What could he be doing?
Inquiry resulted in the discovery that he passed nearly all his evenings at the house of the Marchioness d'Arlange.

The surprise was as great as it was natural.
This dear marchioness was, or rather is,--for she is still in the land of the living,--a personage whom one would consider rather out of date.
She is surely the most singular legacy bequeathed us by the eighteenth century.

How, and by what marvellous process she had been preserved such as we see her, it is impossible to say.

Listening to her, you would swear that she was yesterday at one of those parties given by the queen where cards and high stakes were the rule, much to the annoyance of Louis XIV., and where the great ladies cheated openly in emulation of each other.
Manners, language, habits, almost costume, she has preserved everything belonging to that period about which authors have written only to display the defects.

Her appearance alone will tell more than an exhaustive article, and an hour's conversation with her, more than a volume.
She was born in a little principality, where her parents had taken refuge whilst awaiting the chastisements and repentance of an erring and rebellious people.