tion to one
of the most elegant women of her time--to the goddess of fashion in her
temple, the Circe of high life, at the "witching hour," but of being most
"graciously" received; and even hearing a panegyric on my chivalry, from
the Marechal, smilingly echoed by lips which seemed made only for smiles.

A summons from the ball-room soon withdrew the captivating mistress of the
mansion, who retired with the step and glance of the very queen of
courtesy; and I was about to take my leave, when a ceremonial of still
higher interest awaited me. Clotilde, feebly rising from her sofa, and
sustaining herself on the neck of her kneeling mother, murmured her thanks
to me "for the preservation of her dear parent." The sound of her voice,
feeble as it was, fell on my ear like music. I advanced towards her. The
Marechal stood with her handkerchief to her eyes, and venting her
sensibilities in sobs. The fairer object before me shed no tears, but,
with her eyes half-closed, and looking the marble model of paleness and
beauty, she held out her hand. She was, perhaps, unconscious of offering
more than a simple testimony of her gratitude for the services which her
mother had described with such needless eloquence. But in that delicious,
yet unaccountable feeling--that superstition of the heart, which makes
every thing eventful--even that simple pressure of her hand created a
long and living future in my mind.

Yet let me do myself justice; whether wise or weak in the presence of the
only being who had ever mastered my mind, I was determined not "to point a
moral and adorn a tale." I had other duties and other purposes before me
than to degenerate into a slave of sighs. I was to be no Romeo, bathing my
soul in the luxuries of Italian palace-chambers, moonlight speeches, and
the song of nightingales. I felt that I was an Englishman, and had the
rugged steep of fortune to climb, and climb alone. The time, too, in which
I was to begin my struggle for distinction, aroused me to shake off the
spirit of dreams which threatened to steal over my nature. The spot in
which I lived was the metropolis of mankind. I was in the centre of the
machinery which moved the living world. The wheels of the globe were
rushing, rolling, and resounding in my ears. Every interest, necessity,
stimulant, and passion of mankind, came in an incessant current to London,
as to the universal heart, and flowed back, refreshed and invigorated, to
the extremities of civili