, with somewhat slighter
proportions. But how well such a slender and delicate figure accords
with youth, when an olive complexion, heavy eyebrows, and the gleam of
a velvety eye promise virile passions, noble ideas for the future! If
Filippo remained in the hearts of young women as a type of manly beauty,
he likewise remained in the memory of all mothers as the best match in
France.

The beauty, the great wealth, the intellectual qualities, of these
two children came entirely from their mother. The Comte de Lanty was a
short, thin, ugly little man, as dismal as a Spaniard, as great a bore
as a banker. He was looked upon, however, as a profound politician,
perhaps because he rarely laughed, and was always quoting M. de
Metternich or Wellington.

This mysterious family had all the attractiveness of a poem by Lord
Byron, whose difficult passages were translated differently by each
person in fashionable society; a poem that grew more obscure and more
sublime from strophe to strophe. The reserve which Monsieur and Madame
de Lanty maintained concerning their origin, their past lives, and their
relations with the four quarters of the globe would not, of itself, have
been for long a subject of wonderment in Paris. In no other country,
perhaps, is Vespasian's maxim more thoroughly understood. Here gold
pieces, even when stained with blood or mud, betray nothing, and
represent everything. Provided that good society knows the amount of
your fortune, you are classed among those figures which equal yours, and
no one asks to see your credentials, because everybody knows how little
they cost. In a city where social problems are solved by algebraic
equations, adventurers have many chances in their favor. Even if this
family were of gypsy extraction, it was so wealthy, so attractive, that
fashionable society could well afford to overlook its little mysteries.
But, unfortunately, the enigmatical history of the Lanty family offered
a perpetual subject of curiosity, not unlike that aroused by the novels
of Anne Radcliffe.

People of an observing turn, of the sort who are bent upon finding out
where you buy your candelabra, or who ask you what rent you pay when
they are pleased with your apartments, had noticed, from time to time,
the appearance of an extraordinary personage at the fetes, concerts,
balls, and routs given by the countess. It was a man. The first time
that he was seen in the house was at a concert, when he seemed to have