anxiety, terror, and anguish!  From the complication of circumstances, danger may lurk in the slightest inadvertence, in the least imprudence, in possible accidents, while powerful assistance may suddenly spring from some obscure and forgotten individual.  A dramatic interest may instantaneously arise from interviews apparently the most trivial, giving an unforeseen phase to every relation.  A misty uncertainty hovers round every meeting, through whose clouds it is difficult to seize the contours, to fix the lines, to ascertain the present and future influence, thus rendering intercourse vague and unintelligible, filling it with an indefinable and hidden terror, yet, at the same time, with an insinuating flattery.  The strong currents of genuine sympathy are always struggling to escape from the weight of this external repression.  The differing impulses of vanity, love, and patriotism, in their threefold motives of action, are forever hurtling against each other in all hearts, leading to inextricable confusion of thought and feeling.

What mingling emotions are concentrated in the accidental meetings of the Mazourka!  It can surround, with its own enchantment, the lightest emotion of the heart, while, through its magic, the most reserved, transitory, and trivial rencounter appeals to the imagination.  Could it be otherwise in the presence of the women who give to this dance that inimitable grace and suavity, for which, in less happy countries, they struggle in vain?  In very truth are not the Sclavic women utterly incomparable?  There are to be found among them those whose qualities and virtues are so incontestable, so absolute, that they are acknowledged by all ages, and by all countries.  Such apparitions are always and everywhere rare.  The women of Poland are generally distinguished by an originality full of fire.  Parisians in their grace and culture, Eastern dancing girls in their languid fire, they have perhaps preserved among them, handed down from mother to daughter, the secret of the burning love potions possessed in the seraglios.  Their charms possess the strange spell of Asiatic languor.  With the flames of spiritual and intellectual Houris in their lustrous eyes, we find the luxurious indolence of the Sultana.  Their manners caress without emboldening; the grace of their languid movements is intoxicating; they allure by a flexibility of form, which knows no restraint, save that of perfect modesty, and which etiquette has never succeeded in robbing of its willowy grace.  They win upon us by those intonations of voice which touch the heart, and fill the eye with tender tears; by those sudden and graceful impulses which recall the spontaneity and beautiful timidity of the gazelle.  Intelligent, cultivated, comprehending every thing with rapidity, skillful in the use of all they have acquired; they are nevertheless as superstitious and fastidious as the lovely yet ignorant creatures adored by the Arabian prophet.  Generous, devout, loving