I dine with the
Comte de Beauvilliers to meet some of the Corps Diplomatique. I must
make good my place in the salons, since you so clearly show me that I
have no chance of one in the Legislature--unless--"

"Unless what?"

"Unless there happen one of those revolutions in which the scum comes
uppermost."

"No fear of that. The subterranean barracks and railway have ended
forever the rise of the scum, the reign of the canaille and its
barricades."

"Adieu, my dear Hennequin. My respectful hommages a Madame."

After that day the writing of Pierre Firmin in "Le Sens Commun," though
still keeping within the pale of the law, became more decidedly hostile
to the Imperial system, still without committing their author to any
definite programme of the sort of government that should succeed it.

CHAPTER IV.

The weeks glided on. Isaura's manuscript bad passed into print; it came
out in the French fashion of feuilletons,--a small detachment at a time.
A previous flourish of trumpets by Savarin and the clique at his command
insured it attention, if not from the general public, at least from
critical and literary coteries. Before the fourth instalment appeared
it had outgrown the patronage of the coteries; it seized hold of the
public. It was not in the last school in fashion; incidents were not
crowded and violent,--they were few and simple, rather appertaining
to an elder school, in which poetry of sentiment and grace of diction
prevailed. That very resemblance to old favourites gave it the
attraction of novelty. In a word, it excited a pleased admiration, and
great curiosity was felt as to the authorship. When it oozed out that it
was by the young lady whose future success in the musical world had
been so sanguinely predicted by all who had heard her sing, the interest
wonderfully increased. Petitions to be introduced to her acquaintance
were showered upon Savarin. Before she scarcely realized her dawning
fame, she was drawn from her quiet home and retired habits; she was
fetee and courted in the literary circle of which Savarin was a chief.
That circle touched, on one side, Bohemia; on the other, that realm of
politer fashion which, in every intellectual metropolis, but especially
in Paris, seeks to gain borrowed light from luminaries in art and
letters. But the very admiration she obtained somewhat depressed,
somewhat troubled her; after all, it did not differ from that which was
at her command as a singer.

O