“Diable! mais monsieur à beaucoup vu,” said the old man, his hair standing on end as he bowed them into the carriage. : From Ferney they proceeded to Coppet. Poor Madame de Staël! in a fit of monomania she talks of the "moral air of England!" but there really is a moral atmosphere and well-regulated look about Coppet, at least compared to Ferney. At all events, it has a " soignée" English appearance, which always gives one a good opinion of the owner of a Continental house, when one has been surfeited with dirt, disorder, and the fine arts. After driving through a long, straight, ugly gravel-walk road, the nice old house, with its four round, quaintlooking towers, grouped like oldfashioned sentry-boxes, appears; the hall is not particularly good, but the staircase is broad and handsome; opposite the hall-door is the library, a nice long room with pillars, and oldfashioned wire bookcases lined with green silk. The windows look out upon a pretty garden, bounded by the lake at the upper end of the library is a large tapestried bedchamber, formerly occupied by Madame Récamier. At the lower, a door opening into the "salle à manger ;' over the chimney-piece in the library is a full-length portrait of Neckar, on the right of which is another of Madame Neckar, and on the left one of William Schlegel; it is a heavy, stupid face. There is withal an egaré look about it, just the sort of astonishment his features must have expressed when he found that he had inspired love in such a woman as Madame de Staël; while the look of thought the painter has endeavoured to knead into his face only makes him appear to be in the act of racking his brains for misstatements for her Germany." Up stairs, the rooms are large and good, and accurately clean, with such a decided air of English comfort about them, that one wonders how it was ever got through "the customs." Next to Madame de Staël's bedroom is the dressing-room she used to write in of a morning; the chair, the table, the inkstand, just as she left it; the windows looking out upon the lake, and Clarens, the beautiful Clarens in the distance! 66 66 Ah," said Saville, sitting down in the chair and throwing open the window," it is evidently here that she must have first dreamed Corinne,' however she may have realized it in Italy." "Yes," laughed Mowbray, "and William Schlegel (vide the picture) must have been the original of that leaden lover, Lord Nelville.” "Oh, you sacrilegious dog! to speak so profanely of any of the personages mentioned in that rubric of love." "Peccavi," said Mowbray; "but recollect, that though you are no doubt by this time fit for canonization, I am not yet even a convert to the true faith; but as you seem inclined to spend the rest of your life in that chair, dreaming of your Corinne, or perhaps in the hope of becoming inspired, I must leave you, as I want to see the rest of the house." Saville followed slowly on; in the drawing-room was Gerard's picture of Madame de Staël; the turban and attitude evidently after the manner of Domenichino's Sibyl in the Capitol, but oh! what a difference in the face! though the eyes are certainly remarkably fine, and there is as much beauty in the countenance as expression can give when it plays the rebel, and sets features totally at defiance. "I could have been in love with that woman, too," said Mowbray, in answer to his own thoughts, as he looked with folded arms earnestly at the picture. "What splendid eyes! and what exquisitely beautiful arms! I always admired beautiful arms-one sees them so seldom." "This could not be said of hers," said Saville, laughing; "for, as tradition hath it, she displayed them on all occasions; and even with posterity she appears determined (forgive the pun) to carry it 'vi et armis;' but that eternal palm-branch in her hand, I wonder why she should retain that, even in her picture." 66 Because, in her generation, she yielded the palm to none; and now, Master Harry, you have pùn for pun. But what a sweet, gentle, feminine picture that is of the Duchesse de Broglie! the word lovely seems made on purpose to be applied to it." "It is indeed very lovely," said Saville, "and I dare say she was the original of Lucille; there is something very English in the whole contour." "Now, as you love me, Hal, never undertake to praise me, if you laud after that fashion. English-looking! that is an epithet which never can be eulogistic, except as applied to boards, beds, beefsteaks, and bottled porter; but to apply it to the gentler sex! Harry, Harry, it is the last, the very last insult which injury should provoke a man to offer to a woman. What think you they keep French abigails for, employ French milliners, adopt French morals, and endure as many privations and abominations in Continental tours, as a retreating army in an Egyptian campaign, if it is to be called English-looking at last! Go to and mend thy manners.'" On each side of the mantelpiece were miniatures, into one of which poor Monsieur Rocard had slunk; into the other Monsieur Auguste, with a great deal of French beauty about him (that is to say, "coïffée à la coup de vent"), and that sort of half Agamemnon, half Antinous look, which all the Monsieur Augustes possess, that have ever been or that ever will be transmitted to posterity, through the medium of ivory or canvass. Out of the drawing-room is a very nice, comfortable billiardroom, with busts round it; and though the house had not been inhabited for some time, it had a peculiarly inhabited look. 66 Coppet!" said Mowbray, as they descended the stairs, "thy mistress is no more; then why dost thou seem so cheerful, since thou‘ne'er will look upon her like again?"" That night the friends slept at Mellerie; to their shame be it confessed, they thought not once of Jean Jacques, or even of his tertian ague Julie, and St. Preux, till the hostess announced that no trout could be got for supper. "Comment il n'y à pas de truite! à Mellerie ?" " cried Saville; and then, slapping his forehead like a despairing lover, exclaimed, "L'eau est profonde, La Roch est escarpée, et je suis au desespoir; parcequ'il n'y à pas de truite pour le souper! mais comme tous mes espérances sont de truites pour aujourd'hui, je les aurez pour le déjeûner demain." "I think," said Mowbray, laughing at this rhapsody. and still more at the landlady's astounded face, and Andare's horrified one, at this profane quotation from the Heloise-"I think you had better go to bed, or else you will pun yourself into a fever." "Or sup full of horrors if I remain," said Saville, as he glanced at the first "entrée," a nondescript-looking bird, very like a roasted gondola ingulfed in a sea of "beur noir." CHAPTER III. "A qui cette belle maison et ces vastes "A monseigneur le Marquis de Carabas, Histoire Célébre du Chat Bottée. "I won't describe; description is my forte, But every fool describes in these bright days And spawns his quartos, and demands your praise. While Nature, tortured twenty thousand ways, To guide-books, rhymes, tours, sketches, illustrations." EVERY one who has passed the Simplon (and who is there that has not?) knows as well as I can tell them, that, let them turn to which side they will on the sunny margin of that terrestrial paradise, the Lago Maggiore, and inquire who is the happy owner of some fairy casino, from Isola Madre and Isola Bella onward, will be sure to receive the eternal answer that it belongs to Prince Borromeo, who is most categorically the Marquis de Carabas of “that ilk." How gloriously, how primevally beautiful, is just this one favoured spot! how "flat, stale, and unprofitable" the plains of Lombardy beyond! and how infernal look the red lights, that glare out the way, previous to reaching the ferry at Cesto Calendo, where the poor blind fiddler, with his songs of "Bella Italia" and "La Placida Campagna," seems, Orpheus-like, to move the sticks and stones of the heavily-laden ferry, and make the passage over less miserable than it otherwise would be! But, in Italy, let no one fear a lack of discomfort; no, no! at every "poste" they will be sure of the eternal dogana, the large, dirty, miserable inn, and the pitched battle between the courier and the maestro della posta, about the "tariffe:" add to this, the having nothing to eat, while one's self is eaten alive, will always ensure to an Englishman his national privilege of grumbling, which, being his greatest luxury, is also, luckily, the only one that is not "contrabandista," and therefore gets through the custom-house duty free. The day that Saville and Mowbray reached Milan was one of those bright, balmy, thoroughly Italian days, that make one feel very much as one fancies a chrysalis must feel when it is turning into a butterfly, and expanding into a new and happier existence; but while Mowbray was looking to the right and to the left as they passed the Corso, and joyfully recognising old acquaintances in every tree, Saville was as eagerly looking into every carriage, and thinking every moment an hour till they alighted at the Albergo Reale. Verily, his toilette was not of the longest, and yet the most fastidious eye could not have detected any deficiency in it when, half an hour after their arrival, he might have been seen striding along "à pas de giant" towards the palazza: but, alas! "the course of true love never did," nor ever will, "run smooth." To his inquiry of whether Lord de Clifford was at home, the negative reply he received did not send an icebolt to his heart; but when the same answer was returned about Lady de Clifford and her sister, and, finally, when he was informed that they were gone to Lodi, were not expected back till dinner-time, and that they all dined that day at the Contessa A.'s, poor Saville looked as if, instead of this simple and very natural piece of intelligence, the porter had informed him that a price was set upon his head, and in an hour from thence it would be separated from his body. Slowly and languidly he retraced his steps to the hotel; and after throwing open every window in the room, ringing the bell, till he broke it, for his man Gifford, and being extremely angry at hearing he was out, though, on leaving home, he himself had told him he might go out, as he should not want him till dinner, he resorted to that usual "pis aller" of disappointed lovers, pacing to and fro, as if in the hope of walking away from himself. He was still pursuing this unselfish but somewhat impracticable journey, when Mowbray returned to dinner. “What, noble knight of La Mancha!" said the latter, smiling, "has thy dulcinea persisted in stringing pearls, |