leau, of students and grisettes, opera-dancers, authors, viscounts, swindlers, romantic Lorettes, gamblers on the Bourse, whose pedigree dates from the Crusades; imposters, taking titles from villages in which their grandsires might have been saddlers; and if detected, the detection but a matter of laugh; delicate women living like lawless men; men making trade out of love, like dissolute women, yet with point of honor so nice, that, doubt their truth or their courage, and—piff! you are in Charon's boat, humanity in every civilized land may present single specimens, more or less, answering to each thus described. But where, save in France, find them all, if not precisely in the same salons, yet so crossing each other to and fro, as to constitute a social phase, and give color to a literature of unquestionable genius? And where, over orgies so miscellaneously Berycinthian, an atmosphere so elegantly Horatian? And where can coarseness so vanish into polished expression as in that diamond-like language—all terseness and sparkle—which, as friendly to Wit in its airiest prose, as hostile to Passion in its torrent or cloud wrack of poetry, seems invented by the Grace out of spite to the Muse?
Into circles such as those of which the dim outline is here so imperfectly sketched, Jasper Losely niched himself, as le bel Anglais. (Pleasant representative of the English nation!) Not that those circles are to have the sole credit of his corruption. No! Justice is justice! Stand we up for our native land! Le bel Anglais entered those circles a much greater knave than most of those whom he found there. But there, at least, he learned to set a yet higher value on his youth, and strength, and comeliness—on his readiness of resource—on the reckless audacity that brow-beat timid and some even valiant men—on the six feet one of faultless symmetry that captivated foolish, and some even sensible women. Gaming was, however, his vice by predilection. A month before Arabella met him he had had a rare run of luck. On the strength of it he had resolved to return to London, and (wholly oblivious of "the best of creatures" till she had thus startled him) hunt out and swoop off with an heiress. Three French friends accompanied him. Each had the same object. Each believed that London swarmed with heiresses. They were all three fine-looking men. One was a Count—at least he said so. But proud of his rank? not a bit of it: all for liberty (no man more likely to lose it)—all for fraternity (no man you would less love as a brother). And as for égalitè! the son of a shoemaker who was homme de lettres, and wrote in a journal, inserted a jest on the Count's countship. "All men are equal before the pistol," said the Count; and knowing that,
