Nor need I mention my successes among the fairer portion of the creation.  One of the most accomplished, the tallest, the most athletic, and the handsomest gentlemen of Europe, as I was then, a young fellow of my figure could not fail of having advantages, which a person of my spirit knew very well how to use.  But upon these subjects I am dumb.  Charming Schuvaloff, black-eyed Sczotarska, dark Valdez, tender Hegenheim, brilliant Langeac!—­ye gentle hearts that knew how to beat in old times for the warm young Irish gentleman, where are you now?  Though my hair has grown grey now, and my sight dim, and my heart cold with years, and ennui, and disappointment, and the treachery of friends, yet I have but to lean back in my arm-chair and think, and those sweet figures come rising up before me out of the past, with their smiles, and their kindnesses, and their bright tender eyes!  There are no women like them now—­no manners like theirs!  Look you at a bevy of women at the Prince’s, stitched up in tight white satin sacks, with their waists under their arms, and compare them to the graceful figures of the old time!  Why, when I danced with Coralie de Langeac at the fetes on the birth of the first Dauphin at Versailles, her hoop was eighteen feet in circumference, and the heels of her lovely little mules were three inches from the ground; the lace of my jabot was worth a thousand crowns, and the buttons of my amaranth velvet coat alone cost eighty thousand livres.  Look at the difference now!  The gentlemen are dressed like boxers, Quakers, or hackney-coachmen; and the ladies are not dressed at all.  There is no elegance, no refinement; none of the chivalry of the old world, of which I form a portion.  Think of the fashion of London being led by a Br-mm-l! [Footnote:  This manuscript must have been written at the time when Mr. Brummel was the leader of the London fashion.] a nobody’s son:  a low creature, who can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot even crack a bottle like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be a man with his sword in his hand:  as we used to approve ourselves in the good old times, before that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the world!  Oh, to see the Valdez once again, as on that day I met her first driving in state, with her eight mules and her retinue of gentlemen, by the side of yellow Mancanares!  Oh, for another drive with Hegenheim, in the gilded sledge, over the Saxon snow!  False as Schuvaloff was, ’twas better to be jilted by her than to be adored by any other woman.  I can’t think of any one of them without tenderness.  I have ringlets of all their hair in my poor little museum of recollections.  Do you keep mine, you dear souls that survive the turmoils and troubles of near half a hundred years?  How changed its colour is now, since the day Sczotarska wore it round her neck, after my duel with Count Bjernaski, at Warsaw.