Salon des
Assauts d'Armes; and if I made love to the duchess herself it was sure
to be in a position I had been a whole week in acquiring from my master
of the graces; in short, I took the greatest pains to complete my
education. I wish all young men who frequented the Continent for that
purpose, could say the same.

One day (about a week after the conversation with Vincent, recorded
in my last CHAPTER) I was walking slowly along one of the paths in the
Jardin des Plantes, meditating upon the various excellencies of the
Rocher de Cancale and the Duchesse de Perpignan, when I perceived a tall
man, with a thick, rough coat, of a dark colour (which I recognized long
before I did the face of the wearer) emerging from an intersecting path.
He stopped for a few moments, and looked round as if expecting some one.
Presently a woman, apparently about thirty, and meanly dressed, appeared
in an opposite direction. She approached him; they exchanged a few
words, and then, the woman taking his arm, they struck into another
path, and were soon out of sight. I suppose that the reader has already
discovered that this man was Thornton's companion in the Bois de
Boulogne, and the hero of the Salon de Jeu, in the Palais Royal. I could
not have supposed that so noble a countenance, even in its frowns, could
ever have wasted its smiles upon a mistress of that low station to which
the woman who had met him evidently belonged. However, we all have our
little foibles, as the Frenchman said, when he boiled his grandmother's
head in a pipkin.

I myself was, at that time, the sort of person that is always taken by
a pretty face, however coarse may be the garments which set it off; and
although I cannot say that I ever stooped so far as to become amorous of
a chambermaid, yet I could be tolerably lenient to any man under thirty
who did. As a proof of this gentleness of disposition, ten minutes after
I had witnessed so unsuitable a rencontre, I found myself following a
pretty little bourgeoise into a small sort of cabaret, which was, at
the time I speak of (and most probably still is), in the midst of the
gardens. I sat down, and called for my favourite drink of lemonade; the
little grisette, who was with an old woman, possibly her mother, and un
beau gros garcon, probably her lover, sat opposite, and began, with all
the ineffable coquetries of her country, to divide her attention between
the said garcon and myself. Poor fellow, he seemed to be ve