“Come,” said she one day, at the end of an excursion, or rather a race of some miles along the shore, which put our blood-horses in a foam, “have you ever seen Les Interieurs?”

“No.”

“I saw you,” she remarked, “admiring the Duchesse de Saint Alainville at our little ball the other night.”

“It was impossible to refuse admiration.  She is the noblest looking woman I ever saw.”

“One of the noblest, sir, if you please.  But, as I disdain the superb in every thing”——­She fixed her bright eyes on me.

“The fascinating is certainly much superior.”  A slight blush touched her cheek, she bowed, and all was good-humour again.

“Well, then,” said she, “since you have shown yourself rational at last, I shall present you to this superb beauty in her own palace.  You shall see your idol in her morning costume, her French reality.”

She touched the pane of a window with her whip, and a bowing domestic appeared.  “Is her Grace at home?” was the question.  “Her Grace receives to-day,” was the answer.  My companion looked surprised, but there was no retreating.  We alighted from our horses to attend the “reception.”

The cottage was simply a cottage, roofed with thatch; and furnished in the homeliest style of the peasants to whom it had belonged.  We went up stairs.  A few objects of higher taste were to be seen in the apartment to which we were now ushered—­a pendule, a piano, and one or two portraits superbly framed, and with ducal coronets above them.  But, to my great embarrassment, the room was full, and full of the first names of France.  Yet the whole assemblage were female, and the glance which the Duchess cast from her fauteuil, as I followed my rather startled guide into the room, showed me that I had committed some terrible solecism, in intruding on the party.  On what mysteries had I ventured, and what was to be the punishment of my temerity in the very shrine of the Bona Dea?  My pretty guide, on finding herself with all those dark eyes fixed on her, and all those stately features looking something between sorrow and surprise, faltered, and grew alternately red and pale.  We were both on the point of retiring; when the Duchess, after a brief consultation with some of the surrounding matronage, made a sign to Mariamne to approach.  Her hospitality to all the emigrant families had undoubtedly given her a claim on their attentions.  The result was a most gracious smile from Madame la Presidente, and I took my seat in silence and submission.

“Is France a country of female beauty?” is a question which I have often heard, and which I have always answered by a recollection of this scene.  I never saw so many handsome women together, before or since.  All were not Venuses, it is true; but there was an expression, almost a mould of feature, universal, which struck the eye more than beauty.  It was impossible to doubt that I was among a high caste; there was a general look of nobleness, a lofty yet feminine grace of countenance, a stately sweetness, which are involuntarily connected with high birth, high manners, and high history.