"I returned to Paris, and applied to my friend Casorans, who knows the
Faubourg Saint-Germain from Dan to Beersheba.

"'Madame de Bergenheim,' he said to me, 'is a very popular society woman,
not very pretty, perhaps, rather clever, though, and very amiable. She
is one of our coquettes of the old nobility, and with her twenty-four
carats' virtue she always has two sufferers attached to her chariot,
and a third on the waiting-list, and yet it is impossible for one to find
a word to say against her behavior. Just at this moment, Mauleon and
d'Arzenac compose the team; I do not know who is on the waiting-list.
She will probably spend the winter here with her aunt, Mademoiselle de
Corandeuil, one of the hatefullest old women on the Rue de Varennes.
The husband is a good fellow who, since the July revolution, has lived
upon his estates, caring for his forests and killing wild boars without
troubling himself much about his wife.'

"He then told me which houses these ladies frequented, and left me,
saying with a knowing air:

"'Take care, if you intend to try the power of your seductions upon the
little Baroness; whoever meddles with her smarts for it!'

"This information from a viper like Casorans satisfied me in every way.
Evidently the place was not taken; impregnable, that was another thing.

"Before Madame de Bergenheim's return, I began to show myself assiduously
at the houses of which my friend had spoken. My position in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain is peculiar, but good, according to my opinion. I have
enough family ties to be sustained by several should I be attacked by
many, and this is the essential point. It is true that, thanks to my