musicians, receiving and surveying her subjects,--a woman of majestic
presence. Nodding dismissal to the fierce moustache, she acknowledged my
deep bow with a slight but gracious inclination.

"Madame Fée, permit me to introduce Monsieur Chamilly Haviland, a
D'Argentenaye of Dormillière,--and the last. My child, your attractions
have been too exclusively of the 'West End.' You have lived among the
English; enter now into _my_ society." Mde. Fée smiled, and Mde. de
Rheims taking a look at me continued: "The stock is incomparable out of
France. Remember, my child, that your ancestors were grande noblesse,"
haughtily raising her head. A novel feeling of distinction was added to
my swelling current of new pleasures.

A ruddy, simply-dressed, black-haired lady, but of natural and cultured
manner, was now received by her with much cordiality, and I had an
opportunity to survey the whole concourse and continue my observations.
Brought up as I had been for the last few years, I found my own people
markedly foreign,--not so much in any obtrusive respect as in that
general atmosphere to which we often apply the term.

In the first place there was the language--not patois as of _habitants_
and barbers, nor the mode of the occasional caller at our house, whose
pronunciation seemed an individual exception; but an entire assemblage
holding intercourse in dainty Parisian, exquisite as the famous dialect
of the Brahmans. There was the graceful compliment, the antithetic
description, the witty repartee. One could say the poetical or
sententious without being insulted by a stare. Some of the ladies were
beautiful, some were not, but they had for the most part a quite ideal
degree of grace and many of them a kind of dignity not too often
elsewhere found. Every person laughed and was happy through the homely