indifference, as if she saw him for the first time.

"Do you speak seriously?" asked Maximilien, in a broken voice.

Emilie had turned her back on him with incredible impertinence. These few words, spoken in a low voice, had escaped the curiosity of the two sisters-in-law. When, after taking the pelerine, the three ladies had re-entered the carriage, Emilie, who sat in front, could not help glancing to the end of the odious shop, where she saw Maximilien standing with folded arms in the attitude of a man superior to the misfortune which befell him so suddenly.

Their eyes met and darted looks of implacability at each other. Each one hoped to wound cruelly the heart of the loved one. In one moment they were separated from one another as thoroughly as if one had been in China and the other in Greenland. Has not vanity a breath which withers every thing? A prey to the most violent combat that can agitate the heart of a young girl, Mademoiselle de Fontaine reaped the most ample harvest of sorrows which prejudice and littleness ever sowed in a human breast. Her complexion, before so fresh and soft, was marked with yellow streaks, red spots, and sometimes the white of her cheeks turned greenish. In the hope of concealing her emotion from her sisters, she laughingly shewed them a ridiculous passenger or dress; but this laugh was convulsive. She felt herself more hurt by the compassionate silence of her sisters than she would have been by remarks, to which she could have retorted. She employed all her wit to draw them into a conversation, in which she endeavoured to exhale her anger in senseless paradoxes by overwhelming merchants with the keenest insults and epigrams in bad taste. When she reached home she was seized with a fever, the character of which was at first somewhat dangerous. At the end of a month the attentions of her family and the care of the physician restored her to her friends. Every one hoped that this lesson might serve to subdue Emilie, who gradually returned to her former habits, and again rushed into dissipation. She said there was no shame in being deceived. If, like her father, she had some influence in the Chamber, she said she would petition for a law to grant that all people in trade, especially linendrapers, should be marked on the forehead like the sheep of the Berry to the third generation. She wished the nobles alone to have the right of wearing that ancient French dress which so well became the courtiers of Louis XV. To hear her talk it might have been thought a misfortune for the monarchy that no difference existed between a merchant and a peer of France. A thousand other pleasantries, easy to divine, succeeded each other rapidly when an unforeseen incident led her to the

subject. But those who loved Emilie remarked through all her raillery a tinge of melancholy, which led them to believe that Maximilien Longueville still reigned over this inexplicable heart. Sometimes she became as gentle as she had been during the fugitive season which had seen the birth of her love, and sometimes she was more insupportable than ever. Every one silently excused the inequalities of temper which sprung from a grief at once well known and secret. The Comte

de Kergarouët obtained a little power over her, thanks to an excess of prodigality,-a species of consolation which rarely fails with young Parisian women. The first time that Mademoiselle de Fontaine went to a ball it was at the house of the ambassador of Naples. As she took her place in the most brilliant of the quadrilles, she saw, a few yards from her, Longueville, who nodded slightly to her partner.

"That young man is one of your friends?" she asked her partner with an air of disdain.

"He is my brother," he replied. Emilie could not repress a start. "Ah!" he continued, in tone of enthusiasm, "he is certainly the finest creature in the world!"

"Do you know my name?" asked Emilie, abruptly interrupting him.

"No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to have remembered a name which is on all lips-I should say, in all hearts; but I have a valid excuse. I am just arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who is on leave in Paris, has sent me here this evening to serve as a chaperon to his amiable wife, whom you may see there in a corner."

"A true tragedy mask," said Emilie, after examining the ambassadress.

"Yet that is her ball countenance," laughingly replied the young man. "I must dance with her, therefore wished for some compensation."

Mademoiselle de Fontaine bowed.

"I was very much surprised," continued the talkative secretary of the embassy, "to find my brother here. On arriving from Vienna, I learned that the poor boy was ill. I hoped to go and see him before the ball, but politics do not always leave us leisure

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCIV.

for domestic affections. The padrona della casa did not allow me to go up to my poor Maximilien."

"Your brother is not, like you, in the diplomatic line?" said Emilie.

"No," said the secretary, sighing, "the poor fellow sacrificed himself for me. He and my sister Clara renounced my father's fortune, in order to make an entail for me. My father dreams of the peerage, like all who vote for the ministry. He has the promise of being nominated," added he, in a low voice. "After assembling some capital, my brother joined a banking-house; and I know that he has just made a speculation with Brazil which may make him a millionnaire. You see me quite rejoiced at having contributed to his success by my diplomatic relations. I am even awaiting with impatience a despatch from the Brazilian legation, of a nature to smoothe his brow. What do you think of him ?”

"Your brother's face does not appear to me that of a man occupied with money."

The young diplomatist scrutinised with one look the apparently calm face of his partner.

"How is this?" said he, smiling. "Do young ladies also divine thoughts of love through impassive brows?"

"Your brother is in love?" asked she, with a movement of curiosity.

"Yes. My sister Clara, for whom he has maternal care, wrote me word that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl; but since that I have had no news of his loves. Would you believe that the poor fellow got up at five o'clock in the morning to get over his business, that he might be at four o'clock at his love's countryhouse? He has ruined a beautiful, thoroughbred horse I sent him. Forgive my chattering, mademoiselle; I am just come from Germany. I have not heard French correctly spoken for a twelvemonth. I have been weaned from French faces, and sickened with German ones; so that, in my patriotic mania, I think Í could talk to the figures on a Parisian candlestick. Besides, if I talk with an abandon not proper for diplomatists, it is your fault, mademoiselle. Did you not point out to me my brother? When he is in question, I

am inexhaustible. I should like to publish to the whole world how good and generous he is. It was no less a matter than the hundred thousand francs a-year which the estate of Longueville brings in."

If Mademoiselle de Fontaine obtained these important revelations, she owed them partly to the address with which she knew how to interrogate her confiding partner, as soon as she learned that he was the brother of her disdained lover.

"Were you able to see, without some annoyance, your brother selling muslins and calicoes?" asked Emilie, after the third figure of the quadrille.

"How do you know that?" asked the diplomatist. "Thank Heaven, while pouring forth a torrent of words, I already have learned the art of only saying what I wish, like all the diplomatic apprentices of my acquaintance!"

You have told it me, I assure you."

Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de Fontaine with an astonishment full of perspicacity. A suspicion crossed his mind. Ife successively interrogated his brother's and his partner's eyes, guessed every thing, clasped his hands, looked at the ceiling, laughed, and said,

"I am but a fool! You are the most beautiful woman in the ballroom. My brother looks at you on the sly; he dances in spite of fever, and you feign not to see him. Make him happy," said he, leading her back to her old uncle; "I shall not be jealous, but I shall always start a little in calling you my sister."

But the lovers were each to be inexorable for themselves. Towards two o'clock in the morning, supper was served in an immense gallery, where, in order to give the persons of the same coterie liberty to meet, the tables were arranged as they are at a restaurateur's. By one of those hazards which always happen to lovers, Mademoiselle de Fontaine found herself placed at a table near the one round which sat the most distinguished persons. Maximilien was of the group. Emilie, who lent an attentive ear to the discourse held by her neighbours, heard one of those conversations which are so casily established between young

married women and young men who have the graces and elegance of Maximilien Longueville. The young banker's interlocutor was a Neapolitan duchess, whose eyes darted lightnings, whose white skin had the gloss of satin. The terms of intimacy which young Longueville affected to be on with her wounded Mademoiselle de Fontaine all the more because she had restored to her lover twenty times more tenderness than she had ever before felt for him.

"Yes, in my country, true love knows how to make all sorts of sacrifices," said the duchess, affectedly.

"You are more passionate than Frenchwomen are," said Maximilien, whose expressive glance met Emilie's. "They are all vanity."

"Monsieur," quickly replied the young girl, "is it not wrong thus to calumniate your country? Devotion is of all nations."

"Do you think, mademoiselle," returned the Italian, with a sardonic smile, that a Parisian is capable of following her lover every where?"

26

"Let us understand one another, madame. One may go into a desert and inhabit a tent, but not go and sit down in a shop."

She ended her sentence with a gesture of disdain. Thus the inHuence which Emilie's fatal education exercised over her twice blighted her commencing happiness, and destroyed her future existence. The apparent coldness of Maximilien and the smile of a woman drew from her one of those sarcasms, the perfidious enjoyments of which always led her away.

"Mademoiselle," said Longueville to her, in a low voice, under cover of the noise made by the women rising from the table, "no one will form for your happiness more ardent wishes than I shall; permit me to give you this assurance on taking leave of you. In a few days I shall set out for Italy."

"With a duchess, no doubt ?" "No, mademoiselle; but with an illness, perhaps mortal."

"Is it not a chimera?" asked Emilie, with an anxious glance.

"No," said he; "there are some wounds which never heal."

"You shall not go," said the imperious girl, smiling.

"I shall go," gravely returned Maximilien.

"You will find me married at your return, I warn you," said she, coquettishly. "I hope so."

"Impertinent man!" she exclaimed. "Does he not revenge

himself cruelly?"

A fortnight afterwards, Maximilien Longueville and his sister Clara set out for the warm and poetical regions of Italy, leaving Mademoiselle de Fontaine a prey to the most poignant regret. The young secretary took up his brother's quarrel, and amply compensated Emilie's disdain by publishing the motives of the rupture between the lovers. He returned with usury the sarcasms she had uttered about Maximilien, and made more than one excellency laugh by painting the beautiful enemy of counters-the amazon who preached a crusade against bankers -the young girl whose love had evaporated before half-a-yard of muslin. The Comte de Fontaine was obliged to use his influence in obtaining for Auguste Longueville a mission in Russia, to secure his daughter from the ridicule which this young and dangerous persecutor lavished on her. The ministry, obliged to raise a supply of peers to support the aristocratic opinions which the voice of an illustrious writer staggered in the noble Chamber, soon named Monsieur Guiraudin de Longueville a peer of France and a viscount. Monsieur de Fontaine also obtained a peerage, a recompense due to his fidelity during evil days, as much as to his name, which was missing in the hereditary Chamber.

At this period, Emilie, having come of age, no doubt made serious reflections on life; for she changed her tone and manners considerably. Instead of saying ill-natured things to her uncle, she bestowed on him the most affectionate care; she brought him his crutch with a persevering tenderness which made people laugh. She offered him her arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his walks. even persuaded him that she was not annoyed by the smell of his pipe, and read aloud his beloved Quotidienne in the midst of the puffs of smoke which the mischievous sailor purposely sent

She

her. She learned piquet to play with her uncle. Lastly, this capricious girl listened attentively to the narratives which her uncle periodically recommenced of the fight of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville-de-Paris, of Monsieur de Suffren's first expedition, and of the battle of Aboukir. Although the old sailor had often said that he knew his latitude and longitude too well to allow himself to be captured by a young sloop, one fine morning the salons of Paris learned that Mademoiselle de Fontaine had married the Comte de Kergarouët.* The young countess gave splendid fêtes to divert herself, but she, doubtless, found the nothingness of this vortex. Luxury imperfectly concealed the emptiness and unhappiness of her suffering mind. Notwithstanding outbreaks of feigned gaiety, her beautiful face mostly expressed profound melancholy. Emilie appeared full of attentions and care for her old husband, who often, when going to his room at night to the sound of a joyous orchestra, said that he did not recognise himself, and that he never expected, at seventy-two, to embark as pilot on board the Belle Emilie, after already spending twenty years at the conjugal galleys.

The countess's conduct was so strictly proper, that the most keensighted criticism had no fault to find. Observers thought that the viceadmiral had reserved for himself the right of disposing of his fortune in order to bind his wife more firmly. This supposition was an insult to both uncle and niece. He was often heard to say that he had saved his niece, as if she were a wrecked person, and that he had never abused the laws of hospitality when he had saved an enemy from the fury of the

storm.

Two years after her marriage, in one of the ancient drawing-rooms of the Faubourg St. Germain, where her character was admired as worthy of ancient times, Emilie heard Monsieur le Vicomte de Longueville_announced; and in the corner where she was playing piquet with the Bishop of Persepolis, her emotion was unnoticed. The death of his father, and that of his brother,

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not such have taken care, however, to appear so in their writings. This observation comes from Bolingbroke, and might have formed an appropriate motto for his own productions we apply it to one whom it suits still better. It is in these terms that Sallust refers to his past actions and peculiar adaptation for the severe legislation of the historian:

"In early life I, like most others, folt myself strongly directed to affairs of state; but there I discovered many impediments. Instead of modesty, ab. stinence, and virtue, prevailed audacity, corruption, and avarice; and though my mind, unversed in such practices, abhorred such vices, still in the great and general profligacy my tender age was seduced and entangled by ambition; and however opposed to the evil habits of others, yet no less did the same thirst for distinction subject me to the notoriety and obloquy that harassed the rest."

We find a similar vein of apologetic egotism in the Jugurthan war:

"There are some, I believe, who, because I have determined to pass my life at a distance from public affairs, have applied to my important and useful lahours the character of indolence; particularly those who consider it the height of industry to court the people, and to seek popularity by their convivial entertainments; but if these men reflect on the time when I was in power, and on the

characters of those who failed to obtain office, and then consider the description of persons who afterwards crept into the senate, they will allow that I have changed my sentiments more from propriety than indolence; and that greater advantages will result to the state from my leisure, than from the active exertions of others."

When we turn to history for illustrations of these singular specimens of adulative autobiography, we are confronted by the reflection of a very different character. Where we looked for Chatham, we find Walpole; and Scipio vanishes in one of Napoleon's Marshals. This statesman, whose tender conscience shrank from the chicanery and fraud of politics, was expelled the senate for personal depravity; and this eloquent advocate of purity and justice was known to have adorned his palace with the plunder of his grinding government in Numidia. The expulsion has been questioned, or, rather, the cause of it; but the atrocities of the African officer are confessed. In the evidence of twenty centuries probability and character are not to be overlooked. It is an easy thing to praise virtue; but we have not travelled far back into the human annals, without learning the necessity of keeping our critical eyes undazzled by the rich transparencies, which genius is able to paint and illuminate. Sallust places himself in the midst of his narrative. It was an artistic deception to draw our attention to the dignified figure of the historian, thus