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"I had looked at that face while M. Schneider was reading the address-it moved not a muscle, it might have been a face of marble. Even when at moments the words were drowned in applause, and the Empress, striving at equal composure, still allowed us to see a movement of her eyelids, a tremble on her lips. The boy at his right, heir to his dynasty, had his looks fixed on the President, as if eagerly swallowing each word in the address, save once or twice, when he looked round the hall curiously, and with a smile as a mere child might look. He struck me as a mere child. Next to the Prince was one of those countenances which once seen are never to be forgotten-the true Napoléonic type, brooding, thoughtful, ominous, beautiful. But not with the serene energy that characterises the head of the first Napoléon when Emperor, and wholly without the restless eagerness for action which is stamped in the lean outline of Napoléon when First Consul: no,-in Prince Napoléon, there is the beauty to which, as woman, I could never give my heart-were I man, the intellect that would not command my trust. But, nevertheless, in beauty it is signal, and in that beauty the expression of intellect is predominant. "Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing! The Emperor spoke and believe me, Eulalie, whatever the journals or your compatriots may insinuate, there is in that man no sign of declining intellect or failing health. I care not what may be his years, but that man is in mind and in health as young as Cæsar when he crossed the Rubicon.

"The old cling to the past-they do not go forward to the future. There was no going back in that speech of the Emperor. There was something grand and something young in the modesty with which he put aside all references to that

which his Empire had done in the past, and said with a simple earnestness of manner which I cannot adequately describe :

"We must more than ever look fearlessly forward to the future. Who can be opposed to the progressive march of a régime founded by a great people in the midst of politi cal disturbance, and which now is fortified by liberty?'

"As he closed, the walls of that vast hall seemed to rock with an applause that must have been heard on the other side of the Seine. "Vive l'Empereur !' "Vive l'Impératrice!'

"Vive le Prince Impérial!'— and the last cry was yet more prolonged than the others, as if to affirm the dynasty.

"Certainly I can imagine no Court in the old days of chivalry more splendid than the audience in that grand hall of the Louvre. To the right of the throne all the ambassadors of the civilised world in the blaze of their rich costumes and manifold orders. In the gallery at the left, yet more behind, the dresses and jewels of the dames d'honneur and of the great officers of State. And when the Empress rose to depart, certainly my fancy cannot picture a more queen-like image, or one that seemed more in unison with the representation of royal pomp and power. The very dress, of a colour which would have been fatal to the beauty of most women equally fair-a deep golden colour-(Valérie profanely called it buff)-seemed so to suit the splendour of the ceremony and the day; it seemed as if that stately form stood in the midst of a sunlight reflected from itself. Day seemed darkened when that sunlight passed away.

"I fear you will think I have suddenly grown servile to the gauds and shows of mere royalty. I ask myself if that be so-I think not.

Surely it is a higher sense of greatness which has been impressed on me by the pageant of to-day: I feel as if there were brought vividly before me the majesty of France, through the representation of the ruler she has crowned.

"I feel also as if there, in that hall, I found a refuge from all the warring contests in which no two seem to me in agreement as to the sort of government to be established in place of the present. The 'Liberty' clamoured for by one would cut the throat of the Liberty' worshipped by another.

"I see a thousand phantom forms of LIBERTY-but only one living symbol of ORDER-that which spoke from a throne to-day."

Isaura left her letter uncompleted. On the following Monday she was present at a crowded soirée given by M. Louvier. Among the guests were some of the most eminent leaders of the Opposition, including that vivacious master of sharp sayings, M. P—, whom Savarin entitled "the French Sheridan;" if laws could be framed in epigrams he would be also the French Solon. There, too, was Victor de Mauléon, regarded by the Republican party with equal admiration and distrust. For the distrust, he himself pleasantly accounted in talk with Savarin.

"How can I expect to be trusted? I represent 'Common Sense ;' every Parisian likes Common Sense in print, and cries 'Je suis trahi' when Common Sense is to be put into action."

A group of admiring listeners had collected round one (perhaps the most brilliant) of those oratorical lawyers by whom, in France, the respect for all law has been so often talked away: he was speaking of the Saturday's ceremonial with elo

quent indignation. It was a mockery to France to talk of her placing Liberty under the protection of the Empire.

There was a flagrant token of the military force under which civil freedom was held in the very dress of the Emperor and his insignificant son the first in the uniform of a General of Division; the second, forsooth, in that of a sous lieutenant. Then other liberal chiefs chimed in: "The army," said one,

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was an absurd expense; it must be put down:" "The world was grown too civilised for war," said another: "The Empress was priestridden," said a third: "Churches might be tolerated; Voltaire built a church, but a church simply to the God of Nature, not of priestcraft," and so on.

Isaura, whom any sneer at religion pained and revolted, here turned away from the orators to whom she had before been listening with earnest attention, and her eyes fell on the countenance of De Mauléon who was seated opposite; the countenance startled her, its expression was so angrily scornful; that expression, however, vanished at once as De Mauléon's eye met her own, and drawing his chair near to her, he said, smiling: "Your look tells me that I almost frightened you by the ill-bred frankness with which my face must have betrayed my anger, at hearing such imbecile twaddle from men who aspire to govern our turbulent France. You remember that after Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake, a quack advertised 'pills against earthquakes.' These messieurs are not so cunning as the quack; he did not name the ingredients of his pills."

"But, M. de Mauléon," said Isaura, "if you, being opposed to the Empire, think so ill of the wisdom of those who would destroy it, are you prepared with remedies for

earthquakes more efficacious than their pills?"

"I reply as a famous English statesman, when in opposition, replied to a somewhat similar question, I don't prescribe till I'm called in.'"

"To judge by the seven millions and a half whose votes were announced on Saturday, and by the enthusiasm with which the Emperor was greeted, there is too little fear of an earthquake for a good trade to the pills of these messieurs, or for fair play to the remedies you will not disclose till called in."

"Ah, mademoiselle! playful wit from lips not formed for politics, makes me forget all about emperors and earthquakes. Pardon that commonplace compliment-remember I am a Frenchman, and cannot help being frivolous."

"You rebuke my presumption too gently. True, I ought not to intrude political subjects on one like you-I understand so little about them-but this is my excuse, I so desire to know more.'

M. de Mauléon paused, and looked at her earnestly with a kindly, half-compassionate look, wholly free from the impertinence of gallantry. "Young poetess," he said, softly, "you care for politics! Happy, indeed, is he-and whether he succeed or fail in his ambition abroad, proud should he be of an ambition crowned at home-he who has made you desire to know more of politics!"

The girl felt the blood surge to her temples. How could she have been so self-confessed? She made no reply, nor did M. de Mauléon seem to expect one; with that rare delicacy of high breeding which appears in France to belong to a former generation, he changed his tone, and went on as if there had been no interruption to the question her words implied.

"You think the Empire securethat it is menaced by no earthquake? You deceive yourself. The Emperor began with a fatal mistake, but a mistake it needs many years to discover. He disdained the slow natural process of adjustment between demand and supply-employer and workmen. He desiredno ignoble ambition-to make Paris the wonder of the world, the eternal monument of his reign. In so doing, he sought to create artificial modes of content for revolutionary workmen. Never has any ruler had such tender heed of manual labour to the disparagement of intellectual culture. Paris is embellished; Paris is the wonder of the world: other great towns have followed its example; they, too, have their rows of palaces and temples. Well, the time comes when the magician can no longer give work to the spirits he raises; then they must fall on him and rend: out of the very houses he built for the better habitation of workmen will flock the malcontents who cry, 'Down with the Empire!' the 21st of May you witnessed the pompous ceremony which announces to the Empire a vast majority of votes, that will be utterly useless to it except as food for gunpowder in the times that are at hand. Seven days before, on the 14th of May, there was a riot in the Faubourg du Temple-easily put down - you scarcely hear of it. That riot was not the less necessary to those who would warn the Empire that it is mortal. True, the riot disperses but it is unpunished: riot unpunished is a revolution begun. The earthquake is nearer than you think; and for that earthquake what are the pills yon quacks advertise? They prate of an age too enlightened for war; they would mutilate the army-nay, disband it if they could - with

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Prussia next door to France. Prussia, desiring, not unreasonably, to take that place in the world which France now holds, will never challenge France; if she did, she would be too much in the wrong to find a second: Prussia, knowing that she has to do with the vainest, the most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever flourished a rapier in the face of a spadassin-Prussia will make France challenge her.

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"And how do ces messieurs deal with the French army? Do they dare say to the ministers, Reform it'? Do they dare say, 'Prefer for men whose first duty it is to obey, discipline to equality-insist on the distinction between the officer and the private, and never confound it; Prussian officers are well educated gentlemen, see that yours are'? Oh no; they are democrats too stanch not to fraternise with an armed mob; they content themselves with grudging an extra sou to the Commissariat, and winking at the millions fraudulently pocketed by some 'Liberal contractor.' Dieu des dieux! France to be beaten, not as at Waterloo by hosts combined, but in fair duel by a single foe! Oh, the shame! the shame! But as the French army is now organised, beaten she must be, if she meets the march of the German."

"You appal me with your sinister predictions," said Isaura; "but, happily, there is no sign of war. M. Duplessis, who is in the confidence of the Emperor, told us only the other day that Napoléon, on learning the result of the plébiscite, said: The foreign journalists who have been insisting that the Empire cannot coexist with free institutions, will no longer hint that it can be safely assailed from without.'

And more than ever I may say, L'Empire c'est la paix !" Monsieur de Mauléon shrugged his shoulders. "The old story—

Troy and the wooden horse." "Tell me, M. de Mauléon, why do you, who so despise the Opposition, join with it in opposing the Empire?"

"Mademoiselle, the Empire opposes me; while it lasts I cannot be even a Député; when it is gone, heaven knows what I may be, perhaps Dictator; one thing you may rely upon, that I would, if not Dictator myself, support any man who was better fitted for that task." "Better fitted to destroy the liberty which he pretended to fight for!"

"Not exactly so," replied M. de Mauléon, imperturbably "better fitted to establish a good government in lieu of the bad one he had fought against, and the much worse governments that would seek to turn France into a madhouse, and make the maddest of the inmates. the mad doctor!" He turned away, and here their conversation ended.

But it so impressed Isaura, that the same night she concluded her letter to Madame de Grantmesnil by giving a sketch of its substance, prefaced by an ingenuous confession that she felt less sanguine confidence in the importance of the applauses which had greeted the Emperor at the Saturday's ceremonial, and ending thus: "I can but confusedly transcribe the words of this singular man, and can give you no notion of the manner and the voice which made them eloquent. Tell me, can there be any truth in his gloomy predictions? I try not to think so, but they seem to rest over that brilliant hall of the Louvre like an ominous thunder-cloud."

CHAPTER II.

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The Marquis de Rochebriant was Chevalier did so explain; for though seated in his pleasant apartment, both at the first, and quite recently glancing carelessly at the envelopes at the second default of payment, of many notes and letters lying yet Alain received letters from M. Louunopened on his breakfast - table. vier's professional agent, as He had risen late at noon, for he minders of interest due, and as had not gone to bed till dawn. The requests for its payment, the Chenight had been spent at his club- valier assured him that these appliover the card-table-by no means cations were formalities of convento the pecuniary advantage of the tion-that Louvier, in fact, knew Marquis. The reader will have nothing about them; and when learned, through the conversation dining with the great financier himrecorded in a former chapter between self, and cordially welcomed and De Mauléon and Enguerrand de called "Mon cher," Alain had taken Vandemar, that the austere Seig him aside and commenced explananeur Breton had become a fast tion and excuse, Louvier had cut viveur of Paris. He had long him short. "Peste! don't mention since spent the remnant of Louvier's such trifles. There is such a thing premium of £1000, and he owed a as business that concerns my year's interest. For this last there agent; such a thing as friendship was an excuse- -M. Collot, the con--that concerns me. Allez !" tractor to whom he had been advised to sell the yearly fall of his forest-trees, had removed the trees, but had never paid a sou beyond the preliminary deposit; so that the revenue, out of which the mortgagee should be paid his interest, was not forthcoming. Alain had instructed M. Hébert to press the contractor; the contractor had replied, that if not pressed he could soon settle all claims-if pressed, he must declare himself bankrupt. The Chevalier de Finisterre had laughed at the alarm which Alain conceived when he first found himself in the condition of debtor for a sum he could not pay creditor for a sum he could not recover.

“Bagatelle!" said the Chevalier. "Tschu! Collot, if you give him time, is as safe as the Bank of France, and Louvier knows it. Louvier will not trouble youLouvier, the best fellow in the world! I'll call on him and explain matters."

It is to be presumed that the

Thus M. de Rochebriant, confiding in debtor and in creditor, had suffered twelve months to glide by without much heed of either, and more than lived up to an income amply sufficient indeed for the wants of an ordinary bachelor, but needing more careful thrift than could well be expected from the head of one of the most illustrious houses in France, cast so young into the vortex of the most expensive capital in the world.

The poor Marquis glided into the grooves that slant downward, much as the French Marquis of tradition was wont to slide; not that he appeared to live extravagantly, but he needed all he had for his pocketmoney, and had lost that dread of being in debt which he had brought up from the purer atmosphere of Bretagne.

But there were some debts which, of course, a Rochebriant must pay -debts of honour-and Alain had, on the previous night, incurred such a debt, and must pay it that day.

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