oliere, who
had captivated an English milor of enormous wealth. Demoiselle Candeille
had never been of the Maison Moliere; she had been the leading star of
one of the minor--yet much-frequented--theatres of Paris, but she felt
herself quite able and ready to captivate some other unattached milor,
who would load her with English money and incidentally bestow an English
name upon her.

So she went to London.

The experiment, however, had not proved an unmitigated success. At first
she and her company did obtain a few engagements at one or two of the
minor theatres, to give representations of some of the French classical
comedies in the original language.

But these never quite became the fashion. The feeling against France
and all her doings was far too keen in that very set, which Demoiselle
Candeille had desired to captivate with her talents, to allow of the
English jeunesse doree to flock and see Moliere played in French, by a
French troupe, whilst Candeille's own compatriots resident in England
had given her but scant support.

One section of these--the aristocrats and emigres--looked upon the
actress who was a friend of all the Jacobins in Paris as nothing better
than canaille. They sedulously ignored her presence in this country, and
snubbed her whenever they had an opportunity.

The other section--chiefly consisting of agents and spies of the
Revolutionary Government--she would gladly have ignored. They had at
first made a constant demand on her purse, her talents and her time:
then she grew tired of them, and felt more and more chary of being
identified with a set which was in such ill-odour with that very same
jeunesse doree whom Candeille had desired to please.

In her own country she was and always had been a good republican: Marat
had given her her first start in life by his violent praises of her
talent in his widely-circulated paper; she had been associated in
Paris with the whole coterie of artists and actors: every one of them
republican to a man. But in London, although one might be snubbed by
the emigres and aristocrats--it did not do to be mixed up with the
sans-culotte journalists and pamphleteers who haunted the Socialistic
clubs of the English capital, and who were the prime organizers of all
those seditious gatherings and treasonable unions that caused Mr. Pitt
and his colleagues so much trouble and anxiety.

One by one, Desiree Candeille's comrades, male and female, who had
accompanied her