e
certain of it, many hundreds have been refused." In America we hear of
refusals to go to balls, but we have not yet reached the pass of sending
refusals to invite! "Do you see Mademoiselle ----, dancing in the set
before you?" She pointed to a beautiful French girl, whom I had often
seen at her house, but whose family was in a much lower station in
society than herself, "Certainly--pray how came she here?" "I brought
her. Her mother was dying to come, too, and she begged me to get an
invitation for her and her daughter; but it would not do to bring the
mother to such a place, and I was obliged to say no more tickets could
be issued. I wished, however, to bring the daughter, she is so
pretty, and we compromised the affair in that way." "And to this the
mother assented!" "Assented! How can you doubt it--what funny American
notions you have brought with you to France!"

I got some droll anecdotes from my companion, concerning the ingredients
of the company on this occasion, for she could be as sarcastic as she
was elegant. A young woman near us attracted attention by a loud and
vulgar manner of laughing. "Do you know that lady?" demanded my
neighbour. "I have seen her before, but scarcely know her name." "She is
the daughter of your acquaintance, the Marquise de ----." "Then she is,
or was, a Mademoiselle de ----." "She is not, nor properly ever was, a
Mademoiselle de ----. In the revolution the Marquis was imprisoned by
you wicked republicans, and the Marquise fled to England, whence she
returned, after an absence of three years, bringing with her this young
lady, then an infant a few months old." "And Monsieur le Marquis?" "He
never saw his daughter, having been beheaded in Paris, about a year
before her birth." "_Quelle contretems_!" "_N'est-ce pas_?"

It is a melancholy admission, but it is no less true, that good breeding
is sometimes quite as active a virtue as good principles. How many more
of the company present were born about a year after their fathers were
beheaded, I have no means of knowing; but had it been the case with all
of them, the company would have been of as elegant demeanour, and of
much more _retenue_ of deportment, than we are accustomed to see, I will
not say in _good_, but certainly in _general_ society at home. One of
the consequences of good breeding is also a disinclination, positively a
distaste, to pry into the private affairs of others. The little specimen
to the contrary just named was