young lady, and, om the same occasion, sends
a slightly poetised inventory of his own fortune.
If he, likewise, have expectations in the shape of
a father and mother to bury, he adds his
expectations to the account. The negotiations as to
the dowry advance but slowly with either party.
When the matrimonial diplomacy is concluded to
their mutual satisfaction, the bridegroom obtains
the signal favour of an interview with the
damsel bargained for. He arrives at the
rendezvous, in the official costume of a candidate—
fresh frizzled hair, white cravat, marsala waistcoat,
and watch-chain looped in front. May he
have deserved of his country sufficiently well
to have also a ribbon at his button-hole!
With a smile on his lip he steps into his lady-
love's drawing-room. He is clever: at least he
should be so for that day, even if he fall back
into his natural element on the morrow. His
conversation is inspired; he discourses music,
poetry, and the lovely sky of Italy. Meanwhile,
the damsel, seated at a corner of the window,
with the modesty of a well-bred bride, stitches,
embroiders, turns red and white by turns,
replies in monosyllables, and thinks about the
novel she is reading in secret.

The trial-scene is repeated once or twice
more, perhaps thrice; four times, to be strictly
correct. At the fourth interview, the lover
executes a coup d'état; he ventures to offer
the fair one a five-franc bouquet. Out of
gratitude for this chivalrous act, Mademoiselle
goes so far as to murder Beethoven's Pastoral
Symphony on the piano, for the express benefit
of her authorised adorer. After this summary
protocol, the bride's family urges on the signature
of the marriage-contract. The next day, a
"lettre de faire part," on satin paper, publishes
the news that Such-a-one, Chevalier of the
Legion of Honour, espouses Such-a-one, legitimate
daughter of So-and-so, at the church of
such a parish. The bride beams with happiness;
she displays the contents of her " corbeille de
noce " down, to their most private details, such
as the nightcap and chemisette trimmed with
lace, and the morning dressing-gown. But in this
rapid confrontation of the husband and wife
before the nuptial benediction, have they had time
to discover on each other's foreheads, by some
somnambulistic process, the hidden mystery of
their sympathies? "I don't know you—you
don't know me. What does it signify? You
will know me by-and-by. But if we are
mistaken in each other; if the spirit of variety,
which presided at the Creation, has moulded us
out of antipathetic clay—you of scepticism, me
of enthusiasm? Well! With Heaven's blessing,
we have our whole lives before us to get used
to the error."

Two young men were sitting in a fashionable
circulating library.

"How much do you marry?" said one to the
other.

"A hundred thousand francs," his friend
replied.

"Confess, Messieurs," interposed the
mistress of the establishment, " that if you could
marry the fortune without the lady, you would
greatly prefer that arrangement."

"You are right," assented the first speaker.

And yet they both were young and in easy
circumstances: at least to judge from their stylish
appearance. " How much do you marry?" is
the password of a certain portion of Young
France. They consider marriage as a branch of
the Bourse, and as a last resource for paying
the tailor. But what prospects are in store
for the girl who is dependent on a man who has
taken her by estimate, for the making up of
a budget exhausted by dissipation? The
husband, once set up again, will return to the
habits of his youth, with all the ardour of a
lucky gamester for pleasures abstained from
for economical reasons. He will go to the club,
the café, the Bois de Boulogne; in the evening
to the theatre, in a latticed box. He will leave
home early and return late, to escape from the
ennui, the burden of his house, from himself,
from his wife, whose looks are a reflexion of the
remorse he feels within.

Open any report of judicial statistics, and you
will see a progressive increase of actions for
separation, and murders for jealousy; which
mean that the husband forgets his wife, and
that the wife in turn forgets her husband; that
the heart ought to have its share in the marriage-
contract, and that if its claims be denied, it
will go and seek what it wants, elsewhere. To
save a country, you must save the sanctity of
family ties; for a nation is nothing but an
extensive family. It should never be forgotten
that dissipation is the preparatory school for
servitude. Venice knew it by experience when
she made the carnival the first article of the
constitution of despotism.

There is one special season of the year when
the Parisian mandarins of high degree allow
themselves unwonted licence at the very
carnival alluded to. Did you ever hear a description
of a masked ball given by one of the
princes of the bank or of diplomacy? You
behold there, it appears, a quantity of abstract
and concrete poesies realised by milliners:
Nights, that is petticoats, besprinkled with
stars; Auroras, that is, pink satin corsets, from
which the disk of the sun is emerging; Snows
and Lightnings, that is to say, tufts of eiderdown
and zigzag red and orange ribbons. An
original lady has appeared as a Windmill.
One year, the hero of a masked ball was an
American of Homeric stature and herculean
muscularity. He was announced as " The
Devil, in his wedding dress." He wore tight
satin small-clothes and waistcoat, and on his
forehead a pair of diamond horns. The ladies
mounted on their chairs, to admire this brilliant
specimen of the Yankee race.

After supper, towards cock-crow, when the
truffled paté, the Tokay wine, the blood heated
by the dance, the gas, the music, the dust, the
flowers, and other electric miasms which load the
atmosphere, have sufficiently stirred up the
courage of the Snows, the Naids, and the Nights, by a
tacit accord they shake off etiquette, and dance