ng, intriguing schemer of politics without the slightest talent
for the science.

"Like Paris!" said I, answering only the last question, and that not
with the most scrupulous regard to truth. "Can Madame de Balzac think
of Paris, and not conceive the transport which must inspire a person
entering it for the first time? But I had something more endearing than
a stranger's interest to attach me to it: I longed to express to my
father's friend my gratitude for the interest which I venture to believe
she on one occasion manifested towards me."

"Ah! you mean my caution to you against that terrible De Montreuil. Yes,
I trust I was of service to you _there_."

And Madame de Balzac then proceeded to favour me with the whole history
of the manner in which she had obtained the letter she had sent me,
accompanied by a thousand anathemas against those _atroces Jesuites_ and
a thousand eulogies on her own genius and virtues. I brought her from
this subject so interesting to herself, as soon as decorum would allow
me; and I then made inquiry if she knew aught of Oswald or could suggest
any mode of obtaining intelligence respecting him. Madame de Balzac
hated plain, blunt, blank questions, and she always travelled through
a wilderness of parentheses before she answered them. But at last I did
ascertain her answer, and found it utterly unsatisfactory. She had never
seen nor heard anything of Oswald since he had left her charged with her
commission to me. I then questioned her respecting the character of the
man, and found Mr. Marie Oswald had little to plume himself upon in that
respect. He seemed, however, from her account of him, to be more a rogue
than a villain; and from two or three stories of his cowardice, which
Madame de Balzac related, he appeared to me utterly incapable of a
design so daring and systematic as that of which it pleased all persons
who troubled themselves about my affairs to suspect him.

Finding at last that no further information was to be gained on this
point, I turned the conversation to Montreuil. I found, from Madame de
Balzac's very abuse of him, that he enjoyed a great reputation in the
country and a great favour at court. He had been early befriended by
Father la Chaise, and he was now especially trusted and esteemed by the
successor of that Jesuit Le Tellier,--Le Tellier, that rigid and bigoted
servant of Loyola, the sovereign of the king himself, the destroyer of
the Port Royal, and the mock and