their heated discussions
to talk of Louise d'Armilly.

The career of this young and beautiful artiste had been remarkable. Her
debut had been made at Brussels, about two years before, in company with
her brother, M. Leon d'Armilly, and there, as well as at all the
theatres of Italy, La Scala, Argentina and Valle, they had roused a
perfect storm of operatic enthusiasm.

The origin of this young artiste was veiled in the deepest mystery.
Rumor ascribed to her descent from one of the oldest and most
respectable families of France; and domestic trials, among which was a
matrimonial misadventure, no less than the arrest of an Italian Prince
whom she was about to wed, on the bridal night, as an escaped galley
slave, were assigned as the cause which had given her splendid powers to
the stage.

At an earlier hour than usual--for Parisian fashion never fills the
opera-house until the curtain falls on the second act--the Rue
Lepelletier was crowded with carriages, La Pinon with fiacres, and the
Grande Bateliere and the passages to the Boulevard des Italiens with
persons on foot, all hastening toward that magnificent edifice,
constructed within the space of a single year by Debret, to replace the
building in the Rue de Richelieu ordered to be razed by the Government
because of the assassination at its door of the Duke of Berri, in
1820--that magnificent structure which accommodates two thousand
spectators with seats.

Among the first in the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose
attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly
attired elegantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the
elite of Paris seemed on the qui vive.

"It will be a splendid house," observed Debray.

"The debutante, be she whom she may, should feel flattered by such an
unexampled assemblage of all the ton of Paris."

Orchestra, balcony, galleries, amphitheatres, lobbies and parterre were
packed; every portion of the vast edifice, in short, was thronged except
a few of the loges and baignoires, into which every moment brilliant
companies were entering.

"Who is that tall, dark military man, with the heavy moustache, now
making his way into the Minister's box?" asked Beauchamp, after a pause.

"That man is no less a personage than the Governor of Algeria, Eugene
Cavaignac, Marshal of Camp," said Debray. "He reported himself at the
War Office this morning, and is the lion of the house."

"Ah!" cried the