ke the liberty of bringing a dozen friends with me. I shall furnish
everything, even the guests. But do not be alarmed; you know them all;
they are mutual friends, and this evening we shall be able to judge of
the merits of your cook."

The first Parisian who had the honor and pleasure of paying homage to the
beauty of Mrs. Scott and Miss Percival was a little Marmiton fifteen
years old, who stood there in his white clothes, his wicker basket on his
head, at the moment when Mrs. Scott's carriage, entangled in the
multitude of vehicles, slowly worked its way out of the station. The
little cook stopped short on the pavement, opened wide his eyes, looked
at the two sisters with amazement, and boldly cast full in their faces
the single word:

"Mazette!"

When Madame Recamier saw her first wrinkles, and first gray hairs, she
said to a friend:

"Ah! my dear, there are no more illusions left for me! From the day when
I saw that the little chimney-sweeps no longer turned round in the street
to look at me, I understood that all was over."

The opinion of the confectioners' boys is, in similar cases, of equal
value with the opinion of the little chimney-sweeps. All was not over for
Susie and Bettina; on the contrary, all was only beginning.

Five minutes later, Mrs. Scott's carriage was ascending the Boulevard
Haussmann to the slow and measured trot of a pair of admirable horses.
Paris counted two Parisians the more.

The success of Mrs. Scott and Miss Percival was immediate, decisive, like
a flash of lightning. The beauties of Paris are not classed and
catalogued like the beauties of London; they do not publish their
portraits in the illustrated papers, or allow their photographs to be
sold at the stationers. However, there is always a little staff,
consisting of a score of women, who represent the grace, and charm, and
beauty of Paris, which women, after ten or twelve years' service, pass
into the reserve, just like the old generals. Susie and Bettina
immediately became part of this little staff. It was an affair of
four-and-twenty hours--of less than four-and-twenty hours, for all passed
between eight in the morning and midnight, the day after their arrival in
Paris.

Imagine a sort of little 'feerie', in three acts, of which the success
increases from tableau to tableau:

1st. A ride at ten in the morning in the Bois, with the two marvellous
grooms imported from America.

2d. A walk at six o'clock in the Allee de