a third day, and then I saw that he was young, and, in so regarding him,
his eyes became fixed on mine. The fourth day he did not come, but two
other men came, and the look of one was inquisitive and offensive. They
sat themselves down on a bench in the walk, and though I did not seem to
notice them, I hastened home; and the next day, in talking with our kind
Madame Savarin, and alluding to these quiet walks of mine, she hinted,
with the delicacy which is her characteristic, that the customs of Paris
did not allow demoiselles _comme il faut_ to walk alone even in the most
sequestered paths of the Bois.

I begin now to comprehend your disdain of customs which impose chains so
idly galling on the liberty of our sex.

We dined with the Savarins last evening: what a joyous nature he has!
Not reading Latin, I only know Horace by translations, which I am told
are bad; but Savarin seems to me a sort of half Horace,--Horace on his
town-bred side, so playfully well-bred, so good-humoured in his
philosophy, so affectionate to friends, and so biting to foes. But
certainly Savarin could not have lived in a country farm upon endives and
mallows. He is town-bred and Parisian, _jusqu'au bout des ongles_. How
he admires you, and how I love him for it! Only in one thing he
disappoints me there. It is your style that he chiefly praises:
certainly that style is matchless; but style is only the clothing of
thought, and to praise your style seems to me almost as invidious as the
compliment to some perfect beauty, not on her form and face, but on her
taste and dress.

We met at dinner an American and his wife,--a Colonel and Mrs. Morley:
she is delicately handsome, as the American women I have seen generally
are, and with that frank vivacity of manner which distinguishes them from