or's talk
appeared to interest Isaura. She listened with evident attention; and
when she spoke in return, though Graham did not hear her words, he could
observe on her expressive countenance an increased gentleness of aspect.

"I hope," said the physician, joining Graham, as most of the other
guests gathered round Savarin, who was in his liveliest vein of anecdote
and wit,--"I hope that the fair Italian will not allow that ink-bottle
imp to persuade her that she has fallen in love with him."

"Do young ladies generally find him so seductive?" asked Graham, with a
forced smile.

"Probably enough. He has the reputation of being very clever and
very wicked, and that is a sort of character which has the serpent's
fascination for the daughters of Eve."

"Is the reputation merited?"

"As to the cleverness, I am not a fair judge. I dislike that sort of
writing which is neither manlike nor womanlike, and in which young
Rameau excels. He has the knack of finding very exaggerated phrases by
which to express commonplace thoughts. He writes verses about love
in words so stormy that you might fancy that Jove was descending upon
Semele; but when you examine his words, as a sober pathologist like
myself is disposed to do, your fear for the peace of households
vanishes,--they are Fox et proeterea nihil; no man really in love would
use them. He writes prose about the wrongs of humanity. You feel for
humanity; you say, 'Grant the wrongs, now for the remedy,'--and you find
nothing but balderdash. Still I am bound to say that both in verse and
prose Gustave Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste of the day, and
therefore he is coming into vogue. So much as to his writings; as to his
wickedness, you have only to look at him to feel sure that he is not
a hundredth part so wicked as he wishes to seem. In a word, then, M.
Gustave Rameau is a type of that somewhat numerous class among the youth
of Paris, which I call 'the lost Tribe of Absinthe.' There is a set
of men who begin to live full gallop while they are still boys. As
a general rule, they are originally of the sickly frames which can
scarcely even trot, much less gallop without the spur of stimulants, and
no stimulant so fascinates their peculiar nervous system as absinthe.
The number of patients in this set who at the age of thirty are more
worn out than septuagenarians increases so rapidly as to make one dread
to think what will be the next race of Frenchmen. To the predilecti