arelessly on the
chimney-piece, and continued: "I must tell you a secret of poor De
Beauvais, for I know you feel interested in him. You must know, then,
that our friend is desperately in love with a very beautiful cousin of
his own, one of the suite of Madame Bonaparte. She 's a well-known Court
beauty; and if you had seen more of the Tuileries, you'd have heard of
La Rose de Provence."

"I have seen her, I think," muttered I, as my cheek grew crimson, and my
lips trembled.

"Well," resumed the abbe, and without noticing my embarrassment, "this
love affair, which I believe began long ago, and might have ended in
marriage,--for there is no disparity of rank, no want of wealth, nor
any other difficulty to prevent it,--has been interrupted by General
Bonaparte, because, and for no other reason, mark ye, than that De
Beauvais's family were Bourbonists. His father was a captain of the
Garde du Corps, and his grandfather a grand falconer, or something or
other, with Louis the Fifteenth. Now, the young marquis was well enough
inclined to go with the current of events in France. The order of things
once changed, he deemed it best to follow the crowd, and frequented the
Tuileries like many others of his own politics,--I believe you met him
there,--till one morning lately he resolved to try his fortune where the
game was his all. And he waited on Madame Bonaparte to ask her consent
to his marriage with his cousin; for I must tell you that she is an
orphan, and in all such cases the parental right is exercised by the
head of the Government. Madame referred him coldly to the General, who
received him more coldly still; and instead of replying to his suit, as
he expected, broke out into invectives against De Beauvais's friends;
called them_Chouans_and assassins; said they never ceased to plot
against his life with his most inveterate enemies, the English; that
the exiled family maintained a corps of spies in Paris, of whom he half
suspected him to be one; and, in a word, contrived to heap more insult
on him in one quarter of an hour than, as he himself said, his whole
family had endured from the days of Saint Louis to the present. De
Beauvais from that hour absented himself from the Tuileries, and indeed
almost entirely from Paris,--now living with his friends in Normandy,
now spending a few weeks in the South. But at last he has determined on
his course, and means to leave France forever. I believe the object of
his coming here