ng to do; ambitious men ought to follow curved
lines, the shortest road in politics."

Seen from a distance, Raoul Nathan was a very fine meteor. Fashion
accepted his ways and his appearance. His borrowed republicanism
gave him, for the time being, that Jansenist harshness assumed by the
defenders of the popular cause, while they inwardly scoff at it,--a
quality not without charm in the eyes of women. Women like to perform
prodigies, break rocks, and soften natures which seem of iron.

Raoul's moral costume was therefore in keeping with his clothes. He was
fitted to be what he became to the Eve who was bored in her paradise
in the rue du Rocher,--the fascinating serpent, the fine talker with
magnetic eyes and harmonious motions who tempted the first woman. No
sooner had the Comtesse Marie laid eyes on Raoul than she felt an inward
emotion, the violence of which caused her a species of terror. The
glance of that fraudulent great man exercised a physical influence upon
her, which quivered in her very heart, and troubled it. But the trouble
was pleasure. The purple mantle which celebrity had draped for a moment
round Nathan's shoulders dazzled the ingenuous young woman. When tea was
served, she rose from her seat among a knot of talking women, where she
had been striving to see and hear that extraordinary being. Her silence
and absorption were noticed by her false friends.

The countess approached the divan in the centre of the room, where Raoul
was perorating. She stood there with her arm in that of Madame Octave
de Camp, an excellent woman, who kept the secret of the involuntary
trembling by which these violent emotions betrayed themselves. Though
the eyes of a captivated woman are apt to shed wonderful sweetness,
Raoul was too occupied at that moment in letting off fireworks, too
absorbed in his epigrams going up like rockets (in the midst of which
were flaming portraits drawn in lines of fire) to notice the naive
admiration of one little Eve concealed in a group of women. Marie's
curiosity--like that which would undoubtedly precipitate all Paris into
the Jardin des Plantes to see a unicorn, if such an animal could be
found in those mountains of the moon, still virgin of the tread of
Europeans--intoxicates a secondary mind as much as it saddens great
ones; but Raoul was enchanted by it; although he was then too anxious to
secure all women to care very much for one alone.

"Take care, my dear," said Marie's kind and g