I ASK you, my reader, to picture me as a young man nineteen years of age, just entering Parisian life.

Imagine, also, that I am of a passionately ardent temperament, under the influence of which I persuaded, two weeks ago, a young person, also of a passionately ardent temperament, to run away with me from a convent where she was being educated.

Imagine, further, that while seated after breakfast in my apartment smoking my cigar, I receive the following letter from her; and then ask yourself what must be my feel ings at perusing it.

"ANGÉLIQUE PAPILLON TO AUGUSTE

GRENOUILLE.

"MY FRIEND,-You remember our compact. Actuated by the same impulse, perhaps by the same presentiment, we took along with our vows of love this other vow, that directly either of us should perceive our fetters of silk becoming for one of us fetters of lead, the change should be frankly avowed and the chain cast off. And we did right. To what end should the mask of constancy be maintained when the heart is no longer the same? Why continue to walk hand in hand in the same linked intimacy as before, while the averted glance, fixed on another object, no longer guides in the former paths of love the devious and hesitating footsteps? Why offer on the cold and barren shrine of fidelity the sacrifice of reason and truth? In fine, why at seventeen, with flowers springing on all sides in the parterre of life, should I obstinately continue to press to my bosom the rose I have gathered, when its thorns annoy and distract me? You, my friend, would not thank me for a forced fidelity, nor will you reproach me for an honest inconstancy. My heart, which cannot deceive, tells me it is better to be faithfully fickle than falsely true.

"On perusing these sentiments, you will perhaps say that the tears I shed, the love I expressed for you at our parting yesterday, were feigned -that I must even then have been meditating disloyalty to our mutual passion. Not so, my dear Auguste

heaven and the Virgin, who have witnessed my struggle and temptation, will witness also my truth. Yesterday I was as sincere in my professions as I now am in my recantation. Let us part, then, my friend, with mutual esteem, since the passion I felt for you is transferred to another. Who that other is you may not perhaps care to know; it is sufficient to say that at first sight of him, my heart (which can never deceive me) warned me of the presence of its master. For a time,-upwards of an hour,-I refused to acknowledge the influence. Your last whispers still dwelt in my ears, the very wax of your mustache still lingered on my cheek. I retired to my chamber

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my sufferings were horrible. passed a dreadful night, distracted by thoughts of you and of your rival, of my old and of my new love. But I prayed for guidance, and not in vain. A celestial ray lit my soul and directed my choice. Yet still I felt this morning a moment's hesitation; but only a moment's-the sight of the beloved object fixed my fate, and I knew that hitherto I had been dwelling with you only in the antechamber of Love, whose gorgeous saloons I now enter under other auspices. Adieu, my friend; yet, ere we part, let me recall once again the intoxicating hours that we have spent together. Let me remember for a moment the gloomy conventual veil which was to have hidden me from the paradise of the outer world, and which you, with brave and devoted hand, tore away. Let remembrance for a moment dwell fondly on the fortnight we have since so sweetly

passed in the rapture of our first romance. Let those moments, hallowed by youth and passion, be for ever sacred. Enough! they are past. Adieu !

"ANGÉLIQUE PAPILLON."

Again, I ask, what would you, my reader, have felt at receiving such a letter under the circumstances I have imagined? You doubtless answer— the terrible recoil of impetuous passion, the turmoil of a heart whose holiest aspirations and most sacred confidences have been outraged. And you are, my reader, right in the general view, though not in the particular case. I read this letter, so well calculated to raise the tornado of the soul, with perfect calmness. The cambric on my bosom did not heave -the glow of my cigar was not for an instant brightened by the hastier breath of anger, nor were the jets of smoke accelerated by the convulsions of disappointment. I perused it with the same tranquillity as if it had been a matter the most indifferent, and the reason was, that at the same hour when Angélique posted this letter for me, I had despatched the following one to her, so that the missives must have crossed on their way :

lique, except of two classes-those who are still votaries of love and pleasure, and those who, no longer capable of enjoyment, pass the remnant of their days in melancholy remembrance-a terrestrial purgatory which serves to balance the account between youth and heaven? Some day, when fortune shall afford me the means of expressing the more exalted conceptions of my soul, I will commission some great artist to condense these sentiments, now diffused over many pictures of different styles, into one triumphant work, where a Magdalen, recumbent in a charnel-house, shall seek to detach her reluctant thoughts from the still seductive pleasures of the world (on which, in the background, the artist shall lavish all his warm imagination), by pressing to her bosom the skull of a former lover, out of which worms shall be creeping. You, Angélique, when years shall have ripened your beauties, will make a charming Magdalen. But this refined artistic treat I shall reserve for my old age.

"Thus agreeably occupied, and predisposed for tender sentiment, I saw enter at one door, passing through to the other, a lady-in fact, there were two, but of one only I would speak, for one only engrossed my thoughts. Her shape was perfectly

PAPILLON.

"ANGÉLIQUE,-Heaven, that for two rapturous weeks has smiled upon our passion, is now hostile. A vision has appeared in my path forbidding the continuance of our felicity. Listen, my friend.

"Three days ago I was at the Louvre, filling my mind to overflowing with the ideas of the great painters, and, by a judicious selection of subjects, gathering that mingled aroma so grateful to the taste of our age and country, which arises from a due combination of sentimental religion with the voluptuousness of the heathen mythology. What can be more striking, and at the same time more pleasing, than the contrast between the two opposite aspects of life, asceticism and indulgence, placed in juxtaposition. For of what does life consist, Angé.

d'oeuvre of the most successful of Parisian modistes; her bonnet, in particular, was an exquisite production, trimmed with costly lace, and furnished with a veil of the same, through which bloomed a roseate complexion, which put to shame by its delicacy the tints of Raphael and Corregio upon the walls around us. Between her bonnet and her snowy neck had escaped a tress of flaxen hair, such as might be expected to accompany that delicate blonde skin with its vermilion tints. I need not explain to one so sympathetic as yourself the power there is in contrast to stir afresh the emotions of the heart, and in this instance it had its full effect. My admiration, attracted before by your clear olive skin and warm tints and dark hair, Angélique, now oscillated violently in the opposite direction: I had never before experienced a feeling so

sudden and so powerful as for this fair stranger.

"At the first glance which she cast in my direction, I saw that the attraction was mutual. It is unnecessary to recapitulate the steps by which kindred spirits, magnetically attracted, approach each other in such circumstances: it is sufficient to say that I soon found myself seated at the side of this charming being, exchanging with her those delicious nothings which at once veil and express the emotions of the soul.

"Angélique, you know what a charm mystery has for me, as for all imaginative, poetic natures. There was about this woman enough of the mysterious to complete the spell to which I was yielding.

"In the first place, I observed that she never laughed, nor even smiled, but received my gayest sallies with perfect gravity, though her replies showed that she possessed, like all superior souls, keen sympathy with wit.

"Can it be, Angélique, that this adorable being has some secret grief shadowing her spirit? Yet her conversation was light and playful, and her speaking eye betokened no sor

row.

"Before we parted I besought this bright vision to say by what name I should remember her.

"She thought for a moment, and then replied, as she pressed my hand, 'Call me Ninon, my friend.'

"Ninon! what pleasing emotions does the name excite! recalling as it does Ninon de l'Enclos, the beauty whose charms were not only unrivalled amongst her contemporaries, but who continued to enchant three generations of lovers. On her my fancy had always dwelt with peculiar interest. The enterprising spirit of a French lover finds its keenest zest in what is removed from the commonplace and humdrum order of attachments; and it has ever been a favourite thought of mine, that Ninon in her old age, as having something supernatural in her charms, must have been a more lovable object than in the freshest bloom of her youth.

"I accepted the name, then, as a happy omen, and departed in a delirium of joy.

"On the following day we met again. The same place witnessed our interview.

"She was beautiful, bewitching, mysterious as ever-nay, even more mysterious.

"Take care,' she said, as I urged my suit with ardour; do not be rash! It is not for nothing that I am called Ninon !'

"You are called Ninon,' I said, fervently, because you are irresistible, and because heaven will not suffer such beauty to fade!'

"An inexpressible melancholy stole over Ninon's countenance. 'The great Mirabeau,' said she, 'told me just the same.'

"Mirabeau!' I cried; 'but he was dead before I was born. Surely you are jesting.'

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"I am serious, my friend,' said Ninon.

"Angélique, this woman, who is so beautiful, who never smiles, who calls herself Ninon, who talks of having conversed with Mirabeau, is an enigma the most enchanting.

"Yesterday we met again and again in the Louvre. Again I was subdued by the intoxicating influence of her presence-subdued, yet exalted never had I been so brilliant -so seductive. I urged my passion with fervour. I gazed into those charming eyes, whose azure depths were still hidden by that eternal veil, which she never lifts. I was about to draw towards her more closely-to whisper yet more tenderly, when, casting my eyes around to assure myself that there was no spectator of our happiness, I beheld a well-known figure.

"Heavens!" I said, starting, and relinquishing her hand, 'my father!'

"Ninon's eyes at the exclamation followed mine. Instantly she was violently agitated-she trembledher lips quivered, and I should_certainly have thought she was about to faint, but that her roseate complexion remained lovely as ever.

"What did you say, my friend?' she gasped.

"Yonder stands my father,' I replied. But calm yourself, Ninon— he has not observed us- -he is passing

into the next room.'

My father had married early in life a pretty roturière against the will of his family, who wished him to wed a rich though deformed scion of the noblesse. However, with the ardour of youth he listened only to the dictates of his heart, which, as he afterwards acknowledged, was highly imprudent; for by taking the bride selected for him, he would have secured her fortune without incurring the necessity of submitting to her society; he would have kept on terms with his family; and, finally, he need not have debarred himself from the pleasure of my mother's company, merely because he had been induced from motives of convenance to marry another. Later in life he saw this but wisdom came too late. He chose otherwise, and from that moment separated from his family, dropping even their name; and, taking that of my mother, was known simply as M. Grenouille. He continued after his marriage to live on an estate which my mother's father, a pawnbroker of the Mont-de-Piété, left to them in a distant province; and as he continued to entertain feelings of rancour against his father, whom he considered to have treated him with harshness, it happened that I grew up in profound ignorance of my pedigree.

My mother died early, and my father, who was of an extremely af

fectionate nature, remained inconsolable. I never remember him otherwise than despondent and depressed and though, being a handsome and attractive man, he made many conquests, and indulged, for the beguilement of his widowed loneliness, in a great number of intimate female friendships, which his late wife's relations viewed with pity and respect, yet I am convinced that his heart remained faithful to the memory of his departed saint, whose tomb he constantly visited in company with the different fair ones who desired to console him for her loss. It was a sad pleasure to my father, and one indicative of his sentimental and imaginative nature, to cause each one of them to lay wreaths of immortelles on the tomb, in number proportioned to her place in the order of succession to his affections: thus the first placed one, the twenty-fifth twentyfive, and so on: and as he never permitted any of them to be removed, the monument was in course of time quite hidden by these garlands, the testimonies of his unalterable conjugal devotion. His enjoyments, however, were all tinged with this melancholy hue;-he never recovered his spirits, and remained always a kind of gloomy Don Juan.

My father, being in easy circumstances for the pawnbroker was rich and generous-made me a handsome

allowance, and never demanded any account of its disposal. Accordingly, I was enabled to enjoy to the full all the pleasures of Parisian society immediately on entering it.

On the night following the scene in the Louvre, which has been narrated in my letter to Angélique, I found myself at the Opera Comique before the rising of the curtain. No man with a heart will need to ask what took me there, for his heart will sufficiently inform him-it is unnecessary, therefore, to say that I expected to behold Ninon.

Before she appeared I knew of her approach by an electric current which passed through me, causing my heart to palpitate violently. A noble humility made me lower my eyes as she entered, and it was not till she had taken her seat that I ventured to glance towards her. She raised her lorgnette-a look and motion of her fan made me feel that I was recognised. O there was something inexpressibly delicious in the thought that these rays of intelligence, like the wires of the telegraph, passed through crowds without revealing the message they bore, except to him who was destined to profit by it.

I know not what passed on the stage, for thither I never directed my eyes; but I suppose it was a performance of merit, since the applause was frequent and the laughter loud. But what did attract my attention even from Ninon was a conversation that was passing between the occupants of two stalls behind me.

"Pardieu! she is wonderful," said the old Vicomte de Clos-Vougeot, whom I knew by sight, directing his opera-glass towards Ninon's box.

"There is no change perceptible since I first saw her in that very box, with the great Mirabeau leaning over her, holding her fan," said his companion, the venerable Comte de Chateau-Margaux.

"I have not seen her until to-night since her marriage with the Marquis de Toujours-Vert. One might imagine that she had been buried for a generation or so, and been dug up quite fresh," said the Vicomte. "She has been living abroad, I think."

That makes her reappearance seem all the more extraordinary,"

VOL, LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXI.

returned the Comte de Chateau-Margaux. "She must have gone to sleep in an enchanted palace for the last quarter of a century, and have woke up to find her former admirers either ghosts or greybeards."

"They say she has had no lover since Mirabeau," observed the Vicomte; "she amuses herself with the passions she continues to inspire, but favours none."

Heavens! what delightful exultation did this inspire in my breast! I could have clasped the venerable Vicomte de Clos-Vougeot to my bosom.

"A thought strikes me," he resumed presently; "she must have had the Wandering Jew for a lover in early life, and imbibed a portion of his perpetuity."

"I wish I knew the secret by which she preserves so well," said the Comte de Chateau-Margaux. "I would reveal it to the Comtesse de Chateau - Margaux, who must be about her age, and I would then permit myself to enjoy that lady's society much oftener than I do at present."

"One remarkable thing about her is, that she never smiles," remarked the Vicomte. "Observe how stoically she watches the performance, while all around her are convulsed with laughter."

This was true, and it confirmed my previous observation in my letter to Angélique. But at that moment something especially ridiculous must have occurred on the stage; for Ninon (or rather the Marquise de ToujoursVert), after an apparent struggle to resist joining in the mirth of the audience, suddenly burst into uncontrollable laughter. She immediately put her handkerchief to her face and left the house.

It was very singular. Had she made a vow against laughter? or was it in displeasure with herself at yielding to so trivial an emotion, that she quitted the scene? I knew not. But this I knew, that she was the Marquise de Toujours-Vert, and that she had not without reason called herself Ninon. Her beauty derived for me tenfold piquancy from the two circumstances of her great age and her former intimacy with so emi

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