ame of mind, then, he had written to Savarin, and the answer
he received hardened it still more. Savarin had replied, as was his
laudable wont in correspondence, the very day he received Graham's
letter, and therefore before he had even seen Isaura. In his reply,
he spoke much of the success her work had obtained; of the invitations
showered upon her, and the sensation she caused in the salons; of her
future career, with hope that she might even rival Madame de Grantmesnil
some day, when her ideas became emboldened by maturer experience, and
a closer study of that model of eloquent style,--saying that the young
editor was evidently becoming enamoured of his fair contributor; and
that Madame Savarin had ventured the prediction that the Signorina's
roman would end in the death of the heroine, and the marriage of the
writer.

CHAPTER V.

And still the weeks glided on: autumn succeeded to summer, the winter
to autumn; the season of Paris was at its height. The wondrous capital
seemed to repay its Imperial embellisher by the splendour and the joy
of its fetes. But the smiles on the face of Paris were hypocritical
and hollow. The Empire itself had passed out of fashion. Grave men
and impartial observers felt anxious. Napoleon had renounced les ideas
Napoleoniennes. He was passing into the category of constitutional
sovereigns, and reigning, not by his old undivided prestige, but by the
grace of party. The press was free to circulate complaints as to the
past and demands as to the future, beneath which the present reeled,
ominous of earthquake. People asked themselves if it were possible that
the Empire could co-exist with forms of government not imperial, yet not
genuinely constitutional, with a majority daily yielding to a minority.
The basis of universal suffrage was sapped. About this time the articles
in the "Sens Commun" signed Pierre Firmin were creating not only
considerable sensation, but marked effect on opinion; and the sale of
the journal was immense.

Necessarily the repute and the position of Gustave Rameau, as the avowed
editor of this potent journal, rose with its success. Nor only his
repute and position; bank-notes of considerable value were transmitted
to him by the publisher, with the brief statement that they were sent by
the sole proprietor of the paper as the editor's fair share of profit.
The proprietor was never named, but Rameau took it for granted that it
was M. Lebeau. M. Lebeau he had neve