admitted was that of talent. "Money and titles may be hereditary,"
she would say, "but brains are not," and thus her charming salon was
reserved for originality and intellect, for brilliance and wit, for
clever men and talented women, and the entrance into it was soon looked
upon in the world of intellect--which even in those days and in those
troublous times found its pivot in Paris--as the seal to an artistic
career.

Clever men, distinguished men, and even men of exalted station formed a
perpetual and brilliant court round the fascinating young actress of
the Comedie Francaise, and she glided through republican, revolutionary,
bloodthirsty Paris like a shining comet with a trail behind her of all
that was most distinguished, most interesting, in intellectual Europe.

Then the climax came. Some smiled indulgently and called it an artistic
eccentricity, others looked upon it as a wise provision, in view of the
many events which were crowding thick and fast in Paris just then, but
to all, the real motive of that climax remained a puzzle and a mystery.
Anyway, Marguerite St. Just married Sir Percy Blakeney one fine day,
just like that, without any warning to her friends, without a SOIREE DE
CONTRAT or DINER DE FIANCAILLES or other appurtenances of a fashionable
French wedding.

How that stupid, dull Englishman ever came to be admitted within
the intellectual circle which revolved round "the cleverest woman in
Europe," as her friends unanimously called her, no one ventured
to guess--golden key is said to open every door, asserted the more
malignantly inclined.

Enough, she married him, and "the cleverest woman in Europe" had linked