m
men to women. In the time of Miss Bronte, absolute
rudeness. Is it true, mesdames, that you like rudeness, and
are pleased at being ill-used by men? I could point to more
than one lady novelist who so represents you.

Other people may not much like this extract, madam, from your favorite
novel, but when you come to read it, YOU will like it. I suspect that
when you read that book which you so love, you read it a deux. Did
you not yourself pass a winter at Bath, when you were the belle of the
assembly? Was there not a Lord Orville in your case too? As you think
of him eleven lustres pass away. You look at him with the bright eyes
of those days, and your hero stands before you, the brave, the
accomplished, the simple, the true gentleman; and he makes the most
elegant of bows to one of the most beautiful young women the world
ever saw; and he leads you out to the cotillon, to the dear unforgotten
music. Hark to the horns of Elfand, blowing, blowing! Bonne vieille, you
remember their melody, and your heart-strings thrill with it still.

Of your heroic heroes, I think our friend Monseigneur Athos, Count de la
Fere, is my favorite. I have read about him from sunrise to sunset with
the utmost contentment of mind. He has passed through how many volumes?
Forty? Fifty? I wish for my part there were a hundred more, and would
never tire of him reselling prisoners, punishing ruffians, and running
scoundrels through the midriff with his most graceful rapier. Ah,
Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, you are a magnificent trio. I think I like
d'Artagnan in his own memoirs best. I bought him years and years ago,
price fivepence, in a little parchment-covered Cologne-printed volume,
at a stall in Gray's Inn Lane. Dumas glorifies him and makes a Marshal
of him; if I remember rightly, the original d'Artagnan was a needy
adventurer, who died in exile very early in Louis XIV.'s reign. Did you
ever read the "Chevalier d'Harmenthal?" Did you ever read the "Tulipe
Noire," as modest as a story by Miss Edgeworth? I think of the prodigal
banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and
wonder. To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me!
Where does he find the money for these prodigious feasts? They say that
all the works bearing Dumas's name are not written by him. Well? Does
not the chief cook have aides under him? Did not Rubens's pupils paint
on his canvases? Had not Lawrence assistant