arose in a state
of mad excitation, once more the slave or the victim of his intoxicated
vanity. He hurried behind the scenes. He congratulated her on her
success, her genius, and her beauty; and, to be brief, within a week of
her arrival in our metropolis, the Bird of Paradise was fairly caged in
the Alhambra.

CHAPTER IV.

_The Bird is Caged_

HITHERTO the Duke of St. James had been a celebrated personage, but his
fame had been confined to the two thousand Brahmins who constitute the
world. His patronage of the Signora extended his celebrity in a manner
which he had not anticipated; and he became also the hero of the ten, or
twelve, or fifteen millions of pariahs for whose existence philosophers
have hitherto failed to adduce a satisfactory cause.

The Duke of St. James was now, in the comprehensive sense of the phrase,
a public character. Some choice spirits took the hint from the public
feeling, and determined to dine on the public curiosity. A Sunday
journal was immediately established. Of this epic our Duke was the hero.
His manners, his sayings, his adventures, regularly regaled, on each
holy day, the Protestant population of this Protestant empire, who in
France or Italy, or even Germany, faint at the sight of a peasantry
testifying their gratitude for a day of rest by a dance or a tune.
'Sketches of the Alhambra,' '_Soupers_ in the Regent's Park,' 'The Court
of the Caliph,' 'The Bird Cage,' &c, &c, &c, were duly announced and
duly devoured. This journal, being solely devoted to the illustration
of the life of a single and a private individual, was appropriately
entitled 'The Universe.' Its contributors were eminently successful.
Their pure inventions and impure details were accepted as delicate
truth; and their ferocious familiarity with persons with whom they were
totally unacquainted demonstrated at the same time their knowledge both
of the forms and the personages of polite society.

At the first announcement of this hebdomadal his Grace was a little
annoyed, and 'Noctes Hautevillienses' made him fear treason; but when
he had read a number, he entirely acquitted any person of a breach of
confidence. On the whole he was amused. A variety of ladies in time were
introduced, with many of whom the Duke had scarcely interchanged a bow;
but the respectable editor was not up to Lady Afy.

If his Grace, however, were soon reconciled to this not very agreeable
notoriety, and consoled himself under t