of the political system. Italy at any rate is the
land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent animal, a dangerous
unreasoning siren, guided only by her tastes and appetites, a creature
no more to be trusted than a tiger--"

Mme. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy made up of vague,
conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts which cannot be reproduced in
words. The whole charm of such musing lies in its vagueness--what is it
but a sort of mental haze?

"I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest wish to make
your acquaintance, after all that she has heard of you," said the lady,
taking his arm.

She brought him into the next room, and with such a smile and glance
as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a woman sitting by the
hearth.

"Who is she?" the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly.

"You have heard her name more than once coupled with praise or blame.
She is a woman who lives in seclusion--a perfect mystery."

"Oh! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity's sake tell
me her name."

"She is the Marquise d'Aiglemont."

"I will take lessons from her; she had managed to make a peer of France
of that eminently ordinary person her husband, and a dullard into a
power in the land. But, pray tell me this, did Lord Grenville die for
her sake, do you think, as some women say?"

"Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is very much
changed, poor thing! She has not gone into society since. Four years of
constancy--that is something in Paris. If she is here to-night----"
Here Mme. Firmiani broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, "I am
forgetting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her."

For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly against the
frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of a woman who had
become famous, no one exactly knew how or why. Such curious anomalies
are frequent enough in the world. Mme. d'Aiglemont's reputation was
certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great reputations.
There are men who are always in travail of some great work which never
sees the light, statisticians held to be profound on the score of
calculations which they take very good care not to publish, politicians
who live on a newspaper article, men of letters and artists whose
performances are never given to the world, men of science, much as
Sganarelle is a Latinist for those who know no Latin; there are the men
wh