"Savarin says these axioms are carried out at length, and argued with
great ability.

"I am very grateful for your proffered hospitalities in England. Some
day I shall accept them-viz., whenever I decide on domestic life, and the
calm of the conjugal foyer. I have a penchant for an English Mees, and
am not exacting as to the dot. Thirty thousand livres sterling would
satisfy me--a trifle, I believe, to you rich islanders.

"Meanwhile I am naturally compelled to make up for the miseries of that
horrible siege. Certain moralising journals tell us that, sobered by
misfortunes, the Parisians are going to turn over a new leaf, become
studious and reflective, despise pleasure and luxury, and live like
German professors. Don't believe a word of it. My conviction is that,
whatever may be said as to our frivolity, extravagance, &c., under the
Empire, we shall be just the same under any form of government--the
bravest, the most timid, the most ferocious, the kindest-hearted, the
most irrational, the most intelligent, the most contradictory, the most
consistent people whom Jove, taking counsel of Venus and the Graces, Mars
and the Furies, ever created for the delight and terror of the world;--in
a word, the Parisians.--Votre tout divoue, 'FREDERIC LEMERCIER.'"


It is a lovely noon on the bay of Sorrento, towards the close of the
autumn of 1871. Upon the part of the craggy shore, to the left of the
town, on which her first perusal of the loveliest poem in which the
romance of Christian heroism has ever combined elevation of thought with
silvery delicacies of speech, had charmed her childhood, reclined the
young bride of Graham Vane. They were in the first month of their