ERNEST MALTRAVERS

BY EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(Lord Lytton)

BOOK II.

"He, of wide-blooming youth's fair flower possest,
Owns the vain thoughts--the heart that cannot rest!"
SIMONIDES, /in Tit. Hum/.



CHAPTER I.

"Il y eut certainement quelque chose de singulier dans mes
sentimens pour cette charmante femme."*--ROUSSEAU.

* There certainly was something singular in my sentiments for this
charming woman.

IT was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy at
Naples: and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who attach
themselves to the reigning beauty, was gathered round Madame de
Ventadour. Generally speaking, there is more caprice than taste in the
election of a beauty to the Italian throne. Nothing disappoints a
stranger more than to see for the first time the woman to whom the world
has given the golden apple. Yet he usually falls at last into the
popular idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant
scepticism into superstitious veneration. In fact, a thousand things