more than we get from books, and on her
sweet impudence for a richer original strain. She began to appreciate
now a reputation for profound acquirements. Learned professors of
jurisprudence and history were as enthusiastic for Alvan in their way as
Count Kollin. She heard things related of Alvan by the underbreath. That
circle below her own, the literary and artistic, idolized him; his
talk, his classic breakfasts and suppers, his undisguised ambition,
his indomitable energy, his dauntlessness and sway over her sex,
were subjects of eulogy all round her; and she heard of an enamoured
baroness. No one blamed Alvan. He had shown his chivalrous valour
in defending her. The baroness was not a young woman, and she was a
hardbound Blue. She had been the first to discover the prodigy, and had
pruned, corrected, and published him; he was one of her political works,
promising to be the most successful. An old affair apparently; but
the association of a woman's name with Alvan's, albeit the name of a
veteran, roused the girl's curiosity, leading her to think his mental
and magnetic powers must be of the very highest, considering his
physical repulsiveness, for a woman of rank to yield him such extreme
devotion. She commissioned her princely serving-man, who had followed
and was never far away from her, to obtain precise intelligence of this
notorious Alvan.

Prince Marko did what he could to please her; he knew something of the
rumours about Alvan and the baroness. But why should his lady trouble
herself for particulars of such people, whom it could scarcely be
supposed she would meet by accident? He asked her this. Clotilde said
it was common curiosity. She read him a short lecture on the dismal
narrowness of their upper world; and on the advantage of taking an
interest in the world below them and more enlightened; a world where
ideas were current and speech was wine. The prince nodded; if she had
these opinions, it must be good for him to have them too, and he shared
them, as it were, by the touch of her hand, and for the length of time
that he touched her hand, as an electrical shock may be taken by one far
removed from the battery, susceptible to it only through the link;
he was capable of thinking all that came to him from her a
blessing--shocks, wounds and disruptions. He did not add largely to her
stock of items, nor did he fetch new colours. The telegraph wire was
his model of style. He was more or less a serviceless Indi