she in the least afraid.

I sauntered from the room alone, to wander through the other apartments,
where objects of art and curiosities of every kind were profusely
scattered. The marbles of Greece and Rome, the strange carvings of
Egypt, the rich vases of Sevres were there, amid cabinet pictures of the
rarest and most costly kind. Those delicious landscapes of the time of
Louis the Fifteenth, where every charm of nature and art was conveyed
upon the canvas: the cool arbors of Versailles, with their terraced
promenades and hissing fountains,--the subjects which Vanloo loved to
paint, and which that voluptuous Court loved to contemplate,--the long
alleys of shady green, where gay groups were strolling in the mellow
softness of an autumn sunset; those proud dames whose sweeping garments
brushed the velvet turf, and at whose sides, uncovered, walked the
chivalry of France,--how did they live again in the bright pencil of
Moucheron! and how did they carry one in fancy to the great days of the
Monarchy! Strange place for them, too,--the boudoir of her whose husband
had uprooted the ancient dynasty they commemorated, had erased from the
list of kings that proudest of all the royal stocks in Europe. Was it
the narrow-minded glory of the Usurper, that loved to look upon the
greatness he had humbled, that brought them there? or was it rather the
wellspring of that proud hope just rising in his heart, that he was to
be successor of those great kings whose history formed the annals of
Europe itself?

As I wandered on, captivated in every sense by the charm of what to me
was a scene in fairyland, I came suddenly before a picture of Josephine,
surrounded by the ladies of her Court. It was by Isabey, and had all
the delicate beauty and transparent finish of that delightful painter.
Beside it was another portrait by the same artist; and I started back
in amazement at the resemblance. Never had color better caught the rich
tint of a Southern complexion; the liquid softness of eye, the full and
sparkling intelligence of ready wit and bright fancy, all beamed in that
lovely face. It needed not the golden letters in the frame which called
it "La Rose de Provence." I sat down before it unconsciously, delighted
that I might gaze on such beauty unconstrained. The white hand leaned on
a balustrade, and seemed almost as if stretching from the very canvas. I
could have knelt and kissed it. That was the very look she wore the
hour I saw her fi