and to which he seemed predestined.

The fair lady--with a wax doll's beauty, not very young, confining
herself to George Sand in literature, making three toilettes a day, and
having a large account at the dentist's--singled out the young poet with
a romantic head, and rapidly traversed with him the whole route through
the country of Love. Thanks to modern progress, the voyage is now made by
a through train. After passing the smaller stations, "blushing behind the
fan," a "significant pressure of the hand," "appointment in a museum,"
etc., and halting at a station of very little importance called
"scruples" (ten minutes' pause), Amedee reached the terminus of the line
and was the most enviable of mortals. He became Madame's lapdog, the
essential ornament in her drawing-room, figured at all the dinners,
balls, and routs where she appeared, stifled his yawns at the back of her
box at the Opera, and received the confidential mission of going to hunt
for sweetmeats and chocolates in the foyer. His recompense consisted in
metaphysical conversations and sentimental seances, in which he was not
long in discovering that his heart was blinded by his emotions. At the
end of a few months of this commonplace happiness, the rupture took place
without any regrets on either side, and Amedee returned, without a pang,
the love-tokens he had received, namely: a photograph, a package of
letters in imitation of fashionable romances, written in long, angular
handwriting, after the English style, upon very chic paper; and, we must
not forget, a white glove which was a little yellowed from confinement in
the casket, like the beautiful Madame herself.

A tall girl, with a body like a goddess, who earned three hundred francs
a month by showing her costumes on the Vaudeville stage, and who gave one
louis a day to her hairdresser, gave Amedee a new experience in love,
more expensive, but much more amusing than the first. There were no more
psychological subtleties or hazy consciences; but she had fine, strong
limbs and the majestic carriage of a cardinal's mistress going through
the Rue de Constance in heavy brocade garments, to see Jean Huss burned;
and her voluptuous smile showed teeth made to devour patrimonies.
Unfortunately, Mademoiselle Rose de Juin's--that was the young lady's
theatrical name--charming head was full of the foolishness and vanity of
a poor actress. Her attacks of rage when she read an article in the
journals which cut her