monstrosities—a drunken Frenchman; but he
was a better spy when intoxicated than when
sober.

ln the spring of 1831, Valérie, being then
in her twenty-first year. made her first
appearance at the Folies Dramatiques. She came
out in some sanguinolent drama of the then
new romantic school. She represented some
great wicked lady covered with guilt and
diamonds,and created a furore. The wickedness
she was enabled to portray with rare fidelity
from her accurate observation of human nature.
It was J. B. Constant who found the
diamonds. The money he had received from the
sale of the inn at Marouille was all gone by this
time. He was taking up money at a hundred
per cent from the usurers. He had borrowed
from his sister all she could afford to lend, and
more; but Valérie wanted diamonds, real
diamonds—she laughed paste to scorn—and she had
them. If she had ordered J. B. Constant to forge
the name of M. Jacques Lafitte to bills to the
extent of five hundred thousand francs, with a
certainty of the court of assizes, the pillory, and
the galleys, in perpetuity, commencing from the
very next day, he would have obeyed her.

She was soon engaged at a handsome salary,
at the Porte St. Martin. Her wish was
attained. She was free and independent; but
she did not offer to give back to J. B.
Constant the money he had spent on her education,
or the diamonds he had lavished upon
her. On the contrary, she wanted more
diamonds from him, and she had them. J. B.
Constant was living, in usurers' clutches, at the rate
of fifty thousand francs a year, and his clothes
were growing shabby, and he dined every day at
a restaurant for thirty-two sous.

Valérie played in a piece in which she had
to wear a robe of flame-coloured satin, and to
show a considerable amount of her legs. Paris
was entranced. A sculptor modelled the legs, in
wax, and they were exhibited, under a glass case,
in the Galerie d'Orléans. Her bust was carved.
Her portrait was lithographed. Béranger went
to see her. His criticism was conclusive, but
not complimentary. "Vous n'êtes pas Lisette,"
he murmured, and walked out of the box. The
romancer, M. Honoré de Balzac, then beginning
to make his way in literature, looked at her, long
and anxiously, through his opera-glass. "She is a
Cossack in petticoats," he said, "and will occupy
Paris."

Up to this time she seemed impregnable.
Diamonds, from other quarters than poor Constant,
were laid at her feet. She took them up and
laughed in the face of the donors. She had a
wonderful power of digestion. She took everything
—songs, dedications, money, jewels,
bouquets,love-letters, compliments, and gave
nothing in return, but scorn. She was a
Bacchantein cold blood. She was Venus rising from
the ice.

At this time there was a great English dandy
in Paris, by the name of Blunt. The French had
got it into their heads that he was "Sir François
Blunt, Baronet;" but, titled or untitled, they
persisted in declaring him to be the wealthiest
and most sumptuous of milords. He lived in
great state, on a first floor in the Rue de la
Madeleine. He associated with all the English
aristocracy resident in or visiting Paris. He
played high, at Frascati's and elsewhere. He had
his baignoires at the little theatres. He gave
his dinners at Véfour's, or the Rocher de
Cancale; he gave his suppers at the Café Anglais.
He drove a four-in-hand—a vehicle the Parisians
had never set eyes upon before—a cabriolet, a
phaeton, a dog-cart—he drove anything you
please. He was a capital French scholar, and a
great favourite in women's society. He could
ply the small-sword if challenged, and could hit
the ace of hearts thrown up in the air, with a
pistol-shot at fifty paces.

Blunt, was a great play-goer. He went to the
Porte St. Martin to see the actress after whom
all Paris was flocking. It is not very difficult for
an Englishman, who is cultivated and fashionable,
and is supposed to be rich, to procure an
introduction to a French actress. He was in a short
time permitted to make his obeisance to Valérie.
There was a quiet mocking manner about him, a
polished impertinence, which at first pleased her
infinitely.

"At all events," she said, with an engaging
candour to Constant, in one of the rare audiences
she now granted him in the forenoon, and in her
boudoir, "he is neither imbecile, like the young
Frenchmen who buzz about me, nor ridiculous,
like the English dandies. If he is insolent, he is
witty. If he can give sharp stabs, he can take
them. He pleases me, ce Sir Blunt."

She believed in the stories of his rank and
wealth, although she often said that it mattered
little to her whether the man she chose to favour
was a prince or a rag-picker. She determined,
on New Year's Day, 1832, to give a grand supper
in a gorgeous new suite of apartments she had
taken in the Chausseé d' Antin. Half the fashionable
roué's and actresses in Paris were to be there.
She was good enough to ask Constant to come—
and also to condescend to borrow from him a
thousand francs towards the expenses of the
entertainment. Constant gave her the money,
and found himself at four in the afternoon of the
day on which the party was to come off, with
exactly twenty-seven francs in his pocket. He
was proceeding to dine at his usual thirty-two
sous restaurant in the Rue de I'Ancienne Comédie,
when he was arrested on two bills of
exchange for ten thousand francs each, held by
one Nabal Pixérifort, a Jew, and was carried off
to a debtors' prison.

Soon other judgments crowded in upon him,
and he found himself detained for a total of sixty
thousand francs. As a foreigner, he was liable
to lie in prison for a long term of years, his
creditors being merely bound to pay a sum of
ninepence-halfpenny per diem for his maintenance;
but fortunately he had not been