he
produces, who never is conscious of unspoken admiration, what a monster,
I say, would such a female be! Miss Hopkins, you have been a coquette
since you were a year old; you worked on your papa's friends in the
nurse's arms by the fascination of your lace frock and pretty new sash
and shoes; when you could just toddle, you practised your arts upon
other children in the square, poor little lambkins sporting among the
daisies; and nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones, proceeding
from the lambs to reluctant dragoons, you tried your arts upon Captain
Paget Tomkins, who behaved so ill, and went to India without--without
making those proposals which of course you never expected. Your intimacy
was with Emma. It has cooled. Your sets are different. The Tomkins's are
not quite etc. etc. You believe Captain Tomkins married a Miss O'Grady,
etc. etc. Ah, my pretty, my sprightly Miss Hopkins, be gentle in your
judgment of your neighbours!

CHAPTER XLVII. Contains two or three Acts of a Little Comedy

All this story is told by one, who, if he was not actually present at
the circumstances here narrated, yet had information concerning them,
and could supply such a narrative of facts and conversations as is,
indeed, not less authentic than the details we have of other histories.
How can I tell the feelings in a young lady's mind; the thoughts in a
young gentleman's bosom?--As Professor Owen or Professor Agassiz takes a
fragment of a bone, and builds an enormous forgotten monster out of it,
wallowing in primeval quagmires, tearing down leaves and branches of
plants that flourished thousands of years ago, and perhaps may be coal
by this time--so the novelist puts this and that together: from the
footprint finds the foot; from the foot, the brute who trod on it; from
the brute, the plant he browsed on, the marsh in which he swam--and
thus in his humble way a physiologist too, depicts the habits, size,
appearance of the beings whereof he has to treat;--traces this slimy
reptile through the mud, and describes his habits filthy and rapacious;
prods down this butterfly with a pin, and depicts his beautiful coat and
embroidered waistcoat; points out the singular structure of yonder more
important animal, the megatherium of his history.

Suppose then, in the quaint old garden of the Hotel de Florac, two young
people are walking up and down in an avenue of lime-trees, which are
still permitted to grow in that ancient place. In