ciety
of Paris. There he did not meet, as were met in the times of the
old _regime_, sparkling abbes intent upon intrigues; or amorous old
dowagers, eloquent on Rousseau; or powdered courtiers, uttering epigrams
against kings and religions,--straws that foretold the whirlwind. Paul
Courier was right! Frenchmen are Frenchmen still; they are full of fine
phrases, and their thoughts smell of the theatre; they mistake foil
for diamonds, the Grotesque for the Natural, the Exaggerated for the
Sublime: but still I say, Paul Courier was right,--there is more honesty
now in a single _salon_ in Paris than there was in all France in the
days of Voltaire. Vast interests and solemn causes are no longer tossed
about like shuttlecocks on the battledores of empty tongues. In the
_bouleversement_ of Revolutions the French have fallen on their feet!

Meeting men of all parties and all classes, Maltravers was struck with
the heightened tone of public morals, the earnest sincerity of feeling
which generally pervaded all, as compared with his first recollections
of the Parisians. He saw that true elements for national wisdom were
at work, though he saw also that there was no country in which their
operations would be more liable to disorder, more slow and irregular
in their results. The French are like the Israelites in the Wilderness,
when, according to a Hebrew tradition, every morning they seemed on the
verge of Pisgah, and every evening they were as far from it as ever. But
still time rolls on, the pilgrimage draws to its close, and the Canaan
must come at last!

At Valerie's house, Maltravers once more met the De Montaignes. It was a
painful meeting, for they thought of Cesarini when they met.

It is now time to return to that unhappy man. Cesarini had been removed
from England when Maltravers quitted it after Lady Florence's death;
and Maltravers had thought it best to acquaint De Montaigne with all the
circumstances that had led to his affliction. The pride and the honour
of the high-spirited Frenchman were deeply shocked by the tale of fraud
and guilt, softened as it was; but the sight of the criminal, his awful
punishment, merged every other feeling in compassion. Placed under
the care of the most skilful practitioners in Paris, great hopes of
Cesarini's recovery had been at first entertained. Nor was it long,
indeed, before he appeared entirely restored, so far as the external
and superficial tokens of sanity could indicate a cu