other, yet unable to meet. Fate miscarried all my attempts. My father
had presented me to one of my aunts who lived in the Ile St. Louis.
With her I was to dine on Sundays and Thursdays, escorted to the house
by either Monsieur or Madame Lepitre, who went out themselves on those
days and were to call for me on their way home. Singular amusement for
a young lad! My aunt, the Marquise de Listomere, was a great lady, of
ceremonious habits, who would never have dreamed of offering me money.
Old as a cathedral, painted like a miniature, sumptuous in dress, she
lived in her great house as though Louis XV. were not dead, and saw
none but old women and men of a past day,--a fossil society which made
me think I was in a graveyard. No one spoke to me and I had not the
courage to speak first. Cold and alien looks made me ashamed of my
youth, which seemed to annoy them. I counted on this indifference to
aid me in certain plans; I was resolved to escape some day directly
after dinner and rush to the Palais-Royal. Once seated at whist my
aunt would pay no attention to me. Jean, the footman, cared little for
Monsieur Lepitre and would have aided me; but on the day I chose for
my adventure that luckless dinner was longer than usual,--either
because the jaws employed were worn out or the false teeth more
imperfect. At last, between eight and nine o'clock, I reached the
staircase, my heart beating like that of Bianca Capello on the day of
her flight; but when the porter pulled the cord I beheld in the street
before me Monsieur Lepitre's hackney-coach, and I heard his pursy
voice demanding me!

Three times did fate interpose between the hell of the Palais-Royal
and the heaven of my youth. On the day when I, ashamed at twenty years
of age of my own ignorance, determined to risk all dangers to put an
end to it, at the very moment when I was about to run away from
Monsieur Lepitre as he got into the coach,--a difficult process, for