blush; a round dimpled cheek, an exquisitely-shaped mouth with small
pearly teeth, and a light and delicate figure a little below the
ordinary standard, completed the picture of Madame de Montaigne.

"Well," said Signor Tirabaloschi, the most loquacious and sentimental of
the guests, filling his glass, "these are hours to think of for the rest
of life. But we cannot hope the Signora will long remember what we
never can forget. Paris, says the French proverb, /est le paradis des
femmes/: and in Paradise, I take it for granted, we recollect very
little of what happened on earth."

"Oh," said Madame de Montaigne, with a pretty musical laugh, "in Paris
it is the rage to despise the frivolous life of cities, and to affect
/des sentimens romanesques/. This is precisely the scene which our fine
ladies and fine writers would die to talk of and to describe. Is it not
so, /mon ami/?" and she turned affectionately to De Montaigne.

"True," replied he; "but you are not worthy of such a scene--you laugh
at sentiment and romance."

"Only at French sentiment and the romance of the Chaussee d'Antin. You
English," she continued, shaking her head at Maltravers, "have spoiled
and corrupted us; we are not content to imitate you, we must excel you;
we out-horror horror, and rush from the extravagant into the frantic!"

"The ferment of the new school is, perhaps, better than the stagnation
of the old," said Maltravers. "Yet even you," addressing himself to the
Italians, "who first in Petrarch, in Tasso, and in Ariosto, set to
Europe the example of the Sentimental and the Romantic; who built among
the very ruins of the classic school, amidst its Corinthian columns and