al charms with which our
imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance
at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a
Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one must
inspire at the first sight, the prime interest of our history will have
been justified. _Quod erat demonstrandum_--if one may be permitted to
apply scholastic formulae to the science of manners.

Upon one of those fine spring mornings, when the leaves, although
unfolded, are not yet green, when the sun begins to gild the roofs, and
the sky is blue, when the population of Paris issues from its cells to
swarm along the boulevards, glides like a serpent of a thousand coils
through the Rue de la Paix towards the Tuileries, saluting the hymeneal
magnificence which the country puts on; on one of these joyous days,
then, a young man as beautiful as the day itself, dressed with taste,
easy of manner--to let out the secret he was a love-child, the natural
son of Lord Dudley and the famous Marquise de Vordac--was walking in the
great avenue of the Tuileries. This Adonis, by name Henri de Marsay,
was born in France, when Lord Dudley had just married the young lady,
already Henri's mother, to an old gentleman called M. de Marsay. This
faded and almost extinguished butterfly recognized the child as his own
in consideration of the life interest in a fund of a hundred thousand
francs definitively assigned to his putative son; a generosity which
did not cost Lord Dudley too dear. French funds were worth at that time
seventeen francs, fifty centimes. The old gentleman died without having
ever known his wife. Madame de Marsay subsequently married the Marquis
de Vordac, but before becoming a marquise she showed very little anxiety
as to her son and Lord Dudley. To begin with, the declaration of war
between France and England had separated the two lovers, and fidelity
at all costs was not, and never will be, the fashion of Paris. Then the
successes of the woman, elegant, pretty, universally adored, crushed in
the Parisienne the maternal sentiment. Lord Dudley was no more troubled
about his offspring than was the mother,--the speedy infidelity of a
young girl he had ardently loved gave him, perhaps, a sort of aversion
for all that issued from her. Moreover, fathers can, perhaps, only love
the children with whom they are fully acquainted, a social belief of the
utmost importance for the peace of families, whi