* * * * *

But weightier matters now absorbed the universal interest. The
disappearance of the heroine from the stage was speedily accounted for
by her flight in the carriage whose wheels had disturbed my study. But
where fled, why, and with whom? We now found other defalcations in our
numbers; the Chevalier Paul Charlatanski, a gallant Polish exile, who
contrived to pass a very pleasant time on the merit of his misfortunes,
a man of enormous mustaches and calamities, was also missing. His valet,
his valise, every atom that ever appertained to him, had vanished; the
clearance was complete. The confusion now thickened. I never saw the
master of the mansion in such a rage before. Pistols and post-chaises
were in instant requisition. He vowed that the honour of his house was
involved in the transaction, and that nothing should tempt him to
slumber until he had brought the fugitive fair one to the arms of her
noble family; my Juliet being the ward of a duke, and being also
entitled to about twenty thousand pounds a-year on her coming of age.

As for the unlucky, or rather the lucky, Chevalier, nothing human ever
received a hotter shower of surmise and sarcasm. That he was "an
impostor, a swindler, a spy," was the Earl's conviction, declared in the
most public manner. The whole body of matrons looked round on their
blooming innocents, as if they had been snatched from the jaws of a
legion of wolves and thanked their own prudence which had not trusted
those men of mustaches within their hall doors. The blooming innocents
responded in filial gratitude, and, with whatever sincerity, thanked
their stars for their fortunate escape.

Still, the Earl's indignation was of so _ultra_ a quality; his revenge
was so fiery, and his tongue so fluent; that I began to suspect he had