herefore, her sex's burden, not hers.
Jorian was a Mousquetaire, with plumes and ruffles prodigious, and a
hen's heart beneath his cock's feathers. 'Pourtant j'y allai. I saw your
great ladies, how they carry themselves when they would amuse themselves,
and, mon Dieu! Paris has done its utmost to grace their persons, and the
length of their robes did the part of Providence in bestowing height upon
them, parceque, vous savez, Monsieur, c'est extraordinaire comme ils ont
les jambes courtes, ces Anglaises!' Our aristocracy, however, was not so
bad in that respect as our bourgeoisie; yet it was easy to perceive that
our female aristocracy, though they could ride, had never been drilled to
walk: 'de belles femmes, oui; seulement, tenez, je n'admire ni les yeux
de vache, ni de souris, ni mime ceux de verre comme ornement feminin.
Avec de l'embonpoint elles font de l'effet, mais maigre il n'y a aucune
illusion possible.'

This vindictive critic smarted, with cause, at the recollection of her
walk out of her rooms. Jorian's audacity or infatuation quitted him
immediately after he had gratified her whim. The stout Mousquetaire
placed her in a corner, and enveloped her there, declaring that her
petition had been that she might come to see, not to be seen,--as if, she
cried out tearfully, the two wishes must not necessarily exist together,
like the masculine and the feminine in this world! Prince Hal, acting the
most profligate period of his career, espied her behind the
Mousquetaire's moustache, and did not fail to make much of his discovery.
In a perilous moment for the reputation of the Ball, my father handed him
over to Gascoigne, and conducted Jenny in a leisurely walk on his arm out
of the rooms.

'Il est comme les Romains,' she said: 'he never despairs of himself. It
is a Jupiter! If he must punish you he confers a dignity in doing it. Now
I comprehend, that with such women as these grandes dames Anglaises I
should have done him harm but for his greatness of soul.'

Some harm, I fancied, must have been done, in spite of his boast to the
contrary. He had to be in London every other night, and there were tales
current of intrigues against him which had their sources from very lofty
regions. But in Chippenden he threw off London, just as lightly as in
London he discarded Chippenden. No symptom of personal discouragement, or
of fatigue, was betrayed in his face. I spoke once of that paragraph
purporting to emanate from Prince