for composing a scheme of life, while casting for
themselves a brilliant horoscope; their magic consists in taking their
dreams for reality; secretly, in their long meditations, they resolve
to give their heart and hand to none but the man possessing this or the
other qualification; and they paint in fancy a model to which, whether
or no, the future lover must correspond. After some little experience
of life, and the serious reflections that come with years, by dint of
seeing the world and its prosaic round, by dint of observing unhappy
examples, the brilliant hues of their ideal are extinguished. Then, one
fine day, in the course of events, they are quite astonished to find
themselves happy without the nuptial poetry of their day-dreams. It was
on the strength of that poetry that Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine,
in her slender wisdom, had drawn up a programme to which a suitor must
conform to be excepted. Hence her disdain and sarcasm.

"Though young and of an ancient family, he must be a peer of France,"
said she to herself. "I could not bear not to see my coat-of-arms on the
panels of my carriage among the folds of azure mantling, not to drive
like the princes down the broad walk of the Champs-Elysees on the days
of Longchamps in Holy Week. Besides, my father says that it will someday
be the highest dignity in France. He must be a soldier--but I reserve
the right of making him retire; and he must bear an Order, that the
sentries may present arms to us."

And these rare qualifications would count for nothing if this creature
of fancy had not the most amiable temper, a fine figure, intelligence,
and, above all, if he were not slender. To be lean, a personal grace
which is but fugitive, especially under a representative government,
was an indispensable condition. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had an ideal
standard which was to be the model. A young man who at the first glance
did not fulfil the requisite conditions did not even get a second look.

"Good Heavens! see how fat he is!" was with her the utmost expression of
contempt.

To hear her, people of respectable corpulence were incapable of
sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized society. Though it is
esteemed a beauty in the East, to be fat seemed to her a misfortune
for a woman; but in a man it was a crime. These paradoxical views were
amusing, thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The Count felt
nevertheless that by-and-by his daughter's affections, o