cut a ball in half at ten paces on the blade of a knife; he rode his
horse in a way that made you realize the fable of the Centaur; drove a
four-in-hand with grace; was as light as a cherub and quiet as a lamb,
but knew how to beat a townsman at the terrible game of _savate_ or
cudgels; moreover, he played the piano in a fashion which would have
enabled him to become an artist should he fall on calamity, and owned
a voice which would have been worth to Barbaja fifty thousand francs a
season. Alas, that all these fine qualities, these pretty faults, were
tarnished by one abominable vice: he believed neither in man nor
woman, God nor Devil. Capricious nature had commenced by endowing him,
a priest had completed the work.

To render this adventure comprehensible, it is necessary to add here
that Lord Dudley naturally found many women disposed to reproduce
samples of such a delicious pattern. His second masterpiece of this
kind was a young girl named Euphemie, born of a Spanish lady, reared
in Havana, and brought to Madrid with a young Creole woman of the
Antilles, and with all the ruinous tastes of the Colonies, but
fortunately married to an old and extremely rich Spanish noble, Don
Hijos, Marquis de San-Real, who, since the occupation of Spain by
French troops, had taken up his abode in Paris, and lived in the Rue
St. Lazare. As much from indifference as from any respect for the
innocence of youth, Lord Dudley was not in the habit of keeping his
children informed of the relations he created for them in all parts.
That is a slightly inconvenient form of civilization; it has so many
advantages that we must overlook its drawbacks in consideration of its
benefits. Lord Dudley, to make no more words of it, came to Paris in
1816 to take refuge from the pursuit of English justice, which
protects nothing Oriental except commerce. The exiled lord, when he
saw Henri, asked who that handsome young man might be. Then, upon