It was now generally rumored that the neighboring government was about to send us the Baron Stahl, ambassador concerning arrangements for a loan to maintain the sinking monarchy in supremacy at Paris, the usual synecdoche for France.

The weather being fine, I proceeded to call on Mme. de St. Cyr.  She received me in her boudoir, and on my way thither I could not but observe the perfect quiet and cloistered seclusion that pervaded the whole house,—­the house itself seeming only an adjunct of the still and sunny garden, of which one caught a glimpse through the long open hall-windows beyond.  This boudoir did not differ from others to which I have been admitted:  the same delicate shades; all the dainty appliances of Art for beauty; the lavish profusion of bijouterie; and the usual statuettes of innocence, to indicate, perhaps, the presence of that commodity which might not be guessed at otherwise; and burning in a silver cup, a rich perfume loaded the air with voluptuous sweetness.  Through a half-open door an inner boudoir was to be seen, which must have been Delphine’s; it looked like her; the prevailing hue was a soft purple, or gray; a prie-dieu, a book-shelf, and desk, of a dark West Indian wood, were just visible.  There was but one picture,—­a sad-eyed, beautiful Fate.  It was the type of her nation.  I think she worshipped it—­And how apt is misfortune! to degenerate into Fate!—­not that the girl had ever experienced the former, but, dissatisfied with life, and seeing no outlet, she accepted it stoically and waited till it should be over.  She needed to be aroused;—­the station of an ambassadrice, which I desired for her, might kindle the spark.  There were no flowers, no perfumes, no busts, in this ascetic place.  Delphine herself, in some faint rosy gauze, her fair hair streaming round her, as she lay on a white-draped couch, half-risen on one arm, while she read the morning’s feuilleton, was the most perfect statuary of which a room could boast,—­illumined, as I saw her, by the gay beams that entered at the loftily-arched window, broken only by the flickering of the vine-leaves that clustered the curiously-latticed panes without.  She resembled in kind a Nymph or Aphrodite just bursting from the sea.  Madame de St. Cyr received me with empressement, and, so doing, closed the door of this shrine.  We spoke of various things,—­of the court, the theatre, the weather, the world,—­skating lightly round the slender edges of her secret, till finally she invited me to lunch with her in the garden.  Here, on a rustic table, stood wine and a few delicacies,—­while, by extending a hand, we could grasp the hanging pears and nectarines, still warm to the lip and luscious with sunshine, as we disputed possession with the envious wasp who had established a priority of claim.

“It is to be hoped,” I said, sipping the Haut-Brion, whose fine and brittle smack contrasted rarely with the delicious juiciness of the fruit, “that you have laid in a supply of this treasure that neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, before parting with that little gem in the Gironde.”