More torturing than all else to the man’s innermost heart was the consciousness that he had not conquered, could not conquer, the yearning love with which Isaura had inspired him, and yet that against such love all his reasonings, all his prejudices, more stubbornly than ever were combined. In the French newspapers which he had glanced over while engaged in his researches in Germany-nay, in German critical journals themselves--he had seen so many notices of the young author,--highly eulogistic, it is true, but which to his peculiar notions were more offensive than if they had been sufficiently condemnatory of her work to discourage her from its repetition; notices which seemed to him the supreme impertinences which no man likes exhibited towards the woman to whom he would render the chivalrous homage of respect. Evidently this girl had become as much public property as if she had gone on the stage. Minute details of her personal appearance,--of the dimples on her cheek, of the whiteness of her arms, of her peculiar way of dressing her hair; anecdotes of her from childhood (of course invented, but how could Graham know that?); of the reasons why she had adopted the profession of author instead of that of the singer; of the sensation she had created in certain salons (to Graham, who knew Paris so well, salons in which he would not have liked his wife to appear); of the compliments paid to her by grands seigneurs noted for their liaisons with ballet-dancers, or by authors whose genius soared far beyond the flammantia maenia of a world confined by respect for one’s neighbours’ land-marks,--all this, which belongs to ground of personal gossip untouched by English critics of female writers, ground especially favoured by Continental, and, I am grieved to say, by American journalists,--all this was to the sensitive Englishman much what the minute inventory of Egeria’s charms would have been to Numa Pompilius. The nymph, hallowed to him by secret devotion, was vulgarized by the noisy hands of the mob, and by the popular voices, which said, “We know more about Egeria than you do.” And when he returned to England, and met with old friends familiar to Parisian life, who said, “of course you have read the Cicogna’s roman. What do you think of it? Very fine writing, I dare say, but above me. I go in for ‘Les Mysteres de Paris’ or ‘Monte Cristo;’ but I even find Georges Sand a bore,” then as a critic Graham Vane fired up, extolled the roman he would have given his ears for Isaura never to have written; but retired from the contest muttering inly, “How can I--I, Graham Vane--how can I be such an idiot; how can I in every hour of the twenty-four sigh to myself, ‘What are other women to me? Isaura, Isaura!’” BOOK VII. CHAPTER I.