The Parisians, Book 5.

de the western borderland between earth and heaven. On the table before her lay a few sheets of manuscr

date of marriage, six well-educated clever girls out of ten keep a journal; not one well-educated man in ten thousand does. So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy se

at it seemed to her no effort, she had commenced a tale,- without plan, without method, without knowing in one page what would fill the next. Her slight fingers hurried on as if, like the pretended spirit manifestations, impelled by an invisible agency without the pale of the world. She was intoxicated by the mere joy of inventing ideal images. In her own special art an elaborate artist, here she had no thought of art; if art was in her work, it sprang unconsciously from the harmony between herself and her subject,-as it is, perhaps, with the early soarings of the genuine lyric poets, in contrast to the dramatic. For the true lyric poet is intensely personal, intensely subjective. It is himself that he expresses, that he represents; and he almost ceases to be lyrical when he seeks to go out of his own existence into that of others with whom he has no sympathy, no rapport. This tale was vivid with genius as yet untutored,-genius in its morning freshness, full of beauties, full of faults. Isaura distinguished not the faults from the beauties. She felt only a vague persuasion that there was a something higher and brighter-a something more true to her own idiosyncrasy-than could be achieved by t

expenses for starting a new journal, of which Gustave Rameau is to be editor-in-chief; and I have promised to assist him as contributor for the first two months. I have given him notes of introduction to certain other feuilletonistes and critics whom he has on his list. But all put

e," cried Ram

, with a smile half reproachful, "to suppose that she is a mer

me, that the journal in question is designed for circulation among readers of haute classe it is to be pleasant and airy, full of bons mots and anecdote; witty, but not ill-natured. Politics to be Liberal, of course, but of elegant admixture,-champagne and seltzer-water. In fact,

ame de Grantmesnil?" a

y I will,

mes of the collaborateurs," interrupted Rameau.

upon a sentence-an aphorism-embodying a very delicate sentiment in very felicitous diction,-one of those choice condensations of thought, suggest

eautiful; what is more, it is original,"-and he read the words aloud. Blushing wit

me so reproachfully. We all know that young ladies keep commonplace books in which they enter passages that strike them in the works t

withdraw the paper. Savarin gently detained her hand, and l

and somewhat fastidious critic. If the rest of what you write resembles t

d, half incredul

eluctant clasp, "do permit me to cast a glance over these papers. For what I yet k

the young writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, when hearing the

ver written anything of the kind before, and this is a riddle to me. I know no

w to a recess by the farther window, and seated himself there, reading

man-like than author-like, ashamed even to seem absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her back turned, in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her manuscript,-Isau

mething here,' striking his forehead. Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching myself headlong in the chase of a name; I, underrated, uncomprehended, indebted even for a hearing to the patronage of a

already forgetting her m

d not ref

iter. Behind the gaudy scaffolding of this rickety Empire, a new social edifice unperceived arises; and in that edifice the halls of State shall be given to the men who help obscurely to build it,-to men like me." Here, drawing her hand into his own, fixing on her

ing the servant, who announced unintellig