er clever countrywomen have at unrivaled command. She
was "delighted, charmed, enchanted, to make my acquaintance. She had
owed many marks of friendship to M. Elnathan; but this surpassed them
all--she admired the English--they were always the friends of
liberty--France was now beginning a race in the arena of freedom. The
rivalry was brilliant, the prize was inestimable." I could only bow.
Again, "she was enraptured to see an Englishman; the countryman of
Milton and Wilkes, of Charles Fox and William Tell--she had been lately
studying English history, and had wept floods of tears over the
execution of William III.--_Enfin_, she hoped that Shakspeare, 'ce beau,
ce superbe Shakspeare,' was in good health, and meant to give the world
many, many more charming tragedies."

She had now discharged her first volley, and she wheeled back upon a
group of members of the Convention, grim and sullen-looking sages, with
wild hair hanging over their shoulders, and the genuine Carmagnole
physiognomy. With those men she was evidently plunged in vehement
discussion, and her whole volume of politics was flung at their heads
with as little mercy as her literary stores had been poured upon me.

But the crowd pressed towards another object of curiosity, and I
followed it, under the guidance of my Asmodeus, to a music room,
splendidly fitted up, and filled with the most select orchestra of the
capital. But it was an amateur that was there to attract all eyes and
ears. "Madame de Fontenai," whispered the Jew, as he glanced towards a
woman of a remarkably expressive countenance and statue-like form, half
sitting, half reposing, on a sofa--surrounded by a group soliciting her
for a "few notes, a suspiration, a _soupcon_"--of, as Elnathan observed,
"one of the most delicious voices which had ever crossed the Pyrenees,"
and the Jew had all the habitual connoisseurship of his nation. At last
the siren consented, and a harp was brought and placed before her, with
the same homage which might have attended an offering to the Queen of
Cyprus, in her own island, three thousand years ago; and rather letting
her hand drop among the strings, than striking them, and rather
breathing out her feelings, than performing any music of mortal
composition, she sang one of the fantastic, but deep, reveries of
passion of "the sweet south."

SARABANDA.

"Tus ojos y los mios
Se miran y hablan.
Pero los Corazones
No se declaran.
Mas t