The Parisians, Book 2.

at Paris was for an Englishman large and somewhat miscellaneous, he recognized no familiar countenance. A lady was playing the pianoforte-playing remarkably well -with accurate science, with tha

wards her would have sufficed to chill him into indifference. She was not young, and with prominent features and puckered skin, was twisting her face into strange sentimental grimaces, as if terribly overcome by the b

as aroused by the cessation of the music and the hum of subdued approbation by which it was followed. Above the hum swelled the impo

gratify us even by a single song?" Then turning aside and addressing some one else invisibl

tness of pathos, answered, "Nay, Monsieur Louvier, he rather overtasks the words at my command

it was loud enough for him to hear. He sank again into revery. Other guests now came into the room, among them Frank Morley, styled Colonel,-eminent military titles in the United States do not always denote eminent military services,-a wealthy American, and his sprightly and beautiful wife. The Colonel was a clever man, rather stiff in his deportment, and grave in speech, but by no means without a vein of dry humour. By the French he was esteemed a high-bred specimen of the kind of grand seigneur which democratic republics engender. He spoke French like a Parisian, had an i

r made him acknowledged as a thorough gentleman by every Englishman, however

mately acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one of those cordial friendships, which, perfectly free alike from polite flirtation and Platonic attachment, do sometimes spring up between persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing their honest character into morbid sentimentality or unl

sion in "the West" for

pe

, and in the ill-natured impulse of a man

ubtless accurately English, since you employ them; but at Boston the collocation would be deem

dear Colonel. I stand rebuked; m

wrong flock, and would not hazard the remark if y

rina Cicogna stood before him, le

said Mrs. Morley to her husband; and then, turning

course you know the Signorina, or, as we usually call her, Mademoiselle Cicogna. No? Allow me t

rtainly was confused and embarrassed when his eyes met Isaura's, and he felt her hand on his arm. Before quitting the room she paused and looked back. Graham's look followed her own, an

an. "Madre!" echoed Graham, also in Italian. "I hav

replied in English, "She is not my mother; but

gently, "Your own mother wa

d from his arm. He saw that he had offended or wounded her, and with the straightforward fra

hing to forgi

ilent. At last Isaura, thinking she ought to speak first

ly Mrs. M

ase of her American manner. Have

e first time some week

loquent on the

e heard her on

ave at Paris; but that may be my fault, for I like to start it. It is a relief to the languid smal

seek to do that if she had her rights

; but perhaps you

w what her opin

s?-

uasion, a sentiment, out of which the op

hat a woman should have votes in the choice of legi

at is an opinion, right or wrong, which

lain the

oused and the ambition thus animated; that they cannot but rebel, though it may be silently, against the notions of the former age, when women were not thus educated, notions that the aim of the sex should be to steal through life unremarked; that it is a reproach to be talked of; that women are plants to be kept in a hothouse and forbidden the frank liberty of growth in the natural air and sunshine of heaven? This, at least, is a sentiment

he contrast between a vein of reflection so hardy, expressed in a style of language that seemed to him so masculine, and the soft

chancially seated themselves on an ottoman in a recess while Isaura was yet speaking. It must seem as strange to the reader as it did to Graham that such a speech should have been spoken by so young a g

vilized world, it is only women that are made restless and uneasy? Do you not see amid the masses congregated in the wealthiest cities of the world, writhings and struggles against the received order of things? In this sentiment of discontent there is a certain truthfulness, because it is an element of human nature, and how best to deal with it is a problem yet unsolved; but in the opinions and doctrines to which, among the masses, the sentiment gives birth, the wisdom of the wisest detects only the certainty of a common ruin, offering for reconstruction the same

ing interest. It was the first time that a clever young m

good things of this little life. One word more ere we join them,-consult your own mind, and consider whether your uneasiness and unrest are caused solely by conventional shackles on your sex.