Thus should heroes be eternized in brass, or granite, or marble, while they are instinct with the glory of action, not when they are aged and fatten and grow bilious and use ear-trumpets. They should be given to posterity in their prime, when they did the great things for which posterity will remember them. Great is the anointed of Notre Dame; but greater is the victor of Lodi! This O'Hara said, first warming with the associations of the Napoleon room of the Louvre, and then kindled into enthusiasm by the applause of Captain Chauvin, whose heart was so young for all his white beard and deep wrinkles; and Caroline looked at the speaker approvingly, and he looked back, and suddenly it was revealed to him that she was strikingly handsome. That night when he retired to rest in his hotel in the Latin Quarter, the tress of hair he had long kept warm at his breast was missing. Was this an omen? CHAPTER XIV. VANITAS VANITATUM. There is a certain poet whose free-and-easy philosophy expressed in verse, rippling and silvery, but slightly too luscious for Sunday reading in a boarding-school conducted on correct principles, holds that when far from the lips we love, we have but to make love to the lips we are near. Our friend O'Hara, we fear, was much addicted to reading that erotic bard, and had been so long removed by time and so far by distance from his mistress, to whom belonged the tress of hair he wore over his heart and under his watch-fob--fob without a watch--that he had not many obstacles to conquer in persuading himself that Captain Chauvin's unmarried _protégée_ was strikingly handsome. There was that high-bred air about her, too, which plays such havoc with the feelings of a race accustomed to set more store by blood than pelf. Her manners were stamped by a refined self-respecting reserve not chilled to the point of _hauteur_. She had a commanding figure, with brilliant eyes, and that feature which is the greatest charm in woman--an even and undamaged set of almond-white teeth, when her lips parted. Her hair, besides, was the colour of his tress--as ebon and full, as thick and glossy. 'Frenchwomen make good housewives,' reflected Manus to himself, as he smoked the pipe of meditation the morning after the marriage. 'They're not very expansive at home, it is true, but they do adore their children. Caroline is not insipid, anyhow. In case anything happened to Bidelia, she would be just the woman to fall back upon. Besides, I have neither leisure nor liking for billing and cooing. How is Bidelia, by the way? What is she doing? Egad! I'll write to London, to my cousin Hyacinth, to ask him.' And he did write. And this was the answer he got eight-and-forty hours afterwards: 'Doughty Street, London, W.C. 'April 27th, 1866. 'DEAR MANUS,