s addition of so much capital, and the pretty
little matrimonial arrangement is concluded (the agent touching his
percentage), or broken off, and nobody unhappy, and the world none the
wiser. The consequences of the system I do not pretend personally
to know; but if the light literature of a country is a reflex of its
manners, and French novels are a picture of French life, a pretty
society must that be into the midst of which the London reader may walk
in twelve hours from this time of perusal, and from which only twenty
miles of sea separate us.

When the old Duke d'Ivry, of the ancient ancient nobility of France, an
emigrant with Artois, a warrior with Conde, an exile during the reign
of the Corsican usurper, a grand prince, a great nobleman
afterwards, though shorn of nineteen-twentieths of his wealth by the
Revolution,--when the Duke d'Ivry lost his two sons, and his son's son
likewise died, as if fate had determined to end the direct line of that
noble house, which had furnished queens to Europe, and renowned chiefs
to the Crusaders--being of an intrepid spirit, the Duke was ill disposed
to yield to his redoubtable energy, in spite of the cruel blows which
the latter had inflicted upon him, and when he was more than sixty years
of age, three months before the July Revolution broke out, a young lady
of a sufficient nobility, a virgin of sixteen, was brought out of the
convent of the Sacre Coeur at Paris, and married with immense splendour
and ceremony to this princely widower. The most august names signed the
book of the civil marriage. Madame la Dauphine and Madame la Duchesse de
Berri complimented the young bride with royal favours. Her portrait by
Dubufe was in the Exhibition next year, a charming young duchess indeed,
with black eyes, and black ringlets, pearls on her neck, and diamonds in
her hair, as beautiful as a princess of a fairy tale. M. d'Ivry, whose
early life may have been rather oragious, was yet a gentleman perfectly
well conserved. Resolute against fate his enemy (one would fancy fate
was of an aristocratic turn, and took especial delight in combats with
princely houses; the Atridae, the Borbonidae, the Ivrys,--the Browns
and Joneses being of no account), the prince seemed to be determined not
only to secure a progeny, but to defy age. At sixty he was still young,
or seemed to be so. His hair was as black as the princess's own, his
teeth as white. If you saw him on the Boulevard de Gand, sunning am