“Fi donc!” cried La belle Meronville, tapping his grace playfully on the arm, in order to do which she was forced to lean a little harder upon Clarence’s, which she had not yet relinquished--“Fi donc! Francois, chez moi!” “My carriage is just behind,” said the duke. “You will go with me to La Meronville’s, of course?” “Really, my dear duke,” said Clarence, “I wish I could excuse myself from this party. I have another engagement.” “Excuse yourself? and leave me to the mercy of Mademoiselle Caumartin, who has the face of an ostrich, and talks me out of breath! Never, my dear Linden, never! Besides, I want you to see how well I shall behave to Trevanion. Here is the carriage. Entrez, mon cher.” And Clarence, weakly and foolishly (but he was very young and very unhappy, and so, longing for an escape from his own thoughts) entered the carriage, and drove to the supper party, in order to prevent the Duke of Haverfield being talked out of breath by Mademoiselle Caumartin, who had the face of an ostrich. CHAPTER XXXIX. Yet truth is keenly sought for, and the wind Charged with rich words, poured out in thought’s defence; Whether the Church inspire that eloquence, Or a Platonic piety, confined To the sole temple of the inward mind; And one there is who builds immortal lays, Though doomed to tread in solitary ways; Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind! Yet not alone-- WORDSWORTH. London, thou Niobe, who sittest in stone, amidst thy stricken and fated children; nurse of the desolate, that hidest in thy bosom the shame, the sorrows, the sins of many sons; in whose arms the fallen and the outcast shroud their distresses, and shelter from the proud man’s contumely; Epitome and Focus of the disparities and maddening contrasts of this wrong world, that assemblest together in one great heap the woes, the joys, the elevations, the debasements of the various tribes of man; mightiest of levellers, confounding in thy whirlpool all ranks, all minds, the graven labours of knowledge, the straws of the maniac, purple and rags, the regalities and the loathsomeness of earth,--palace and lazar-house combined! Grave of the living, where, mingled and massed together, we couch, but rest not,--“for in that sleep of life what dreams do come,”--each vexed with a separate vision,--“shadows” which “grieve the heart,” unreal in their substance, but faithful in their warnings, flitting from the eye, but graving unfleeting memories on the mind, which reproduce new dreams over and over, until the phantasm ceases, and the pall of a heavier torpor falls upon the brain, and all is still and dark and hushed! “From the stir of thy great Babel,” and the fixed tinsel glare in which sits pleasure like a star, “which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays,” we turn to thy deeper and more secret haunts. Thy wilderness is all before us--where to choose our place of rest; and, to our eyes, thy hidden recesses are revealed.