until he arrived at L., where his confidence in his disguise failed him, and he resolved rather to trust to the fidelity and gratitude of his former subordinate soldier. Le Chevalier Pierre Babat de la Bonbonnerie, and his brother Monsieur Louis Babat soon became extremely fashionable in L. Everybody thought it a duty to call on so accomplished a nobleman who, there was no doubt, had much influence at court; and the chevalier’s table soon “groaned,” as the fashionable novelists of the day term it, “under the weight of visiters’ cards.” The papas of all the respectable families in the town called on the new comers, and not a few mammas of unmarried daughters waited with impatience the visit of the fashionable brothers, to whose credit a vast deal of interest with the king was immediately set down. It was far from being the interest of the colonel to keep himself secluded from society. Retirement would have created mystery, and mystery would have set all the officious mischief-mongers of L. writing voluminous dispatches to the minister of police in Paris; by which means his retreat would have been discovered, and his plans frustrated. He accordingly returned all the visits which were paid at his hotel, sometimes accompanied by his brother, but most frequently alone. In the meanwhile, the younger ladies of L. had, individually and collectively, lost their hearts to the young Monsieur Louis Babat. He was considered “charming, _piquant_, so delicate a figure, so sweet a voice, so elegant an every thing in fact.” The strangers were duly fêted, and amused in every variety of way which the ingenuity of the inhabitants could invent. The gentlemen became jealous as fast as the young ladies grew enamored of Monsieur L., and the peace and quiet of the town of L. was more disturbed by the arrival of monsieur le chevalier and his brother, than Paris had been by his departure.