e gone off to
India together to rob the Great Mogul." Madame Firmiani, like the
distinguished woman that she is, saw that she ought not to convert
her beautiful lips into a mouthpiece for false denunciation.

Many persons, when they hear of these tragi-comedies of life,
refuse to believe them. They take the side of human nature and
fine sentiments; they declare that these things do not exist. But
Talleyrand said a fine thing, my dear fellow: "All things happen."
Truly, things happen under our very noses which are more amazing
than this domestic plot of yours; but society has an interest in
denying them, and in declaring itself calumniated. Often these
dramas are played so naturally and with such a varnish of good
taste that even I have to rub the lens of my opera-glass to see to
the bottom of them. But, I repeat to you, when a man is a friend
of mine, when we have received together the baptism of champagne
and have knelt together before the altar of the Venus Commodus,
when the crooked fingers of play have given us their benediction,
if that man finds himself in a false position I'd ruin a score of
families to do him justice.

You must be aware from all this that I love you. Have I ever in my
life written a letter as long as this? No. Therefore, read with
attention what I still have to say.

Alas! Paul, I shall be forced to take to writing, for I am taking
to politics. I am going into public life. I intend to have, within
five years, the portfolio of a ministry or some embassy. There
comes an age when the only mistress a man can serve is his
country. I enter the ranks of those who intend to upset not only
the ministry, but the whole present system of government. In
short, I swim in the waters of a certain prince who is lame of the
foot only,--a man whom I regard as a statesman of genius whose
name will go down to posterity; a prince as complete in his way as
a great artist may be in his.

Several of us, Ronquerolles, Montriveau, the Grandlieus, La
Roche-Hugon, Serisy, Feraud, and Granville, have allied ourselves
against the "parti-pretre," as the party-ninny represented by the
"Constitutionnel" has ingeniously said. We intend to overturn the
Navarreins, Lenoncourts, Vandenesses, and the Grand Almonry. In
order to succeed we shall even ally ourselves with Lafayette, the
Orleanists, and the Left,--people whom we can throttle on the
morrow