ve the author._

MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
[Footnote: Copyright, 1873 and 1901, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Published by special arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
publishers of Mr. Aldrich's works.]

I

We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency
which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were
of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo.
So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as
women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of
gossiper extant. Where will you find, in or out of literature, such
another droll, delightful, chatty busybody as Samuel Pepys, Esq.,
Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen
Charles II and James II of England? He is the king of tattlers, as
Shakespeare is the king of poets.

If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would back Our Club against
the Sorosis or any women's club in existence. Whenever you see in your
drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy chairs, cigar
in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small
round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles,
you may be sure that they are discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's
extravagance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the younger Miss
Fleurdelys. It is here old Tippleton gets execrated for that
everlasting _bon mot_ of his which was quite a success at
dinner-parties forty years ago; it is here the belle of the season
passes under the scalpels of merciless young surgeons; it is here B's
financial condition is handled in a way that would make B's hair stand
on end; it is here, in short, that everything is canvassed--everything
that happens in our set, I mean--much that never happens, and a great
deal that could not possibly happen. It was at Our Club that I learned
the particulars of the Van Twiller affair.

It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though
it was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand
the case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one
of the proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal
descendant of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New
York--Nieuw Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been
burgomasters or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs.