, whatever that enchanting metropolis could afford.

I have hitherto said but little of the Duchesse de Perpignan; I think
it necessary now to give some account of that personage. Ever since
the evening I had met her at the ambassador's, I had paid her the most
unceasing attentions. I soon discovered that she had a curious sort of
liaison with one of the attaches--a short, ill-made gentleman, with high
shoulders, and a pale face, who wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat,
wrote bad verses, and thought himself handsome. All Paris said she was
excessively enamoured of this youth. As for me, I had not known her four
days before I discovered that she could not be excessively enamoured of
any thing but an oyster pete and Lord Byron's Corsair. Her mind was the
most marvellous melange of sentiment and its opposite. In her amours she
was Lucretia herself; in her epicurism, Apicius would have yielded to
her. She was pleased with sighs, but she adored suppers. She would
leave every thing for her lover, except her dinner. The attache soon
quarrelled with her, and I was installed into the platonic honours of
his office.

At first, I own that I was flattered by her choice, and though she
was terribly exigeante of my petits soins, I managed to keep up her
affection, and, what is still more wonderful, my own, for the better
part of a month. What then cooled me was the following occurrence:

I was in her boudoir one evening, when her femme de chambre came to tell
us that the duc was in the passage. Notwithstanding the innocence of our
attachment, the duchesse was in a violent fright; a small door was at
the left of the ottoman, on which we were sitting. "Oh, no, no, not
there," cried the lady; but I, who saw no other refuge, entered it
forthwith, and before she could ferret me out, the duc was in the room.

In the meanwhile, I amused myself by examining the wonders of the new
world into which I had so abruptly immerged: on a small table before
me, was deposited a remarkably constructed night-cap; I examined it as
a curiosity: on each side was placed une petite cotelette de veau
cru, sewed on with green-coloured silk (I remember even the smallest
minutiae), a beautiful golden wig (the duchesse never liked me to play
with her hair) was on a block close by, and on another table was a set
of teeth, d'une blancheur eblouissante. In this manufactory of a beauty
I remained for a quarter of an hour; at the end of that time, the
abigail (the d