space, the human heart has no wings to
flee. In life, the mind and the circumstance give the true seasons, and
regulate the darkness and the light. Of two men standing on the same
foot of earth, the one revels in the joyous noon, the other shudders
in the solitude of night. For Hope and Fortune, the day-star is ever
shining. For Care and Penury, Night changes not with the ticking of the
clock, nor with the shadow on the dial. Morning for the heir, night for
the houseless, and God's eye over both.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

"The knight of arts and industry,
And his achievements fair."
THOMSON'S Castle of Indolence: Explanatory Verse to Canto II.

In a popular and respectable, but not very fashionable quartier in
Paris, and in the tolerably broad and effective locale of the Rue ----,
there might be seen, at the time I now treat of, a curious-looking
building, that jutted out semicircularly from the neighbouring shops,
with plaster pilasters and compo ornaments. The virtuosi of the quartier
had discovered that the building was constructed in imitation of an
ancient temple in Rome; this erection, then fresh and new, reached only
to the entresol. The pilasters were painted light green and gilded
in the cornices, while, surmounting the architrave, were three little
statues--one held a torch, another a bow, and a third a bag; they were
therefore rumoured, I know not with what justice, to be the artistical
representatives of Hymen, Cupid and Fortune.

On the door was neatly engraved, on a brass plate, the following
inscription:

"MONSIEUR LOVE, ANGLAIS,
A L'ENTRESOL."

And if you had crossed the threshold and mounted the stairs, and gained
that mysterious story inhabited by Monsieur Love, you would have seen,
upon another door to the right, another epigraph, informing those
interested in the inquiry that the bureau, of M. Love was open daily
from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon.

The office of M. Love--for office it was, and of a nature not
unfrequently designated in the "petites affiches" of Paris--had been
established about six months; and whether it was the popularity of the
profession, or the shape of the shop, or the manners of M. Love himself,
I cannot pretend to say, but certain it is that the Temple of Hymen--as
M. Love classically termed it--had become exceedingly in vogue in the
Faubourg St.--. It was rumoured that no less than nine marriages in