gether men who seldom meet so familiarly
elsewhere--men of all callings; a club especially favoured by wits,
authors, and the flaneurs of polite society.

Graham shook his head, about to refuse, when Bevil added, "I have just
come from Paris, and can give you the last news, literary, political,
and social. By the way, I saw Savarin the other night at the
Cicogna's--he introduced me there." Graham winced; he was spelled by the
music of a name, and followed his acquaintance into the crowded room,
and, after returning many greetings and nods, withdrew into a remote
corner, and motioned Bevil to a seat beside him.

"So you met Savarin? Where, did you say?"

"At the house of the new lady-author--I hate the word
authoress--Mademoiselle Cicogna! Of course you have read her book?"

"Yes."

"Full of fine things, is it not?--though somewhat highflown and
sentimental: however, nothing succeeds like success. No book has been
more talked about at Paris: the only thing more talked about is the
lady-author herself."

"Indeed, and how?"

"She doesn't look twenty, a mere girl--of that kind of beauty which
so arrests the eye that you pass by other faces to gaze on it, and the
dullest stranger would ask, 'Who, and what is she?' A girl, I say, like
that--who lives as independently as if she were a middle-aged widow,
receives every week (she has her Thursdays), with no other chaperon than
an old ci-devant Italian singing woman, dressed like a guy--must set
Parisian tongues into play even if she had not written the crack book of
the season."

"Mademoiselle Cicogna receives on Thursdays,--no harm in that; and if
she have no other chaperon than the Italian lady you mention, it is
because Mademoiselle Cicogna is an orphan, and having a fortune, such as
it is, of her own, I do not see why she should not live as independently
as many an unmarried woman in London placed under similar circumstances.
I suppose she receives chiefly persons in the literary or artistic
world, and if they are all as respectable as the Savarins, I do not
think ill-nature itself could find fault with her social circle."

"Ah! you know the Cicogna, I presume. I am sure I did not wish to say
anything that could offend her best friends, only I do think it is a
pity she is not married, poor girl!"

"Mademoiselle Cicogna, accomplished, beautiful, of good birth (the
Cicogna's rank among the oldest of Lombard families), is not likely to
want offers."

"Offers of m