and you may kill all the game you can find. At
present we want a cavalier for our expedition: there is Madame
d'Arlincourt, and Madame de Tourzel, and the Duchesse de Vauvilliers,
and Madame de Mirepoix there, on your right--why these ladies are all
here by themselves; they want a cavalier this very morning.
_Figurez-vous_, Monsieur!" and the lady turned towards me--"we want
somebody to come and find our ponies for us, and to take care of our
shawls, and to carry our books, and our stools, and positively, with the
exception of two officers who are at the other hotel, I do not know whom
to ask. We engage you, sir, for the whole of this very day: our
husbands"----

"I thought, Madame, that these ladies were all alone here."

"Ah!--our husbands, _ca va sans dire_!--but gentlemen of that kind do
nothing else than play billiards all the morning."

"It is only the young and the gallant," here interposed Madame de
Mirepoix "that dare to face our forests.--You shall teach us all some
English as we ride along: I could give any thing to master your
barbarous language:--you have only one musical word in it--_moonlight_."

Now, I know not what there was in the pronunciation of Madame de
Mirepoix, but though the word had never before entered into my
imagination as any thing but one of the most commonplace of our
vocabulary, there was a witchery in the sound as it flowed forth from
her swelling lips that riveted my attention, and set my imagination on
fire. 'Tis the same with French:--how refined and how mellow soever may
be the utterance of the most polished courtier of France, of the most
learned academician of the Institute, there is sometimes a rich pouting
sound, a sort of velvety and oily intonation, that distinguishes the
speech of the women of high birth such as I never heard in any other
country. It is not to be defined: but whoso has drunk in the golden
tones of such a syren, will know what I mean. Moonlight! yes, 'tis a
pleasing word, by its signification and its associated ideas, if not by
its own innate harmony: yes; I have learned the full influence and
sweetness of moonlight, whether in the summer woodland or in the wintry
cloister; true, there is both music and poetry, ay and something else,
in moonlight.

"I agree to the thing, Madame la Marquise, if not to the sound; nothing
could be more beautiful than the latter as you have pronounced it,
except the reality, amidst these mountains and these retired deep-gree