THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR.
27
and superior to ouch weaknesses, as becomes a
-president of many boards and a chairman of
many committees, opened his eyes and glanced (
tat her; and some young Cantabs and artists at
the other end of the table stopper! their own
conversation, envying Dunbar and myself, I
believe, for our juxtaposition with the bellein-
connue; while my sisters sat trifling with the
wing of a pigeon, in voluntary starvation (they
would have had nothing to complain of, you
see, if they had suffered themselves to dine
well!), with strong disapprobation marked
upon their lineaments, of this lovely, vivacious
unknown, whoever she might be, talking ex-
clusively to each other, with a certain expres-
sion of sarcastic disdain and offended virtue,
hinting far more forcibly than words that they
thought already the " very worst" of her.
So severe, indeed, did they look, that Dun-
bar, who is a good-natured fellow, and thinks—
and thinks justly—that Constance and Agneta
are very fine women, left me to discuss Hoff-
man, Heine, and the rest of Germany's sat ri-
cal poets, with my opposite neighbor; and en-
deavored to thaw my sisters—a very difficult
matter when once those ladies are iced. He
tried Paris, but only elicited a monosyllabic re-
mark concerning its weather; he tried Vioq
d'Azyr, and was rewarded for his trouble by
a withering sarcasm on the unlucky Toison
d'Or; he tried chit-chat on mutual acquaint-
ances, and the unhappy people he chanced to
name were severally dismissed with a cutting
.satire appended to each. Lady Maréchale and
Mrs. Protocol were in one of those freezing
and unassailable moods in which they sealed a
truce with one another; and, combining their
forces against a common foe, dealt out sharp,
spherical, hard-hitting little bullets of speech
from behind the abatis in which they intrenched
themselves.
At last he, in despair, tried Lemongenseid-
litz, and the ladies thawed slightly—their an-
ticipations from that fashionable little quarter
were couleur de rose. They would meet
J heir neople of the best monde, all their
dearest—that is of course their most fashionable
—friends ; the dear Duchess of Frangipane, the
Millamonts those charming people, M. le Mar-
quis de Croix-et-Cordon, Sir Henry Pullinger,
Mrs. Merivale-Delafield, were all there; that
•delightful person, too, the Graf von Rosenliiu,
who amused them so much at Baden last year,
Vas, as of course Dunbar knew, Master of the
I lorse to the Prince of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizz-
litrelitz; they would be well received at the
Court. Which last thing, however, they did
not, say, though they might imply, and assuredly
fully thought it; since Lady Maréchale already
pictured herself gently awakening his Serene
1 Ugliness to the spiritual darkness of his soul in
legitimatizing gaming-tables in his duchy, and
Mrs. Protocol already beheld herself closeted
With his First Minister, giving that venerable
Metternich lessons in political economy, and
developing to him a system for filling his beg-
gared treasury to overflowing, without taxing
the people a kreutzer—a problem which, though
it might have peplexed Kaunitz, Colbert, Pitt,
Malesherbes, Talleyrand, and Palmerston put
together, offered not the slightest difficulty to
1er enterprising intellect. Have I not said that
Sherlock states women are at the top of the
staircase while we are toiling up the first few
steps?                                                               ¦
" The Duchess—Princess Hélène is a lovely
woman, I think Winton saw her at the Tuil-
eries last winter, and raved about her beauty,"
said Dunbar, finding he had hit at last on an
acceptable subject, and pursuing it with more
zeal than discretion ; for if there be one thing,
I take it, more indiscreet thau another, it is to
praise woman to woman.
Constance coughed and Agneta smiled, and
both assented. "Oh yes—very lovely, they
believed!"
" And very lively—up to everything, I think
I have heard," went on Dunbar, blandly, un-
conscious of the meaning of cough, smile, and
assent.
" Very lively!" sighed the Saint.
" Very lively!" smiled the Politician.
' As gay a woman as Marie Antoinette," con-
tinued Dunbar, too intent on the truffles to pay
i même temps much heed to the subject he
.vas discussing. "She's copied the Trianon,
hasn't she?—has fêtes and pastorals there, acts
in comedies herself, shakes off etiquette and
eremonial as much as she can, and all that
a»rt of thing, I believe?"
Lady Maréchale leaned back in her chair, the
severe virtue and dignified censure of a British
matron and a modern Lucretia expressed in
both attitude and coutenance.
"A second Marie Antoinette?—too truly and
unfortunately so, I have heard! Levity in any
station sufficiently reprehensible, but when ex-
hibited in the persons of those whom a higher
power has placed in exalted positions, it is most
deeply to be deplored. The evil and contagion
of its example become incalculable ; and even
when, which I believe her excusers are wont to
assert of Princess Hélène, it is merely trace-
able to an over-gayety of spirit and an over-
carelessness of comment and censure, it should
be remembered that we are enjoined to abstain
from every appearance of evil!"
With which Constance shook out her phy-
lacteries, represented by the thirty-guinea bra-
cade-silk folds of her skirt (a dress I heard her
describe as "very plain!—serviceable for trav-
eling"), and glanced at my opposite neighbor
with a look which said, " You are evidently not
a proper person, but you hear for once what
a proper person thinks!"
Our charming companion did hear it, for she
apparently understood English very well. She
laughed a little—a sweet, low, ringing laugh—
(I was rather in love with her, I must say—I
am still)—and spoke with a slight pretty ac-
cent.
"True, madame! but ah! what a pity your
St. Paul did not advise, too, that people should
not go by appearances, and think evil where
evil is not !"
Lady Maréchale gave stare number two with
a curl of her lip, and bent her head stiffly.
" What a very strange person!" she observed
to Agneta, in a murmur, meant, like a stage
aside, to be duly heard and appreciated by the
audience. And yet my sisters are thought very
admirably bred women, too! But then, a wo-
man alone—a foreigner, a stranger—surely no
one would exact courtesy to such, from "ladies
of position!"
" Have you ever seen Princess Hélène, the
Duchess of Lemongenseidlitz, may I ask?"
Maréchale inquired, hastily, to cover his wife's
sneer. He's a very good fellow, and finds the
constant and inevitable society of a saint slightly
trying, and a very heavy chastisement for a few
words sillily said one morning in St. George's.
"I have seen her, monsieur—yes 1"
" And is she a second Marie Antoinette?"
She laughed gaily, showing her beautiful
white teeth.
"Ah bah, monsieur! many would say that
is a great deal too good a comparison for her !
A second Louise de Savoie—a second Duchesse
de Chevreuse—nay, a second Lucrezia Borgia,
some would tell you. She likes pleasure—who
does not, though, except those with whom ' les
raisins sont trop verts et bons pour des goujats?' "
" What an insufferably bold person !" mur-
mured Constance.
" Very disagreeable to meet this style of peo-
ple!" returned Agneta.
And both stiffened themselves with a little
more starch; and we know that British wheats
produce the stiffest starch in the world!
"Who, indeed!" cried Maréchale, regardless
of madame's frown. "You know this for
truth, then, of Princess Hélène?"
"Ah, bah, monsieur! who knows anything
for truth?" laughed the lovely brunette. "The
world dislikes truth so much, it is obliged to
hide itself in out-of-the-way corners, and very
rarely comes to light. Nobody knows the
truth about her. Some think her, as you say
a second Marie Antoinette who is surrendered
to dissipation and levity, cares for nothing, and
would dance and laugh over the dead bodies
of the people. Others judge her as other
judged Marie Antoinette; discredit the gossip,
and think she is but a lively woman, who
laughs at forms, likes to amuse herself, and
does not see why a court should be a prison!
The world likes the darker picture best; let
it have it! I do not suppose it will break her
heart!"
And the fair stranger laughed so sweetly,
that every man at the dinner-table fell m love
with her on the spot: and Lady Maréchale and
Mrs. Protocol sat throughout the remainder of
the meal in frozen dignity and unbreakable
silence, while the lovely brunette talked with
and smiled on us all with enchanting gayety,
wit, and abandon, chatting on all sorts of
topics of the day.
Dinner over, she was the first to rise from the
table, and bowed to us with exquisite grace and
that charming smile of hers, of which the
sweetest rays fell upon me, I swear, whether
you consider the oath an emanation of personal
vanity or not, my good sir. My sisters re-
turned her bow and her good evening to them
with that pointed stare which says so plainly,
" You are not my equal, how dare you insult
me by a courtesy?"
Anil scarcely had we begun to sip our coffee
up-stair in the apartments Chanderlos had
secured for the miladies Anglaises, than the
du:» upon her began as the two ladies sat
with Spes between them on a sofa beside
one of the windows opening on the balcony that
ran round the house. A chance inadvertent
assent of Dunbar's, apropos of—oh, sin
unpardonable !—the beauty of the incognita's
eyes, touched the valve and unloosened the hot
springs that were seething below in silence.
" A handsome woman!—oh yes, a gentleman's
beauty, 1 dare say!—but a very odd person!"
commenced Mrs. Protocol. "A very strange
person!" assented Mrs. Maréchale. " Very free
manners!" added Agneta. "Quite French!"
chorused Constance. " She has diamond rings—
paste, no doubt!" said the Politician. "And
rouges—the color's much too lovely to be
natural!" sneered the Saint. " Paints her eye-
brows, too!" "Not a doubt—and tints her
lashes!" "An adventuress, I should say!"
"Or worse!" "Evidently not a proper per-
son!"    " Certainly not!"
Through the soft mellow air, hushed into
evening silence, the words reached me, as I
walked through the window on to the balcony,
and stood sipping my coffee and looking lazily
over the landscape wrapped in sunset haze, over
the valley where the twilight shadows wero
deepening, and the mountains that were steeped
yet in a rose-hued golden radiance from the raya
that had sunk behind them.
"My dear ladies," I cried, involuntarily,
" can't you find anything a little more kindly
so say of a stranger who has never done you
any harm, and who, fifty to one, will never
cross your path again?"
"Bravo!" echoed Maréchale, who has never
gone as quietly in the matrimonial break as
Protocol, and indeed will never be thoroughly
broken in—"bravo! women are always study-
ing to make themselves attractive; it's a pity
they don't put down among the items a trifle of
generosity and charity, it would embellish
them wonderfully."
Lady Maréchale beat an injured tattoo with
the spoon on her saucer, and leaned back with
1 he air of a martyr, and drawing in her lips
with a smile, whose inimitable sneer any lady
might have envied—it was quite priceless!
" It is the first time, Sir George, I should pre-
sume, that a husband and a brother were ever
heard to unite in upbraiding a wife and a sister
with her disinclination to associate with, or her
averseness to countenance, an improper person!"
' ' An improper person !" I cried. ' ' but my dear
Constance, who ever told you that this lady you
are so desperately bitter upon has any fault at
all, save the worst fault in her own sex's eyes—
that of beauty? I see nothing in her; her man-
ners are perfect; her tone——"
" You must pardon me if I decline taking
your verdict on so delicate a question," inter-
rupted Lady Maréchale, with withering satire.
" Very possibly you see nothing objectionable
in her—nothing, at least, that you would call so !
Your views and mine are sufficiently different
on every subject, and the women with whom I
believe you have chiefly associated are not those
who are calculated to give you very much appre-
ciation for the more refined classes of our sex !
Very possibly the person in question is what you,
and Sir George too, perhaps, find charming;
but 37ou must excuse me if I really cannot, to
oblige you, stoop to countenance any one whom
my intuition and my knowledge of the world
both declare so very evidently what she should
not be. She will endeavor most probably, if
she remain here, to push herself into our ac-
quaintance, but if you and my husband should
choose to insult us by favoring her efforts,
Agneta and I, happily, can guard ourselves
, from the objectionable companionship into
! which those who should be our protectors would
wish to force us!"
With which Lady Maréchale, with a little
more martyrdom and an air of extreme dig-
nity, had recourse to her flacon of Viola Mon-
tana, and sank among the sofa cushions,
a model of outraged and Spartan virtue.
I set down my coffee-cup, and lounged
out again to the peace of the balcony ;
Maréchale shrugged his shoulders, rose,
and followed me. Lo ! on the part of the bal-
cony that ran under her windows, leaning on
its balustrade, her white hand, white as tl»