picture the celestial dwelling
of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the
best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened Imperia
at the plate-glass window reviews an army of faultlessly-clad gentlemen
filing before her, and sweetly calls out:

"This, gentlemen, is the spot where you can be amused!"

Yes, Cesarine was intended to entertain men! She longed to be the
central figure in the scene, however brief, of that apotheosis where
Cupid is proclaimed superior to all the high interests of human
conscience; this glittering stage sufficed for her, although it would
have limited Felix's ideal of man's function.

In a struggle between duty and passion, she expected passion to
overcome, and she concurred beforehand with this troubadour who
protested that the gentler sex really held the under one in its
dependence.

Radiant with pleasure and farther delighted to recognize a well-known
face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give
him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight
with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second
thought! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a
viscount's rank in France, and his aunt, the marchioness, presented him
as the last of the Terremondes.

She had not expected to meet in this coterie a gentleman who patronized
the singers of a beer-hall, but the frock does not make the monk, and
Baron Gratian von Linden-Hohen-Linden, Viscount de Terremonde in France,
was of another species than the frequenters of Latour chateau.

From his income in both countries, he had the means to maintain what
would have been ruinous establishments; he had the racing stud which no
English peer would be ashamed of, a gallery of masterpieces acquired
from living painters, an unrivaled hot-house of orchids, wolf-hounds and
fox-hounds and other dogs, and the rumor went that the famous Caroline
Birchoffstein, in consideration of his being a fellow-countryman, was
more often seen in his box at the Grand Opera House than in her own.

The imperial court, also, not averse to being on good terms with South
Germany, since Prussia was supposed to be France's greatest opponent in
case Luxembourg were clutched, petted the Franco-Teuton, and regretted
that he was so pleasure-loving.

To continue her thraldom over him, Cesarine left not a word unsaid or a
glance undelivered. In this attack,