such terms of intimacy, as a man has a right to claim when a
woman singles him out and keeps him at her side as a complacent
_souffre-douleur_ rather than a makeshift."

"Well," says she, "have you found those letters of which you spoke
yesterday? You said that you could not tell me all about _him_ without
them?"

"Yes, I have them."

"It is your turn to speak; I am listening like a child when his mother
begins the tale of _Le Grand Serpentin Vert_."

"I count the young man in question in that group of our acquaintances
which we are wont to style our friends. He comes of a good family; he
is a man of infinite parts and ill-luck, full of excellent
dispositions and most charming conversation; young as he is, he is
seen much, and while awaiting better things, he dwells in Bohemia.
Bohemianism, which by rights should be called the doctrine of the
Boulevard des Italiens, finds its recruits among young men between
twenty and thirty, all of them men of genius in their way, little
known, it is true, as yet, but sure of recognition one day, and when
that day comes, of great distinction. They are distinguished as it is
at carnival time, when their exuberant wit, repressed for the rest of
the year, finds a vent in more or less ingenious buffoonery.

"What times we live in! What an irrational central power which allows
such tremendous energies to run to waste! There are diplomatists in
Bohemia quite capable of overturning Russia's designs, if they but
felt the power of France at their backs. There are writers,