welcome; it is some days since I saw you."

"I have numbered them, I assure you, Madame," said I, "and they have
crept with a dull pace; but you know that business has claims as well as
pleasure!"

"True!" said Madame de Balzac, pompously: "I myself find the weight of
politics a little insupportable, though so used to it; to your young
brain I can readily imagine how irksome it must be!"

"Would, Madame, that I could obtain your experience by contagion; as
it is, I fear that I have profited little by my visit to his Majesty.
Madame de Maintenon will not see me, and the Bishop of Frejus (excellent
man!) has been seized with a sudden paralysis of memory whenever I
present myself in his way."

"That party will never do,--I thought not," said Madame de Balzae, who
was a wonderful imitator of the fly on the wheel; "_my_ celebrity, and
the knowledge that _I_ loved you for your father's sake, were, I fear,
sufficient to destroy your interest with the Jesuits and their tools.
Well, well, we must repair the mischief we have occasioned you. What
place would suit you best?"

"Why, anything diplomatic. I would rather travel, at my age, than remain
in luxury and indolence even at Paris!"

"Ah, nothing like diplomacy!" said Madame de Balzac, with the air of a
Richelieu, and emptying her snuff-box at a pinch; "but have you, my son,
the requisite qualities for that science, as well as the tastes? Are
you capable of intrigue? Can you say one thing and mean another? Are you
aware of the immense consequence of a look or a bow? Can you live like
a spider, in the centre of an inexplicable net--inexplicable as well as
dangerous--to all but the weaver? That, my son, is the art of politics;
that is to be a diplomatist!"

"Perhaps, to one less penetrating than Madame de Balzac," answered I, "I
might, upon trial, not appear utterly ignorant of the noble art of state
duplicity which she has so eloquently depicted."

"Possibly!" said the good lady; "it must indeed be a profound
dissimulator to deceive _me_."

"But what would you advise me to do in the present crisis? What party to
adopt, what individual to flatter?"

Nothing, I already discovered and have already observed, did the
inestimable Madame de Balzac dislike more than a downright question: she
never answered it.

"Why, really," said she, preparing herself for a long speech, "I am
quite glad you consult me, and I will give you the best advice in my
power. _Ecoutez donc_; you