rld of

Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of

Monseigneurforming a goodly half of the polite company

would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that

sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance,

owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of

bringing a troublesome creature into this worldwhich does not

go far towards the realisation of the name of motherthere was

no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the

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unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming

grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.

The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in

attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a

dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some

vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather

wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the halfdozen

had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists,

and were even then considering within themselves whether they

should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spotthereby

setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for

Monseigneur’s guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other

three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters

with a jargon abou