This affected me gloomily and ferociously.  There is nothing I despise more than an album, unless it be two of them.

To avoid any such attempt, I broke into the most of the conversation with several innocent provincialisms, and effected my retreat in a masterly manner; advancing towards the door by degrees, and reaching it, I sprang outside so suddenly and nimbly that I had gotten to the bottom of the stairs before my absence was discovered.

Alas! no one can escape au album when it is predestined!  The next day a book, magnificently bound in Russia, arrived in a superb moire case in the hands of a groom, with an accompanying note from the Infanta soliciting the honor, &c.

All great men have their antipathies.  James I. could not look upon a glittering sword; Roger Bacon fainted at the sight of an apple; and blank paper fills me with melancholy.

However, I resigned myself to the decrees of fate, and scribbled, I don’t know what, in the corner, and subscribed my initials as illegible as those of Napoleon when in a passion.

This, I flattered myself, was the end of the tragedy, but no:  a few days afterwards I received an invitation to a select gathering, in such amiable terms that I resolved to decline it.

Talleyrand said, “Never obey your first impulse, because it is good;” I obeyed this Machiavellian maxim, and erred!

“Eucharis” was being performed at the opera; the sky was filled with ugly, threatening clouds; I sought in vain for a companion to get tight with, and moralize over a few bottles of wine, and so for want of a gayer occupation I went to the Marquise.

Her apartments are a perfect series of catafalques, and seem to have been upholstered by an undertaker.  The drawing-room is hung in violet damask; the bed-rooms in black velvet; the furniture is of ebony or old oak; crucifixes, holy-water basins, folio bibles, death’s-heads and poniards adorned the enlivening interior.  Several Zurbarans, real or false, representing monks and martyrs, hung on the walls, frightening visitors with their grimaces.  These sombre tints are intended to contrast with the waxy cheeks and painted eyes of the lady who looks more like the ghost than the mistress of this dwelling; for she does not inhabit, she haunts it.

You must not think, dear Roger, from this funereal introduction, that your friend became the prey of a ghoul or a vampire.  The Marquise is handsome enough, after all.  Her features are noble, regular, but a little Jewish, which induces her to wear a turban earlier and oftener than is necessary.  She would not be so pale, if instead of white she put on red.  Her hands, though too thin, are rather pretty and aristocratic, and weighted heavily with odd-looking rings.  Her foot is not too large for her slipper.  Uncommon thing! for women, in regard to their shoes, have falsified the geometrical axiom:  the receptacle should be greater than its contents.