She now began in the evenings to inflict recitations on her mother, and the servants at their spinning wheels; and as her audience understood the poetry as well as they did Sanscrit, their admiration was without bounds. Finally she came to Paris, published her collection, and acquired a certain degree of consideration with the public.

"Now it should seem that with a fair share of renown and a respectable name, she would have her choice of husbands; however, this expectation was not realised. A little court had formed round her, but no one stepped from the ring to offer her his hand : nothing, no proposal either spontaneous or formal; homages in abundance, but no offers. Among the really serious well wishers, some recoiled in terror of the young and eager swarms of admirers who made her cortege; others wishing to judge her by her works, read her poems one by one, and were frightened at the amount of sighs which she had already exchanged with the moon, the stars, and other objects still more suspicious. It seemed dangerous to take charge of a woman who had made declarations to so many animated beings; and they naturally asked themselves if after such extravagant expenditure of sentiment, she could have preserved any thing agreeable at all to say to a husband: these natural but wrong suspicions kept them from offering proposals."

Having arrived at the mature age of thirty, unwedded, she beceme a canoness* to spite the tasteless crowd who should have interfered in time; and lived on a small hereditary pension, and on the premiums annually awarded to poets and poetesses, under the names of violets and eglantines, by an old foundation which has existed in Toulouse from the time of the troubadours. She is now settled for life in a suite of two rooms, where she occasionally holds a little court of poets young and old.

Nepomucene adopting the system of counter irritation, determines that Lucien shall become a star of her little court, and be weaned from his attraction to the Countess of Mauleon, who is a special object of hate to the good canoness: he pays her a visit to prepare the way.

"The palace of the poetess consisted of two rooms and a kitchen on the entresol. The chief ornaments were four portraits of the presiding divinity in oil, crayons, &c. Here her fingers swept the harp strings; there her hand rested on a virgin sheet of paper; now she plunged her quill in the ink-stand, and lastly she contented

The vows of this half secular community not being as stringent as those taken by regular nuns, the kind reader will permit our poetess a little sentimentality.

herself with an absence of all attributes. To vary the furniture of the scene, a robe lay on one chair, and a slipper on the floor; instances of seemly negligence, and serving to strengthen the local color."

Eulalie at her visitor's entrance is cooking her dinner in her small adjoining kitchen, and invites him to take a seat in that sanctuary, as she must jealously watch her pot till the due turn is given.

"Never was I affected so by any spectacle; at the end of a Jewish patriarch's life it would not have escaped my memory. Armed with a big iron spoon, the divine Eulalie skirmished with that dexterity conferred by habit alone; plunged it into the boiler, drew it forth, and tasted the contents by gingerly touching its edge with her lips.

Sometimes even, in the heat of conversation, she used it as a music baton, and flourished it about to the imminent danger of my vestments.

Yesterday, my friend, I had a servant; I have been obliged to dismiss her without drum or trumpet. You cannot keep a domestic now; she will turn out so exacting, so argumentative, so hardened in vice. This one for instance, a cow-herd from her shed, from the middle of cocks and hens, with cow-dung in her sabots, and straw in her hair :-this one knowing nothing, never having seen service but with muleteers, a machine, a tnrn-spit ;-eh, well! what do you think she complained of? I'll give you a thousand guesses.She complained of the diet.' Oh, frightful!' You may well say so; I had a mind to cram her with clover on the spot; but that is not the worst; a new vice has crept in among servants; they are corrupted to the core; we will be devoured infallibly by the harpies. What do you think? they insist on being regularly paid.'"

Her astonished visitor asked could such wickedness be possible; and while insisting on its naked verity, she brandished her spoon with such recklessness, that he was obliged to make a brisk retreat to avoid its dripping contents. The culinary operation being over, she requests him to step into the salon while she puts herself to rights. She makes him endure a pretty long wait, and then enters in radiant guise, to compensate for her neglected kitchen undress. Nepomucene explains his wish for the admission of Lucien to her converzaciones, and to his surprise she asks the color of his friend. He rejoins by hoping that she did not imagine he could think of presenting her a negro; adding that Lucien was a

handsome brun. She cries out that she has already eight of that complexion on her hands, and says that if he were a blond of Scandinavia something might be done. He observes that there are bruns and bruns, but she still persists in demanding a Swede or Russ. He then intimates that his friend is a poet; that once in accord, their lyres would sound in unison, and lend each other mutual support, but this unlucky suggestion is the worst move of all.

"So, so; one coxcomb more on my hands, as if I had not enough already. Whence do you come, my friend? have I to do at last with an enemy? I begin to entertain serious doubts of you, your offers sound so strange. A poet indeed! you might as well offer me a serpent to be warmed in my bosom. A poet to deprive me of my living! to steal my eglantines, and reduce me to a dry crust! Ahl Nepomucene; ought I to expect this from you."

Foiled in all his side attacks, he now makes a direct charge, and tells the naked truth; Lucien's senseless admiration for the Countess of Mauleon, and his earnest wish to save him from coming within the sphere of her fascinations.

"Eh, my dear friend, why did you not say so at first? The Countess of Mauleon indeed! Oh you cannot be aware how I detest her. An observer of your power not to know that it is always a pleasure for one woman of letters to mortify another!

You ask me to enter into your design. Why, my friend; I would cheerfully pay for the privilege. I will take your young friend in hands. He is dark 'tis true, but we will repaint him: besides, the Countess doats on bruns; let her come: I'll pull out half a dozen of her teeth, sooner than give him up to her; Countess of Mauleon indeed!'

Bravo! Eulalie. You are really superb;' and in truth she looked for the moment like the handsomest of the Eumenides.

'It is because I hate her so cordially: there is no word in the language strong enough to express what I feel towards her. A woman who has had such success, a woman whose works sell; and I, to pardon such a thing!'

'You are right,' said I, stirring up the fire of her resentment, it is unpardonable.'

'It might be borne, if she possessed talent; but one should be purblind, bandy-legged, hump-backed, and all skin and bone, like that idiot, THE PUBLIC, to find in her the shade of an idea, of a sentiment, of any beauty whatever; and yet her books are printed, are sold, and find publishers to push them, and imbeciles to read

them. Misery and what does this prove but that we are all going to the dogs?'

So you accept your part, Canoness?'

Accept it! Ay, with four hands, if I had them. Let me have the youth, foxy or brown, who cares? I should not have looked to shades: he will be an instrument of revenge on the Countess. Do not mingle in this business, you would strike too light. Send the young man of any color heaven pleases. I'll be revenged for all I have ever suffered in enduring her praises. But in talking I have forgotten my simmering pot: now you must go. Oh! Vengeance, Vengeance! what a morsel for a king !'"

Now is our young hero, day after day, plotting, fasting, walking, and watching at corners, and under gateways, to catch a glimpse of his idol; to follow where she has passed, and to look on these privileges as the greatest on earth. His guardian, seeing the state of things, hurries forward his first appearance in Eulalie's salon, where, in presence of her four portraits, and young, aspiring, hoping poets, and old, unprinted, despairing ones, and at the round serge-covered table in the middle of the apartment, he is to favor the presiding goddess, and her little court, with a specimen of his poetic powers. Nepomucene detests poetry, and on this occasion only, he will submit to the infliction.

"Must I acknowledge my shame; own to my cowardice? well, if it must be so, let it be. I spent an hour beside myself; I took pleasure in the recital. I resisted at first, then gradually gave ground step by step, then gave way to complete enjoyment. It was that Lucien sung his passion in true accents, such as go to the heart whatever be the form of the language. In a series of fragments, he painted the state of a soul attracted to unknown divinities; and moulded the feelings in a shape taken from the spirit of his dreams. A little of Pygmalion, a little of Venus Aphrodité; grace, languor, murmurs of the waters, murmurs from the sky, the hues of the solar prism, the perfumes of earth and air :-all these floated in the chaunt. Behold the cause of my defeat, of my utter discomfiture. Me sensible to the seductions of verse! Ye gods of good sense, gods of prose, give me your pardon.'

6

If this poesy produced such an effect on one of the prophane,' judge of the emotions of the initiated.' It was but one cry and one extasy during the recital. At every instant, Lucien was interrupted by the marks of an involuntary admiration. Such testimonies were too vivid not to be sincere: besides, there prevailed in these fragments, such an elevation of feeling and thought, such vigour, and such brilliancy, that we felt ourselves bound, and hurried along, despite of every obstacle, and by an irresistible impulse. But you should have seen poor Eulalie. Her eyes flashed, and her lips breathed out a visible triumph. She had reason to be proud in reality: it was an

epoch for her salon, now become the cradle of an illustrious name. Oh! to see her movements, her gestures, her agitation!

'Oh! divine, divine,' she cried: divine,' they all repeated in chorus; a great poet is born,' she added; 'yes indeed, a great poet,' cried the juniors with enthusiasm: a great poet,' repeated the unpublished seniors in a lower key, as became those who had felt the thorns of the art.

The assembly was dissolved and the youths would have constructed a bier to conduct the Laureat in triumph to his lodgings. The Canoness did not shrink from any excess: she had fished from the depths of a press, two or three perfumed handkerchiefs, and was not happy but while wiping the moist and heated brow of the poet. I am sure she would have proposed a foot-bath in addition, and herself as the hand-maid, but that this ceremony seems to belong exclusively to ancient manners."

We would now seem to be in a fair way to secure our young poet from the songs of the syren Countess, but the scheme, though well contrived, proved nought. A mad philosopher who has the entrée in the salons both of Countess and Canoness, fastens himself on Lucien to induct him into his system; and the victim puts his head willingly into the snare, for by conversing with Trinachon, he can hear about his idol and her doings. A card of invitation is at last presented to Lucien, who of course, now walks on air; but the same card being forgotten on the sofa in Eulalie's salon, and coming under her eyes, infuses fright and grief into her excitable and loving heart. She is now enraged at Lucien for his ingratitude and weakness; against his patron for not having infused better principles into him; and against Trinachon for seducing him into the enemy's camp. Poor Trinachon was very unconscious instrument in the transaction. His system was, that we were all mistaken as to the proper offices of the feet and head. In order that honey should be collected from the leaves of trees, and wine flow without ceasing from all the public fountains, we had nothing to do but elevate our feet in the air, and use our heads as organs for walking. Hearing that a young poet had arisen, he pounced on him to secure his services as high priest to his new cultus, and the invitation to the Countess's party fell out without any selfish or treacherous design on the part of the system-monger. Lucien patiently listened to his ravings to get a word or two about his divinity, and Trinachon rejoiced in the acquisition of an important disciple.

On the very day before the much longed for party, Lucien,