The beggar remained silent for a moment or two, and renewed his supplication.

-Do not, my fair young ladies, said he, stop your good ears against me. Upon my word, honest man! said the younger, we have no change. Then God bless you! said the poor man, and multiply those joys which you can give to others, without change!————I observed the elder sister put her hand into her pocket.

-I

-I'll see, said she, if I have a sous!A sous! give twelve, said the supplicant; Nature has been bountiful to you; be bountiful to a poor man.

-I would, friend, with all my heart, said the younger, if I had it.

-My fair charitable! said he, addressing himself to the elder,—what is it but your goodness and humanity which makes your bright eyes so sweet, that they outshine the morning, even in this dark passage! and what was it which made the Marquis de Santerre and his brother say so much of you both as they just passed by?

The two ladies seemed much affected; and impulsively at the same time they both put their hands into their pocket, and each took out a twelve-sous piece.

The contest betwixt them and the poor supplicant was no more, it was continued betwixt themselves, which of the two should give the twelve-sous piece in charity; and, to end the dispute, they both gave it together, and the man went away.

THE RIDDLE EXPLAINED.

PARIS.

I STEPPED hastily after him: it was the very man whose success in asking charity of the women before the door of the hotel had so puzzled me ;-and I found at once his secret, or at least the basis of it :-'twas flattery.

Delicious essence! how refreshing art thou to Nature! how strongly are all its powers and all its weaknesses on thy side! how sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the heart!

The poor man, as he was not straitened for time, had given it here in a larger dose : 'tis certain he had a way of bringing it into less form, for the many sudden cases he had to do with in the streets; but how he contrived to correct, sweeten, concentre, and qualify it,—I vex not my spirit with the inquiry;—it is enough, the beggar gained two twelve-sous pieces,—and they can best tell the rest who have gained much greater matters by it.

PARIS.

WE get forwards in the world, not so much by doing services as receiving them: you take a withering twig, and put it into the ground; and then you water it, because you have planted it.

Mons. le Count de B, merely because he had done me one kindness in the affair of my passport, would go on and do me another, the few days he was

at Paris, in making me known to a few people of rank; and they were to present me to others, and so on.

I had got master of my secret just in time to turn these honours to some little account; otherwise, as is commonly the case, I should have dined or supped a single time or two round; and then, by translating French looks and attitudes into plain English, I should presently have seen that I had got hold of the couvert of some more entertaining guest; and, in course, should have resigned all my places, one after another, merely upon the principle that I could not keep them.-As it was, things did not go much amiss.

*

I had the honour of being introduced to the old Marquis de B————. In days of yore he had signalised himself by some small feats of chivalry in the Cour d'Amour, and had dressed himself out to the idea of tilts and tournaments ever since.—The Marquis de B—— wished to have it thought the affair was somewhere else than in his brain. "He could like to take a trip to England:" and asked much of the English ladies.- -Stay where you are, I beseech you, Mons. le Marquis, said I.—Les Messieurs Anglois can scarce get a kind look from them as it is. The Marquis invited me to supper.

Mons. P―, the farmer-general, was just as inquisitive about our taxes.-They were very considerable, he heard.- -If we knew but how to collect them, said I, making him a low bow.

I could never have been invited to Mons. P's concerts upon any other terms.

* Plate, napkin, knife, fork, and spoon,

I had been misrepresented to Madame de Q— as an esprit.-Madame de Q was an esprit herself: she burnt with impatience to see me, and hear me talk. I had not taken my seat, before I saw she did not care a sous whether I had any wit or no-I was let in to be convinced she had.-I call Heaven to witness I never once opened the door of my lips.

Madame de Qvowed to every creature she met, -"She had never had a more improving conversation with a man in her life."

There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman: She is coquette, then deist,-then devoté: the empire during these is never lost;-she only changes her subjects; when thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominions of the slaves of love, she repeoples it with the slaves of infidelity, and then with the slaves of the church.

Madame de V———— was vibrating betwixt the first of these epochas: the colour of the rose was fading fast away;-she away; she ought to have been a deist five years before the time I had the honour to pay my first visit.

She placed me upon the same sofa with her, for the sake of disputing the point of religion more closely.In short, Madame de V— told me she believed nothing.—I told Madame de V— it might be her principle; but I was sure it could not be her interest to level the out-works, without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as hers could be defended; that there was not a more dangerous thing in the world than for a beauty to be a deist;—that it was a debt I owed my creed, not to conceal it from her;-that I had

not been five minutes sat upon the sofa beside her, but I had began to form designs; and what is it but the sentiments of religion, and the persuasion they had excited in her breast, which could have checked them as they rose up?

We are not adamant, said I, taking hold of her hand; and there is need of all restraints, till Age in his own time steals in and lays them on us. But, my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand,-'tis too-too

soon.

I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de V -She affirmed to Mons. D- and the Abbé M- — that in one half hour I had said more for revealed religion than all their Encyclopedia had said against it,—I was lifted directly into Madame de V's coterie ;-and she put off the epocha of deism for two years.

I remember it was in this coterie, in the middle of a discourse, in which I was showing the necessity of a first cause, that the young Count de Faineant took me by the hand to the farthest corner of the room, to tell me my solitaire was pinned too strait about my neck. -It should be plus badinant, said the Count, looking down upon his own;-but a word, Mons. Yorick, to the wise.

And from the wise, Mons. le Count, replied. I, making him a bow,—is enough.

The Count de Faineant embraced me with more. ardour than ever I was embraced by mortal man.

For three weeks together, I was of every man's opinion. I met.-Pardi! ce Mons. Yorick a autant d'esprit que