r
me. Paris alarmed my parents, and justly. Students are secretly engaged
in the same occupation which fills the minds of young ladies in their
boarding-schools. Do what you will, nothing can prevent the latter from
talking of lovers, or the former of women. But in Paris, and especially
at this particular time, such talk among young lads was influenced by
the oriental and sultanic atmosphere and customs of the Palais-Royal.

The Palais-Royal was an Eldorado of love where the ingots melted away in
coin; there virgin doubts were over; there curiosity was appeased. The
Palais-Royal and I were two asymptotes bearing one towards the other,
yet unable to meet. Fate miscarried all my attempts. My father had
presented me to one of my aunts who lived in the Ile St. Louis. With her
I was to dine on Sundays and Thursdays, escorted to the house by either
Monsieur or Madame Lepitre, who went out themselves on those days and
were to call for me on their way home. Singular amusement for a
young lad! My aunt, the Marquise de Listomere, was a great lady, of
ceremonious habits, who would never have dreamed of offering me money.
Old as a cathedral, painted like a miniature, sumptuous in dress, she
lived in her great house as though Louis XV. were not dead, and saw none
but old women and men of a past day,--a fossil society which made me
think I was in a graveyard. No one spoke to me and I had not the courage
to speak first. Cold and alien looks made me ashamed of my youth,
which seemed to annoy them. I counted on this indifference to aid me in
certain plans; I was resolved to escape some day directly after dinner
and rush to the Palais-Royal. Once seated at whist my aunt would pay no
attention to me. Jean, the footman, cared little for Monsieur Lepitre
and would have aided me; but on the day I chose for my adventure that
luckless dinner was longer than usual,--either because the jaws employed
were worn out or the false teeth more imperfect. At last, between eight
and nine o'clock, I reached the staircase, my heart beating like that of
Bianca Capello on the day of her flight; but when the porter pulled the
cord I beheld in the street before me Monsieur Lepitre's hackney-coach,
and I heard his pursy voice demanding me!

Three times did fate interpose between the hell of the Palais-Royal and
the heaven of my youth. On the day when I, ashamed at twenty years of
age of my own ignorance, determined to risk all dangers to put an end
to it, at t