It is many years ago; I was but a child.

The Count de Chambord was then at that enervating little spa for the benefit of the Countess's health.
If our friend Lemercier does not mangle your name as he does mine, I understand him to say that you are the Marquis de Rochebriant." "That is my name: it pleases me to hear that my father was among those who flocked to Ems to do homage to the royal personage who deigns to assume the title of Count de Chambord." "My own ancestors clung to the descendants of James II.

till their claims were buried in the grave of the last Stuart, and I honour the gallant men who, like your father, revere in an exile the heir to their ancient kings." The Englishman said this with grace and feeling; the Marquis's heart warmed to him at once.
"The first loyal 'gentilhome' I have met at Paris," thought the Legitimist; "and, oh, shame! not a Frenchman!" Graham Vane, now stretching himself and accepting the cigar which Lemercier offered him, said to that gentleman "You who know your Paris by heart--everybody and everything therein worth the knowing, with many bodies and many things that are not worth it--can you inform me who and what is a certain lady who every fine day may be seen walking in a quiet spot at the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, not far from the Baron de Rothschild's villa?
The said lady arrives at this selected spot in a dark-blue coupe without armorial bearings, punctually at the hour of three.

She wears always the same dress,--a kind of gray pearl-coloured silk, with a 'cachemire' shawl.

In age she may be somewhat about twenty--a year or so more or less--and has a face as haunting as a Medusa's; not, however, a face to turn a man into a stone, but rather of the two turn a stone into a man.
A clear paleness, with a bloom like an alabaster lamp with the light flashing through.