“I never would risk my life for deformity,” said I, in a fit of enthusiasm. “Deformity!” quoth the foe of foxes, opening his eyes very wide; “why she is a divinity! Venus was a wax doll to her--Diana a dowdy! One glance of her might charm a statue from its pedestal, or inspire the Bench of Bishops with wit!” And then all three joined in a sort of chorus of eulogy, which conveyed to me no definite idea of form or feature, but expressed simply the conviction of the speakers that every perfection of both had been collected by the munificence of a bountiful destiny in the person of Adèle Lepicq. I arrived at my journey’s end pretty considerably puzzled, and not a little annoyed. I fortified myself, however, in my preconceived dislike of my guardian’s angel, by remembering that wealth and want of ideas, loveliness and imbecility, were perfectly compatible qualities. “Some silly uneducated heiress--all heiresses are silly and uneducated--who knows nothing but what she has learnt from her glass, and likes no one who does not corroborate daily its assertions; who votes literature _mauvais ton_, and would rather look into a coffin than a quarto.” So thought I with myself as I lounged into Sir Andrew’s library, in the pride of my mathematical studies, to take down Laplace from the neglect in which I flattered myself he had slumbered for years. Laplace was gone; and the card, which according to the custom of the place accounted for the vacancy on the shelf, informed me that the appropriator of the treasure was Adèle Lepicq.