s. It was said that Lord Montfort saw no
one; he certainly did not court or receive his own countrymen, and this
perhaps gave rise to, or at least caused to be exaggerated, the tales
that were rife of his profusion, and even his profligacy. But it was not
true that he was entirely isolated. He lived much with the old families
of France in their haughty faubourg, and was highly considered by them.
It was truly a circle for which he was adapted. Lord Montfort was the
only living Englishman who gave one an idea of the nobleman of
the eighteenth century. He was totally devoid of the sense of
responsibility, and he looked what he resembled. His manner, though
simple and natural, was finished and refined, and, free from forbidding
reserve, was yet characterised by an air of serious grace.

With the exception of the memorable year when he sacrificed his
nomination boroughs to the cause for which Hampden died on the field
and Sidney on the scaffold--that is to say, the Whig government of
England--Lord Montfort had been absent for his country for ten years,
and one day, in his statued garden at the Belvedere, he asked himself
what he had gained by it. There was no subject, divine or human, in
which he took the slightest interest. He entertained for human nature
generally, and without any exception, the most cynical appreciation. He
had a sincere and profound conviction, that no man or woman ever acted
except from selfish and interested motives. Society was intolerable to
him; that of his own sex and station wearisome beyond expression; their
conversation consisted only of two subjects, horses and women, and he
had long exhausted both. As for female society, if they were ladies, it
was expected that, in some form or other, he should make love to them,
and he had no sentiment. If he took refuge in the _demi-monde_, he
encountered vulgarity, and that, to Lord Montfort, was insufferable.
He had tried them in every capital, and vulgarity was the badge of all
their tribe. He had attempted to read; a woman had told him to read
French novels, but he found them only a clumsy representation of the
life which, for years, he had practically been leading. An accident made
him acquainted with Rabelais and Montaigne; and he had relished them,
for he had a fine sense of humour. He might have pursued these studies,
and perhaps have found in them a slight and occasional distraction, but
a clever man he met at a guingette at Passy, whither he had g