on, but nowhere was truth, or sincerity, or real pleasure.
All things were perverted. Constancy was only to be found in
inconstancy. Gossip and rumor left no frailty undiscovered, no
reputation unsmirched. Religion was scoffed at, love was caricatured.
All about him Calvert saw young nobles, each the slave of some
particular goddess, bowing down and doing duty like the humblest menial,
now caressed, now ill-treated, but always at beck and call, always
obedient. It was the fashion, and no courtier resented this treatment,
which served both to reduce the men to the rank of puppets and to render
incredibly capricious the beauties who found themselves so powerful. All
the virility of Calvert's nature, all his new-world independence and his
sense of honor, was revolted by such a state of things. As he looked
around the company, there was not a man or woman to be seen of whom he
had not already heard some risque story or covert insinuation, and,
though he was no strait-laced Puritan, a sort of disdain for these
effeminate courtiers and a horror of these beautiful women took
possession of him.

"Decidedly," he thought to himself, "I am not fitted for this society,"
and so, somewhat out of conceit with his surroundings, and the Duchess
having withdrawn, he bade good-night to the company without waiting for
Mr. Morris, and took himself and his disturbed thoughts back to the
Legation.

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH MR. CALVERT'S GOOD INTENTIONS MISCARRY

It was in the midst of such society that Calvert encountered Madame de
St. Andre repeatedly during the remainder of the winter and early
spring. And though she was as imperious and capricious as possible,
followed about by a dozen admirers (of whom poor Beaufort was one of the
most constant); though she was as thoughtless, as pleasure-loving as any
of that thoughtless, pleasure-loving society in which she moved; though
she had a hundred faults easy to be seen, yet, in Calvert's opinion,
there was still a saving grace about her, a fragrant youthfulness, a
purity and splendor that coarsened and cheapened all who were brought
into comparison with her. When she sat beside the old Duchesse d'Azay at
the Opera or Comedie, he had no eyes for la Saint-Huberti or Contat, and
thought that she outshone all the beauties both on the stage and in the
brilliant audience. Usually, however, he was content to admire her at a
distance and rarely left the box which he occupied with Mr. Jefferson