“I should rather have thought,” said Graham, “that no one would have cared for Eleonora if it were not for Tasso.” Rameau glanced at the Englishman superciliously. “Pardon, Monsieur, in every age a love-story keeps its interest; but who cares nowadays for le clinquant du Tasse?” “Le clinquant du Tasse!” exclaimed Isaura, indignantly. “The expression is Boileau’s, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of the ‘Sot de qualite,’ who prefers-- “‘Le clinquant du Tasse a tout l’or de Virgile.’ “But for my part I have as little faith in the last as the first.” “I do not know Latin, and have therefore not read Virgil,” said Isaura. “Possibly,” remarked Graham, “Monsieur does not know Italian, and has therefore not read Tasso.” “If that be meant in sarcasm,” retorted Rameau, “I construe it as a compliment. A Frenchman who is contented to study the masterpieces of modern literature need learn no language and read no authors but his own.” Isaura laughed her pleasant silvery laugh. “I should admire the frankness of that boast, Monsieur, if in our talk just now you had not spoken as contemptuously of what we are accustomed to consider French masterpieces as you have done of Virgil and Tasso.” “Ah, Mademoiselle! it is not my fault if you have had teachers of taste so rococo as to bid you find masterpieces in the tiresome stilted tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Poetry of a court, not of a people, one simple novel, one simple stanza that probes the hidden recesses of the human heart, reveals the sores of this wretched social state, denounces the evils of superstition, kingcraft, and priestcraft, is worth a library of the rubbish which pedagogues call ‘the classics.’ We agree, at least, in one thing, Mademoiselle; we both do homage to the genius of your friend Madame de Grantmesnil.” “Your friend, Signorina!” cried Graham, incredulously; “is Madame de Grantmesnil your friend?” “The dearest I have in the world.” Graham’s face darkened; he turned away in silence, and in another minute vanished from the room, persuading himself that he felt not one pang of jealousy in leaving Gustave Rameau by the side of Isaura. “Her dearest friend Madame de Grantmesnil!” he muttered. A word now on Isaura’s chief correspondent. Madame de Grantmesnil was a woman of noble birth and ample fortune. She had separated from her husband in the second year after marriage. She was a singularly eloquent writer, surpassed among contemporaries of her sex in popularity and renown only by Georges Sand.