he back way, for, in
spite of her victory, she still felt a little sorry for poor Fanchon.

CHAPTER IV. "But Spare Your Country's Flag"

If it be true that love is the great incentive to the useless arts, the
number of gentlemen who became poets for the sake of Miss Betty Carewe
need not be considered extraordinary. Of all that was written of her
dancing, Tom Vanrevel's lines, "I Danced with Her beneath the Lights"
(which he certainly had not done when he wrote them) were, perhaps, next
to Crailey Gray's in merit, though Tom burned his rhymes after reading
them to Crailey. Other troubadours were not so modest, and the Rouen
Journal found no lack of tuneful offering, that spring, generously
print-ing all of it, even at the period when it became epidemic. The
public had little difficulty in recognizing the work of Mr. Francis
Chenoweth in an anonymous "Sonnet" (of twenty-three lines) which
appeared in the issue following Miss Carewe's debut. Mr. Chenoweth
wrote that while dancing the mazourka with a Lovely Being, the sweetest
feelings of his soul, in a celestial stream, bore him away beyond
control, in a seraphic dream; and he untruthfully stated that at the
same time he saw her wipe the silent tear, omitting, however, to venture
any explanation of the cause of her emotion. Old General Trumble
boldly signed his poem in full. It was called "An Ode upon Miss C--'s
Waltzing," and it began:

"When Bettina found fair Rouen's shore, And her aged father to us bore
Her from the cloister neat, She waltzed upon the ball-room floor, And
lightly twirled upon her feet."

Mr. Carewe was rightfully indignant, and refused to acknowledge the
General's salutation at their next meeting: Trumble was fifteen years
older than he.

As Crailey Gray never danced with Miss Carewe, it is somewhat singular
that she should have been the inspiration of his swinging verses in
waltz measure, "Heart-strings on a Violin," the sense of which was
that when a violin had played for her dancing, the instrument should
be shattered as wine-glasses are after a great toast. However, no one,
except the author himself, knew that Betty was the subject; for Crailey
certainly did not mention it to Miss Bareaud, nor to his best friend,
Vanrevel.

It was to some degree a strange comradeship between these two young men;
their tastes led them so often in opposite directions. They had rooms
to-gether over their offices in the "Madrillon Block" on Main Street,
an