er ambition
moved her, but she left us, some said, to become the mistress of
Mirabeau; others declared that Collot d'Herbois was her lover. The truth
was soon apparent when she appeared at the Francais under the name of
Gabrielle. Ay, Gerald, the great genius of the French stage, the gifted
pupil of Talma, the marvellous artiste whose triumphs are trumpeted
through Europe, was the other day but the gipsy actress of the Trou de
Taupe, as our little stage was politely named.'

De Noe described with enthusiasm the fervour of admiration La Gabrielle
had excited; how the foremost men of the time had offered to share
fortune with her; that she had but to choose throughout France the man
who would be her protector--from Dumourier to Tinaille, there is not one
would not make her his wife to-morrow.

'I see,' added he, 'that you account all this exaggeration on my part.
Well, there is happily a way to test the faithfulness of my report.'

'How so?'

'To-morrow evening is Madame Roland's night of reception. You have heard
of her as the great leader of the advanced reformers--they who would
strip the nation of everything to clothe it in rags of their own
pattern. Come with me there; I will present you as a young friend from
the provinces, or better still, an exile fled from Italian tyranny. You
will meet the most distinguished men of that extreme party; you will
hear their sentiments and their hopes. A stray phrase about despotism,
a passing word of execration on kingly rule, will be enough to make you
free of the guild, and you will not fail to glean information from them.
At all events, there is a great chance that you may see "Gabrielle;" she
rarely misses one of these evenings, and you will see her in the sphere
she loves best to move in, and where her influence is unbounded. It may
be she will give me leave to present you.'

'I will not ask so much,' said Gerald, with an affected humility.

'You cannot say so till you have seen her,' cried the other. 'I tell
you, Gerald, that the men whose pride would scorn the notice of royalty
would kneel with devotion to do her homage. She is not one of those
whose eminence is a recognised conventionality, but one whose sway is
an indisputable influence, greater as she is in real life than when
depicting imaginary sorrows; and then that wondrous gift, the heritage
of her gipsy blood, perhaps heightens the power she possesses to
something almost terrible.'

'Of what do you speak?' a