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"There have been worse longings nor that," quoth the Corporal gravely. "Perhaps you meditate marrying one of the London belles; an heiress eh?" "Can't but say," said the Corporal very solemnly, "but that might be 'ticed to marry a fortin, if so be she was young, pretty, good-tempered, and fell desperately in love with me, best quality of all." "You're a modest fellow."
Sounding the lungs of a veiled princess in Morocco was the least of his adventures, and the treasures he had collected supplied Lavinia with materials for unlimited romances: cuff-buttons made from bits of marble picked up among the ruins of Carthage; diamond crescents and ear-rings bought in Toledo, so antique and splendid that relic-loving Amanda raved about them; photographs of the belles of Constantinople, Moorish coins and pipes, bits of curious Indian embroidery; and, best of all, the power of telling how each thing was found in so graphic a manner that Eastern bazaars, ruins, and palaces seemed to rise before the listeners as in the time of the magic story-tellers.
It was here that the young girl was initiated into the most elegant forms of luxury, and met the cleverest men of that time Voltaire, Rousseau, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Volney. She set herself to be the most accomplished woman of her day, not merely in belles lettres, but in the natural and political sciences.
"You must excuse the Marquis, ladies," said I, in my turn; "he has not been in love in England. There, perhaps, he found the belles less cruel than in France, where, for the cruelty of one lady, or for her insensibility of his merit, he revenges himself on the whole sex: "I apply to M. de Talleyrand," answered the Marquis; "he has been longer in England than myself."
And the words of a French song came back into my memory, telling of the best of our mixed existence: 'Que t'as de belles filles, Girofle! Girofla! Que t'as de belles filles, L'Amour let comptera! And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and free to love. But there was another side to my residence at Our Lady of the Snows.
"You must excuse the Marquis, ladies," said I, in my turn; "he has not been in love in England. There, perhaps, he found the belles less cruel than in France, where, for the cruelty of one lady, or for her insensibility of his merit, he revenges himself on the whole sex: "I apply to M. de Talleyrand," answered the Marquis; "he has been longer in England than myself."
In such writing, style would be a misfortune. One must know how to speak jesuitically; and, in order to advance, one must be clever in getting one's ideas to walk on crutches. Those who engage in the trade confess themselves corrupt; like diplomatists, they have as a pension the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, a few librarianships, even archiveships.
Charms as fresh as those of Hebe, beauties which might rival the feminine softness of those of Venus, while they bespeak the vigour of Diana, and the bloom of Hygeia, are the advantages which distinguish many of the Parisian belles of the present day, and for which they are, in a great measure, indebted to the freedom they enjoy under the antique costume.
And he had known most of those whose names studded the printed lines so thickly. Indeed, some of them he still knew only now they were old men and old women faded, wrinkled bucks and belles of a far-distant day.
I have a perfect remembrance of a fête at Frogmore, about the beginning of the present century, where there was a Dutch fair, and haymaking very agreeably performed in white kid gloves by the belles of the town, and the buck-basket scene of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" represented by Fawcett and Mrs. Mattocks, and I think Mrs.
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