nt at the quickness with which Rachel had converted
the tickets into money. But what puzzled him still more was the fact of
her having offered Walewski double the quantity of tickets he had given
her. Where had she got the others from? He was coming to the conclusion
that she had offered twenty in order to place ten, when he ran against
Comte Le Hon, the husband of the celebrated Mdlle. Musselmans, the
erstwhile Belgian ambassador to the court of Louis-Philippe, who averred
frankly that he was the father of a family, though he had no children of
his own.

Taylor thought he would try another chance, and was met with the reply,
"Cher baron, I am very sorry, but I have just taken five tickets from
Mdlle. Rachel. It appears that she is a lady patroness, and that they
burdened her with two hundred; fortunately, she told me, people were
exceedingly anxious to get them, and these were the last five."

"Then she had two hundred tickets after all," said Baron Taylor to
himself, making up his mind to find out who had been before him with
Rachel. But no one had been before him. The five tickets sold to Comte
Le Hon were five of the ten she had sold to Comte Walewski. When the
latter had paid her, she made him give her five tickets for herself and
family, or rather for her four sisters and herself. Of Comte Le Hon she
only took toll of one, which, wonderful to relate, she did not sell.
This was Rachel's way of bestirring herself in the cause of charity.

"Look at the presents she made to every one," say the panegyrists. They
forget to mention that an hour afterwards she regretted her generosity,
and from that moment she never left off scheming how to get the thing
back. Every one knew this. Beauvallet, to whom she gave a magnificent
sword one day, instead of thanking her, said, "I'll have a chain put to
it, mademoiselle, so as to fasten it to the wall of my dressing-room. In
that way I shall be sure that it will not disappear during my absence."
Alexandre Dumas the younger, to whom she made a present of a ring, bowed
low and placed it back on her finger at once. "Allow me to present it to
you in my turn, mademoiselle, so as to prevent you asking for it." She
did not say nay, but carried the matter with one of her fascinating
smiles. "It is most natural to take back what one has given, because
what one has given was dear to us," she replied.

Between '46 and '53 I saw a great deal of Rachel, generally in the
green-room of the Com