telligible and interesting. A little neglect is
thought charming, and her face is so carefully studied, so well known,
that slight changes are scarcely noticed, and regarded at last as
"beauty spots." When Dinah ceased to have a new dress with a new season,
she seemed to have made a concession to the philosophy of the place.

It is the same with matters of speech, choice of words and ideas, as it
is with matters of feeling. The mind can rust as well as the body if
it is not rubbed up in Paris; but the thing on which provincialism
most sets its stamp is gesture, gait, and movement; these soon lose the
briskness which Paris constantly keeps alive. The provincial is used to
walk and move in a world devoid of accident or change, there is nothing
to be avoided; so in Paris she walks on as raw recruits do, never
remembering that there may be hindrances, for there are none in her
way in her native place, where she is known, where she is always in her
place, and every one makes way for her. Thus she loses all the charm of
the unforeseen.

And have you ever noticed the effect on human beings of a life in
common? By the ineffaceable instinct of simian mimicry they all tend to
copy each other. Each one, without knowing it, acquires the gestures,
the tone of voice, the manner, the attitudes, the very countenance of
others. In six years Dinah had sunk to the pitch of the society she
lived in. As she acquired Monsieur de Clagny's ideas she assumed his
tone of voice; she unconsciously fell into masculine manners from seeing
none but men; she fancied that by laughing at what was ridiculous in
them she was safe from catching it; but, as often happens, some hue of
what she laughed at remained in the grain.

A Parisian woman sees so many examples of good taste that a contrary
result ensues. In Paris women learn to seize the hour and moment when
they may appear to advantage; while Madame de la Baudraye, accustomed
to take the stage, acquired an indefinable theatrical and domineering
manner, the air of a _prima donna_ coming forward on the boards, of
which ironical smiles would soon have cured her in the capital.

But after she had acquired this stock of absurdities, and, deceived by
her worshipers, imagined them to be added graces, a moment of terrible
awakening came upon her like the fall of an avalanche from a mountain.
In one day she was crushed by a frightful comparison.

In 1829, after the departure of Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, she