the chateau of Madame de Lorgeville, seven miles
from Avallon.

The particularity of this information startled me. What wonderful
clock-work! What secret wheels! What intelligent mechanism! It is the
machine of Marly applied to a human river. At Rome a special niche would
have been devoted to the goddess of Police.

What a lesson to us! How circumspect it should make us! Our walls are
diaphanous, our words are overheard; our steps are watched ...
everything said and done reaches by secret informers and invisible
threads the central office of Jerusalem street. It is enough to make one
tremble!!!

_At the chateau of Mad. de Lorgeville_!

I walked along repeating this sentence to myself, with a thousand
variations: At the chateau of Mad. de Lorgeville.

After a decennial absence, I know nobody in Paris--I am just as much of
a stranger as the ambassador of Siam.... Who knows Mad. de Lorgeville?
M. de Balaincourt is the only person in Paris who can give me the
desired information--he is a living court calendar. I fly to see M. de
Balaincourt.

This oracle answers me thus: Mad. de Lorgeville is a very beautiful
woman, between twenty-four and twenty-six years of age. She possesses a
magnificent _mezzo-soprano_ voice, and twenty thousand dollars income.
She learnt miniature painting from Mad. Mirbel, and took singing lessons
from Mad. Damoyeau. Last winter she sang that beautiful duo from Norma,
with the Countess Merlin, at a charity concert.

I requested further details.

Madame de Lorgeville is the sister of the handsome Leon de Varezes.

Oh! ray of light! glimmer of sun through a dark cloud!

The handsome Leon de Varezes! The ugly idea of troubadour beauty! A fop
fashioned by his tailor, and who passes his life looking at his figure
reflected in four mirrors as shiny and cold as himself!

I pressed M. de Balaincourt's hand and once again plunged into the
vortex of Paris.

If the handsome Leon were only hideous I would feel nothing but
indifference towards him, but he has more sacred rights to my hatred, as
you will see.

Three months ago this handsome Leon made a proposal of marriage to Mlle.
de Chateaudun--she refused him. This is evidently a preconcerted plan;
or it is a ruse. The handsome Leon had a lady friend well known by
everybody but himself, and he has deferred this marriage in order to
gild, after the manner of Ruolz, his last days of bachelorhood;
meanwhile Mlle. de Chateaudun received her liberty