Mariamne was a "belle dame," and a remarkably pretty one. She was therefore intitled to all the privileges of prettiness; and, it must be acknowledged, that she enjoyed them to a very animated extent. In the curious memoirs of French private life, from _Plessis Les Tours_ down to St Evremond and Marmontel--and certainly--more amusing and dexterous dissections of human nature, at least as it is in France, never existed--our cooler countrymen often wonder at the strange attachments, subsisting for half a century between the old, who were nothing but simple fireside friends after all; and even between the old and the young. The story of Ninon and her Abbé--the unfortunate relationship, and the unfortunate catastrophe excepted--was the story of hundreds or thousands in every city of France fifty years ago. It arises from the vividness of the national mind, the quick susceptibility to being pleased, and the natural return which the heart makes in gratitude. If it sometimes led to error--it was the more to be regretted. But I do not touch on such views. As the Jew's daughter had been rendered by her late adventure all but the affianced bride of Lafontaine, she immediately assumed all the rights of a bride, treated her slave as slaves are treated every where, received his friends at her villa with animation, and opened her heart to them all, from the old general downwards, even to me. I never had seen a creature so joyous, with all her soul so speaking on her lips, and all her happiness so sparkling in her eyes. She was the most restless, too, of human beings; but it was the restlessness of a glow of enjoyment, of a bird in the first sunshine, of a butterfly in the first glitter of its wings. She was now continually forming some party, some ingenious surprise of pleasure, some little sportive excursion, some half theatric scene, to keep all our hearts and eyes as much alive as her own. Lafontaine obviously did not like all this; and some keen encounters of their wits took place, on the pleasure which, as he averred, "she took in all society but his own." "If the charge be true," said she one day, "why am I in fault? It is so natural to try to be happy." "But, to be happy without me, Mariamne." "Ah, what an impossibility!" laughed the little foreigner. "But, to receive the attentions even of the general, old enough to have married your grandmother." "Well, does it not show his taste, even in your own opinion, to follow your example, and admire what you tell me _you_ worship?" "You are changed; you are a _girouette_, Mariamne."