eant to say that in certain places
the title of a Vicomte has still a more powerful attraction than you,
with your artistic but plebeian ideas, would suppose in this year of our
Lord 1832."

"Well and good. I accept your apology."

"A vicomte's title is a recommendation in the eyes of people who still
cling to the baubles of nobility, and all women are of this class. There
is something, I know not what, delicate and knightly in this title, which
suits a youngish bachelor. Duke above all titles is the one that sounds
the best. Moliere and Regnard have done great harm to the title of
marquis. Count is terribly bourgeois, thanks to the senators of the
empire. As to a Baron, unless he is called Montmorency or Beaufremont, it
is the lowest grade of nobility; vicomte, on the contrary, is above
reproach; it exhales a mixed odor of the old regime and young France;
then, don't you know, our Chateaubriand was a vicomte.

"I departed from my subject in speaking of nobility. I accidentally
turned over one day to the article upon my family in the Dictionnaire de
Saint-Allais; I found that one of my ancestors, Christophe de Gerfaut,
married, in 1569, a Mademoiselle Yolande de Corandeuil.

"'O my ancestor! O my ancestress!' I exclaimed, 'you had strange
baptismal names; but no matter, I thank you. You are going to serve me as
a grappling iron; I shall be very unskilful if at the very first meeting
the old aunt escapes Christophe.'

"A few days later I went to the Marquise de Chameillan's, one of the most
exclusive houses in the noble Faubourg. When I enter her drawing-room, I
usually cause the same sensation that Beelzebub would doubtless produce
should he put his foot into one of the drawing-rooms in Paradise. That
evening, when I was announced, I saw a certain undulation of heads in a
group of young women who were whispering to one another; many curious
eyes were fastened upon me, and among these beautiful eyes were two more
beautiful than all the others: they were those of my bewitching
traveller.

"I exchanged a rapid glance with her, one only; after paying my respects
to the mistress of the house, I mingled with a crowd of men, and entered
into conversation with an old peer upon some political question, avoiding
to look again toward Madame de Bergenheim.

"A moment later, Madame de Chameillan came to ask the peer to play whist;
he excused himself, he could not remain late.

"'I dare not ask you to play with Mademoiselle