ith us, and there is a
consolation in the deceit ("the homage," according to the old mot of
Rochefoucauld) "which vice pays to virtue"; for the very falsehood shows
that the virtue exists somewhere. We once heard a furious old French
colonel inveighing against the chastity of English demoiselles:
"Figurez-vous, sir," said he (he had been a prisoner in England), "that
these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with
the men!"--and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts
of maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young
lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous
lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich
and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting or
thinking of harm.

Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the
Faubourg St. Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but
some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader;
and all are filled with that remarkable naif contempt of the institution
called marriage, which we have seen in M. de Bernard. The romantic young
nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted into what a
celebrated female author calls la creme de la creme de la haute volee
of Parisian society. He is a youth of about twenty years of age.
"No passion had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to his
faculties; he was awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for
it, and yet trembling at its approach; feeling in the depths of his
soul, that that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and
decide, perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life."

Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should
not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue
must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be,
is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of

A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.

"A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years' experience
of the great world had given a prodigious perspicacity of judgment, the
Duchess of Chalux, arbitress of the opinion to be held on all new comers
to the Faubourg Saint Germain, and of their destiny and reception in
it;--one of those women, in a word, who make or ruin a man,--said, in
speaking of Gerard de Stolberg, whom she received at her own house, and
met everywhere, 'Th