"We are much obliged to Mr. Smith; not every man of the present day would wet his feet to save a mad girl, and not every one would or could rescue you from some of the scrapes you so often get into; but it would be a bad return to ask Mr. Smith to go home with us two dull ladies this evening. I suppose both he and you will find it more pleasant to call some forenoon."

I saw clearly she was not disposed for our company. Her niece seemed disappointed at her want of cordiality, and said to me, in English, "Do not fail to come. My aunt is not very well, but she will be better to

morrow.

Albert bit his lip, but said nothing.

"Look," said Madame Lagrange, rousing herself into some animation, "there is the Comte de Merville. It is not often he comes to the theatre. I hope he will have the good taste to join us."

The count had just entered an opposite box. He seemed a handsome, middle-aged man, but the distance was too great to enable me to see his features. He soon recognised Madame Lagrange, and shortly made his appearance in her box. He sat down a seat or two back, and was joined by Madame Lagrange, with whom he entered into an earnest conversation.

I was too pleasantly engaged to pay any attention to him; his lucky intervention left me and Trelles and Mademoiselle Lachapelle to ourselves.

During the hour the play lasted I was not in the Théâtre-Français, but in Paradise; and when we left the theatre, I felt, when I handed her into the carriage and pressed her hand, as if the dark curtain which had long hung over my destiny were of a sudden drawn up, revealing in the distance through forest glades and over ripening fields, a blessed land gleaming in the morning sun.

I was so occupied in my leave-taking that I paid little attention to the count and Madame Lagrange, though it excited my envy not a little when the former entered the carriage with the two ladies. I did not see his face. Madame merely bowed coldly as they drove away.

"My aunt," said Albert, "was not over-gracious to you to-night; but something has lately occurred to vex her, I know not what. I see it tries her much to maintain that sublime composure, and sometimes she seems weary of it. I believe the old girl has had her trials. I would wager that some hundred years ago she must have done some slight service to

the devil."

"I don't see," I replied, "that I have any reason to complain. I am a perfect stranger, and, like a prudent woman, she does not like an acquaintance forced on her."

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Spoken like an Englishman," said Albert. "I believe if a man saved your life you would not thank him till you were properly introduced, and knew all about his family. But, still further to satisfy you, be it known that her general manner is much the same to all-even to uncle and myself. She is not demonstrative. The only intimate she has is the count, and even that is not founded on any cordial relation, but on some secret in common which puzzles Adèle and me to find out."

"You interest me," said I. "I will be impatient to call on her in terms of her cordial invitation. I like mysterious ladies."

you

"We will go to-morrow," said he, "but do not be surprised if find nothing mysterious about her.. She was in one of her sombre moods last night; on occasions no one can be brighter or more fascinating, and I have heard good judges say she is the cleverest woman in Paris."

IV.

A PATRIOT À LA FRANÇAISE.

NEXT morning Albert called on me, and we went to the hotel of Monsieur Lagrange, Rue d'Antin. The house was new and handsome, displaying a good deal of wealth and much aristocratic pretension, to which Albert informed me his uncle had no right. The father of Lagrange, he said, had been an innkeeper, and the son made his money and gained his present position by serving, in the diplomatic line, first Napoleon the Great, then Louis XVIII., then Napoleon again, then Louis XVIII. again, next Charles X., then Louis Philippe, thereafter the Provisional Government, and now Napoleon III.

"But how," said I, "did he manage to keep his feet and his head in the midst of such tergiversation?"

"That is a wonder," said Albert, "to his friends, but not to his enemies, who say that he always prepared his way with the coming régime by well-timed treachery to the reigning dynasty, to whom he pretended all the while the most zealous devotion, and his intimate knowledge of secret societies and intrigues made his adhesion a matter of consequence to conspirators about to become the legitimate government. France," he continued, "is a fine country for getting on; we have the ouverte carrière, and are neither impeded by aristocratic privileges nor by conscience."

Our conversation was interrupted by the door being opened.

We entered a splendid hall, and were shown into the study, where we found Lagrange, to whom Albert immediately introduced me as the gentleman who had saved his cousin's life. He received us courteously. "Madame and Miss Lachapelle," he said, "are out at present, but will soon be in, but I lose no time in thanking you for the great service you have conferred on us in saving my niece's life." I made the usual deprecatory remarks, and our conversation gradually diverged into general topics. He was a kind of man not to be found out of France, and I was glad of the opportunity of studying him.

Here was a man who had swallowed so many oaths and broken them, adopted so many constitutions and violated them, that I wondered the floor did not open up and precipitate him into the abyss—or at least into the kitchen. The feeling of moral disapproval such a political life naturally engendered, however, insensibly wore away under the charm of his suave and fluent talk. He had a cordiality which ingratiated him with youth, and I should suppose with older people. He took you completely into his confidence, speaking to you, though a perfect stranger, about his private affairs and feelings as ordinary people do not speak to their most intimate friends. He was one of those who make every one they met their father confessor, and though a repetition of his confession might be tiresome-for Lagrange was a doctrinaire, and preferred the monologue-and it was well known that notwithstanding his affectionate con

fidences he would sacrifice you, without scruple, to his interests; still, to me who did not know his character, and had no implicit confidence in Albert's judgment, this first interview had a freshness and interest which has impressed all he said on my memory to this day.

"I like you," he said to his nephew; "you take things as they come, and do not inquire into causes. You don't know, I take it, that

a practical philosopher."

you are

"Not I," said Albert; "I never was considered practical, and as for philosophy, it is not my métier."

"And in this," said his uncle, " consists your philosophy. Most men puzzle themselves finding reasons for everything, and in questions of practical life this is the surest way to go wrong."

"I would like to hear your reasons for this unreasonable opinion," said I. Well," said he, "it seems to me a vain thing to group the incidents preceding any event, and apparently conducing to it, and say these are the causes of it, because, on closer observation, we always find something else without which the event would not have occurred, and the more closely we observe, the more of these overlooked causes turn up; and, conversely, it is equally futile to deduce from a laboured induction of present causes and tendencies, a prophecy of what is to happen, for the relations of our supposed data-even although we have overlooked none which are essential—and their action and reaction are so infinite, that the most cautious prediction is no better than a mere guess-indeed, in general, not so good."

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But," said I, "if you are right in this, one man is as wise as another, and statesmanship the vainest of all reputations."

Certainly," said Lagrange, "if by statesmanship you mean logical deduction as a means of prediction of public events. That is what many of our ministers try and fail, but your English statesmen are wiser in their generation. They do not attempt to reason or deduce, but trust to instinct, which they call common sense. I am convinced," he continued, "that the most successful statesmen, or the most successful men of business, have reasoned that is to say, have deduced the least. There is in successful men a kind of brute instinct, which cultivation and reflection rather deteriorates than improves. Perhaps the reason is that much thought brings either a fixity of convictions or a vacillation in action, both out of place in this chanceful scene, leading us either obstinately to set ourselves against events, or else not to act at all. In this world we must, in general, make up our mind and act in the same moment, and the best we can do, is now and then to seize a sheaf thrown out by the wheel of fortune, before the next revolution sweeps it again into the vortex."

Our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Madame Lagrange and Miss Lachapelle. Madame, to my surprise, was very cordial in her greeting. She expressed her happiness at seeing us, and said to her husband, "This is the gentleman to whom told you we were under so great obligations for saving Adèle's life.”

I said I considered myself the party obliged in having been able to render a slight service to Miss Lachapelle.

The truth of this conventional disclaimer struck me so forcibly, that the tone in which I concluded was not that of a merely complimentary speech.

March-VOL. CXXX. NO. DXIX.

2 A

Madame Lagrange observed it, but I could make nothing of the expression of her face. Her niece blushed.

Well," said Lagrange, "it is pleasant when two parties think themselves mutually obliged. Let us leave it so, at least till after dinner." The ladies took the hint and retired to dress, and on their return dinner was immediately announced.

I am a judge of a dinner and like a good one, and have no faith in the man's honesty who says he does not care what he eats. The dinner Lagrange set before us was perfect, and I suspect his cuisine was one of his instruments to assist his schemes-an element of success not to be despised in Paris, where Apicius, if a friend to government, would attain the best posts, while Socrates, if he did not give a good dinner (which he was too wise a man not to do), would run a risk of being sent to Cayenne.

I hasten to relieve the appehension of my readers. I am not to give the bill of fare, nor to discuss the wines and their vintages. I hold such dissertations impertinent. You have no right to dilate on a dinner, or on wines, unless you ask your listener to partake, which, in the present case, is impossible. So, let the indulgent reader suppose that I have described a first class French dinner, and he will have no difficulty in believing that it had a soothing, balmy effect on all of us; so much so, that when it was over I found myself on as familiar terms with all the party as if I had known them for years.

It

Madame Lagrange was particularly gracious and very fascinating. It struck me, however, that her talk was more of a kind to be expected from a highly educated man than from a well educated woman. abounded in shrewd remarks of a purely selfish nature, and in observations on the natural sciences, which showed an acquaintance with the present state of discovery not to be expected from a lady. It struck me, too, occasionally, that she was impatient of controversy, or even discussion. Her mind seemed occupied carrying out its own train of thought to the exclusion of everything else, and she seemed pained when she was forced to attend to the remarks of others. Our conversation turned on the working classes.

Madame wanted softness. Her philanthropy was of the poor-law school, and would have delighted a Scotch inspector of a parochial board. The recollection of the Man of the Morgue was vivid in my mind, and I said that I did not so much pity the poor who had been always poor, but rather those who had seen better days, and that I did not admit it was a reason to refuse our sympathy that their misfortunes were often of their own creating.

"I differ from you entirely," said madame; "a man who has seen better days is another name for a fool, and I have no sympathy with fools."

"But they may not be fools," I said; "I have known men of intellect and feeling reduced from riches to poverty by misfortunes they could not avert."

"I think you have been mistaken," she replied; "such men have had it in their power to save themselves, but from some vain crotchet have refused to do so. Depend on it, all men have their deserts."

To complete my sketch of madame, I need hardly say she was a

politician, but her creed was simply a devoted adhérence to the party of order. She had a wholesome hatred of Socialists and Red Republicans, and as little patience or sympathy with Idealogues as Napoleon I. or his nephew. A strong executive was to her the best of all possible governments, and the existing régime was strong enough in that department. Hence, she neither agreed with Albert's Legitimism nor with the Orleanism which, if Lagrange had any real convictions, was the shade of politics to which he faintly inclined; and as to my national predilections for a constitutional government, they were to her incomprehensible. A constitutional government was one in which no party had their will, and madame was too evidently accustomed to have hers to approve or to understand any régime in which the governing power could not carry out its wishes.

On the whole, I did not like madame. She was not wholesome. Her mind was too much taken up with abstract thought; and, when that is the case with a woman, there is some hidden sorrow which the energies of the mind try to hide, and which, therefore, deprives the character of naturalness. I have noticed the same thing in men addicted devotedly to chess or whist. These generally have some strong motive to drive dull care away.

I was in this frame of mind myself, and, though I joined in the conversation, I took little interest in it. Gentlemen in my position look upon political questions with profound indifference. No form of government will pay private debts, and, as we men now-a-days are brought up in an atmosphere of politics, they fail to possess that power of distraction which they may have with women. On the present occasion, I had an agreeable and yet not an unalloyed source of distraction in the conversation of Adèle, with whom at last I managed to have a tête-à-tête. She detailed to me the experiences of her school-days in a convent under a system in excellent keeping with the time of Saint Louis, but decidedly not in harmony with the era of Louis Napoleon, but which, judging from its results in her, must still be in harmony with human nature, and, indeed, for my own part, I prefer a convent-bred girl to that crammed epitome of all science and accomplishment turned out by our fashionable boarding-schools.

But Madame Lagrange did not seem to like our tête-à-tête. Coming over to the alcove in which we had taken refuge, she said to her niece: "Have you seen the count since last night? I stupidly forgot, Mr. Smith, to introduce you to him. You would find him very agreeable, and he must feel grateful to you for the service you rendered my niece." No," said the niece, answering the query directed to her, "I have not seen him, and I don't understand why he should be so particularly obliged to Mr. Smith. It was not the count he pulled out of the water."

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"But," said her aunt-and an attempt at a smile broke for a moment on her face-"I have no doubt the count would consider it as great an obligation saving you as if he himself had been in danger.”

Adèle blushed, and seemed annoyed.

"I doubt it very much," she said. "The count is too fond of himself." Yes," replied the aunt; "but perhaps he looks on some one as part of himself."

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