ors as Balzac or Dumas has
provided for us.

Let us give an instance:--it is from the amusing novel called "Les Ailes
d'Icare," and contains what is to us quite a new picture of a French
fashionable rogue. The fashions will change in a few years, and the
rogue, of course, with them. Let us catch this delightful fellow ere
he flies. It is impossible to sketch the character in a more sparkling,
gentlemanlike way than M. de Bernard's; but such light things are very
difficult of translation, and the sparkle sadly evaporates during the
process of DECANTING.

A FRENCH FASHIONABLE LETTER.

"MY DEAR VICTOR--It is six in the morning: I have just come from the
English Ambassador's ball, and as my plans, for the day do not admit of
my sleeping, I write you a line; for, at this moment, saturated as I am
with the enchantments of a fairy night, all other pleasures would be too
wearisome to keep me awake, except that of conversing with you. Indeed,
were I not to write to you now, when should I find the possibility of
doing so? Time flies here with such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures
and my affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade,
that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment
has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my
correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give
it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and
which carries me hither and thither at its will.

"However, you are not the only person with whom I am behindhand: I
assure you, on the contrary, that you are one of a very numerous and
fashionable company, to whom, towards the discharge of my debts, I
propose to consecrate four hours to-day. I give you the preference to
all the world, even to the lovely Duchess of San Severino, a delicious
Italian, whom, for my special happiness, I met last summer at the Waters
of Aix. I have also a most important negotiation to conclude with one of
our Princes of Finance: but n'importe, I commence with thee: friendship
before love or money--friendship before everything. My despatches
concluded, I am engaged to ride with the Marquis de Grigneure, the
Comte de Castijars, and Lord Cobham, in order that we may recover, for a
breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the appetite
which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the Ambassador's
gala. On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a capric