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 Q*** vowed to every creature she met, "She never had a more im"proving conversation with a man in her "life." There are three epochas in the empire of a French woman-She is coquettethen deist-then devotee-the empire during these is never lost-she only changes her subjects; when thirty-five years and more have unpeopled her dominion of the slaves of love, she repeoples it with slaves of infidelity-and then with the slaves of the church. Madame de Q*** was vibrating betwixt the two first of these epochas: the colour of the rose was fading fast awayshe 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 Q*** told me she believed nothing. I told Madame de Q*** it might be her principle: but I was sure it could not be her interest to level the outworks, without which I could not conceive how such a citadel as her's 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 to my creed, not to conceal it from her-that I had not been five minutes sat upon the sofa beside her, but I had begun 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 her own time steals in, and lays them on us--but my dear lady, said I, kissing her hand-it is too-too soon. I declare I had the credit all over Paris of unperverting Madame de Q***.-She affirmed to Monsieur D*** and the Abbe M***, than in one half hour I had said more for revealed religion, than all their Encyclopedia had said against it—I was listed directly into Madame de Q***'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 shewing 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 nos autres. Il raisonne bien, said another.-C'est un bon enfant, said a third. And at this price I could have eat, and drank, and been merry all the days of my life at Paris; but 'twas a dishonest reckoning-I grew ashamed of it-it was the gain of a slave-every sentiment of honour revolted against it-the higher I got, the more was I forced upon my beggarly system-the better the Coteriethe more children of Art-I languished for those of Nature: and one night, after a most vile prostitution of myself to half a dozen different people, I grew sick-went to bed-ordered La Fleur to get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy. MARIA. MOULINES. I NEVER felt what distress of plenty was in any one shape till now-to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of France-in the hey-day of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up-a journey through each step of which Music beats time to Labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters-to pass through this with my affection flying out, and kindling at every group before me--and every one of them pregnant with adventures. Just heaven!—it would fill up twenty volumes-and, alas! I have but a few small pages left of this to crowd it into-and |