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THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZIR.

BY OUIDA.

BON AMI, do you consider the possession of sisters an agrément to anybody's existence? I hold it very intensely the reverse. Who puts a man down so spitefully as his sisters? Who refuses so obstinately to see any good in the Nazarene they have known from their nurseries? Who snubs him so contumaciously, when he's a little chap in jackets and they young ladies already out? Who worries him so pertinaciously to marry their pet friend," who has ten thousand a year, dear! Red hair, Cyril? I'm sure she has not! It's the most lovely auburn! But you never see any beauty in refined women; you care for nothing but danseuses and such people-odious, low creatures !" Who, if you incline towards a pretty little ineligible, rakes up so laboriously every scrap of gossip detrimental to her, and pours into your ear the delightful intelligence that she has been engaged to Powell of the Greys, is a shocking flirt, wears false braids, and has most objectionable connexions? Who, I should like to know, does any and all of these things, my good fellow, so amiably and unremittingly as your sisters ? till-some day of grace, perhaps you make a telling speech at St. Stephen's, and fling a second-hand aroma of distinction upon them; or marry a co-heiress and lady-in-her-own-right, and they raffolent of that charming creature Adeliza, speculating on the desirability of being invited to your house when the men are down for September-then, what a dear fellow you become! they always were so fond of you! a little wild! oh yes! but they are so glad you are changed, and think more seriously now! it was only from a real interest in your welfare that they used to grieve," &c. &c. &c.

My sisters were my natural enemies, I remember, c'est-à-dire, when I was in the daisy age and exposed to their thraldom; they were so blandly superior, so ineffably condescending, and wielded, with such smiling dexterity, that feminine power of torture known familiarly as "nagging!" Now, of course, they leave me in peace, only decree me en petit comité a "terrible mauvais sujet," quite irreclaimable! and trouble me no more, save when they beg me to choose a riding-horse for them in the Yard, or give them a good place in the inner circle at a review. But from my earliest to my emancipated years they were my natural enemies. I might occasionally excite the enmity, it is possible. I remember when I was aged eight, covering Constance, a stately brune incapable of dérèglement, with a mortifying amount of confusion, by asking her, as she welcomed Mrs. Breloque with effusion, why she said she was delighted to see her when she had cried "There's that odious woman again!" as we saw the carriage drive up. I have a criminal recollection of taking Gwendolina's fan, fresh from Howell and James's,

and stripping it of its gold-powdered down before her face ere she could rush to its rescue, as an invaluable medium in the manufacture of flies. I also have a dim and guilty recollection of saying to the Hon. George Cursitt, standing then in the interesting position of my prospective beaufrère," Mr. Cursitt, Agneta doesn't care one straw for you. I heard her saying so last night to Con; and that if you weren't so near the title, she would never have accepted you;" which revelation inopportunely brought that desirable alliance to an end, and Olympian thunders on my culprit's head. I had my sins, sans doute, but they were more than avenged on me; my sisters were my natural enemies, and I never knew of any man's who weren't so, more or less. Ah! my good sirs, those domesticities are all of them horrid bores, and how any man happily and thrice blessedly free from them can take the very worst of them voluntarily on his head by the Gate of Marriage (which differs thus remarkably from a certain Gate at Jerusalem, that at the one the camels kneel down to be lightened of all their burdens ere they can pass through it; at the other, the poor human animal kneels down to be loaded with all his ere he is permitted to enter), does pass my comprehension, I confess. I might amply avenge the injuries of my boyhood received from mesdemoiselles mes sœurs. Could I not tell Gwendolina of the pot of money dropped by her caro sposo over the Cæsarewitch Stakes? Could I not intimate to Agneta where her Right Honourable lord and master spent the small hours last night, when popularly supposed to be nodding on the Treasury benches in the service of the state? Could I not rend the pride of Constance, by casually asking monsieur son mari, as I sip her coffee in her drawing-room this evening, who was that very pretty blonde with him in Regent-street yesterday? the blonde being as well known about town as any other star of the demi-monde. Of course I could: but I am magnanimous; I can too thoroughly sympathise with those poor fellows' keen relish for cutlets and claret in the old garçon-peace at White's or the Conservative, to have any hand in supplying les trois dames with any additional gall and aloes to embitter further the dreary turtle and turbot of their respective matrimonial tête-à-tête. My vengeance would recoil on innocent heads, so I am magnanimous and silent. My sisters have long ceased to be mesdemoiselles, they have become mesdames, in that transforming crucible of marriage in which, assuredly, all that glitters is not gold, but in which much is swamped, and crushed, and fused with uncongenial metal, and from which the elixir of happiness but rarely exhales, whatever feminine alchemists, who patronise the hymeneal furnace, may choose to assure us to the contrary. My sisters are indisputably very fine women, and, as femmes du monde, develop in full bloom all those essential qualities which their moral and mental trainers sedulously instilled into them when they were limited to the schoolroom and thorough-bass; Garcia and an "expurgated" Shakspeare; the society of Mademoiselle Colletmonté and Fräulein von Engel; and the occasional refection of a mild, religious, respectably-twaddling fiction of the milk-and-water, pioustendency, nursery-chronicling, and grammar-disregarding class, now-adays indited for the mental improvement of a common-place generation in general, and growing young ladies in particular. My sisters are women of the world, as I say, to perfection; indeed, for talent in re

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frigerating with a glance; in expressing disdain of a toilette or a ton by an upraised eyebrow; in assuming a various impenetrable plaît-il? expression at a moment's notice; in sweeping past intimate friends with a charming unconsciousness of their existence, when such unconsciousness is expedient or desirable; in reducing an unwished-for intruder into an instantaneous and agonising sense of his own de trop-ism and insignificance-in all such accomplishments and acquirements necessary to existence in all proper mondes, I think they may be matched with the bestbred lady to be found any day, from April to August, between Berkeleysquare and Wilton-crescent. Constance, now Lady Maréchale, is of a saintly turn, and touched with fashionable fanaticism, pets evangelical bishops and ragged-school boys (Cliquot and Crême de Bouzy for the one, bohea and buns for the others), drives to special services, and is called our noble and Christian patroness by physicians and hon. secs., holds doctrinal points and strong tracts, mixed together in equal proportion, an infallible chloride of lime for the disinfectance of our polluted globe, and appears to receive celestial telegrams of indisputable veracity and charming acrimony concerning the destiny of the vengeful contents of the Seven Vials. Agneta-now Mrs. Albany Protocolis a Cabinet Ministress, and a second Duchesse de Longueville (in her own estimation at the least); is "strengthening her party" when she issues her dinner invitations, whispers awfully of a "crisis" when even penny-paper leaders can't get up a breeze, and spends her existence in "pushing" poor Protocol, who, pur Anglais that he is, considers it a point of honour to stand still in all paths with praiseworthy Britannic obstinacy and opticism. Gwendolina-now Lady Frederic Farniente-is a butterfly of fashion, has delicate health, affects dilettanteism, is interested by nothing, has many other charming minauderies, and lives in an exclusive circle-so tremendously exclusive, indeed, that it is possible she may at last draw the cordon sanitaire so very tight, that she will be left alone with the pretty woman her mirrors reflect.

They have each of them attained to what the world calls a "good position"- —an eminence the world dearly reveres; if you can climb to it, lecteur or lectrice, do; never mind what dirt may cling to your feet, or what you may chance to pull down in your ascent, no questions will be asked you at the top, when you wave your flag victoriously from a plateau at a good elevation. They haven't all their ambitions-who has? If a fresh Alexander conquered the world he would fret out his life for a standing-place to be able to try Archimedes' little experiment on his newly-won globe. Lady Maréchale dies for entrance to certain salons which are closed to her; she is but a Baronet's wife, and though so heavenly-minded, has some weaknesses of earth. Mrs. Protocol grieves because she thinks a grateful country ought to wreathe her lord's brow with laurels-Anglice, strawberry-leaves-and the country remains ungrateful, and the brows bare. Lady Frederic frets because her foe and rival à outrance, Lady Maria Fitz-Sachet, has footmen an inch taller than her own. They haven't all their ambitions satisfied. We are too occupied with kicking our dear friends and neighbours down off the rounds of the social ladder to advance ourselves always perhaps as entirely as we otherwise might do. But still they occupy "unexceptionable positions," and from those fortified and impregnable citadels are very

severe upon those who are not, and very jealous of those who are, similarly favoured by fortune. (When St. Peter lets ladies through the celestial portals, he'll never please them unless he locks out all their acquaintance, and indulges them with a gratifying peep at the rejected candidates.) The triad regard each other after the manner of ladies: c'est-à-dire, Lady Maréchale holds Mrs. Protocol and Lady Frederic "frivolous and worldly;" Lady Frederic gives them both one little supercilious expressive epithet, "précieuses;" Mrs. Protocol considers Lady Maréchale a pharisee," and Lady Frederic a "butterfly ;"-en un mot, there is that charming family love to one another which ladies so delight to evince, that I suppose we must excuse them for it on the plea that

"Tis their nature to!

which Dr. Watts puts forward so amiably and grammatically in excuse for the bellicose propensities of the canine race, but which is never remembered by priest or layman in extenuation of the human. They dislike one another que voulez-vous?-relatives always do-still, the three Arms will combine their Horse, Line, and Field batteries in a common cause and against a common enemy; the Saint, the Politician, and the Butterfly have several rallying-points in common, and when it comes to the question of extinguishing an ineligible, of combining a sneer with a smile, of blending the unexceptionably-courteous with the indescribably-contemptuous, of calmly shutting their doors to those who won't aggrandise them, and blandly throwing them open to those who will, it would be an invidious task to give the golden apple, and decide which of the three ladies most distinguishes herself in such social prowess.

Need I say, ami lecteur, that I don't see very much of mesdames mes sœurs ?-severe strictures on society in general, with moral platitudes concerning the "debasing tendency of that demoralising, senseless, pitiable waste of time and money" (which phrase is conveniently applied by ladies either to smoking or the turf, as may be needed), over the luncheon wines at Lady Maréchale's; discourse redolent of blue-books and bas bleus, with vindictive hits at Protocol and myself for our disinclination to accept a "mission," and our levity of life and opinions at "a period so full of social revolutions and wide-spread agitation as the present," through the soup and fish at Agneta's; softly hissed acerbities and languidly yawned satires on the prettiest women of my acquaintance, over the coffee at Lady Frederic's-are none of them particularly inviting or alluring. And as they or similar conversational confections are invariably included in the menu of each of the three ladies' entertainments en petit comité, it isn't wonderful if I forswear their salons, save occasionally when those salons are crammed for a crush or a drum. Chères dames, you complain en masse, and your chosen defenders for you, that we don't affect your society now-a-days save and except when making love to you. It isn't our fault, indeed: you bore us, and-what can we do ?-we shrink as naturally and pardonably from voluntary boredom as from any other voluntary suffering, and shirk an air redolent of ennui from the same prin ciple as we do an air redolent of diphtheria. Self-preservation is a law of nature, and female society consists too exclusively of milk-and-water, dashed here and there with citric acid of malice, to be either a recherché

or refreshing beverage to palates that have tasted warmer spices or more wholesome tonics.

So I don't see much of mesdames mes sœurs beyond crossing them ac cidentally in the season, but last August I encountered them by chance at Vicq d'Azyr. Do you know Vicq d'Azyr? No? Tant mieux! when it is known universally it will be spoilt; it will soon be fashionable, dyspeptic, artificial, like the crowds that will flock to it; its warm, bubbling springs will be gathered into long upright glasses, and quaffed by yellow-visaged groups; brass-bands will bray where now the thrushes, orioles, and nightingales have the woodlands to themselves; cavalcades of hired hacks will cut up its thyme-covered turf, and young ladies smiling on the "dear Baron," or M. le Comte, will sketch in tortured outline and miserable washes the glorious sweep of its mountains, the crimson tints of its forests, the rush of its tumbling torrents, the golden gleam of its southern sun. Vicq d'Azyr will be a Spa, and will be spoilt; dyspepsia and bronchia, vanities and flirtations, cares and conquests, physicians and intrigantes, real marchionesses puffing under asthma, fictitious marquises strewing chaff for pigeons, monde and demi-monde, grandes dames and dames d'industrie will float into it, a mighty army of butterflies with a locust-power of destruction, Vicq d'Azyr will be no more, and in its stead we shall have-a Fashionable Bath. But,

Non è prudenza

Ma follia de' mortali

L'arte crudel di presagirsi i mali.

"Au diable soit l'avenir!" Vicq d'Azyr is free yet from the hand of the spoiler, and is charming,-its vine-clad hills stretching up in sunny slopes; its little homesteads nestling on the mountains' sides among the pines that load the air with their rich heavy perfume; its torrents foaming down the ravines, flinging their snowy spray far over the boughs of arbutus and mountain-ash that bend across the brinks of their rushing courses; its dark-eyed peasant-girls that dance at sunset under the lindentrees like living incarnations of Florian's pastorals; its sultry brilliant summer nights, when all is still, when the birds are sleeping among the ilex-leaves, and the wind barely stirs the tangled boughs of the woodland; when night is down on the mountains, wrapping hill and valley, crag and forest in one soft purple mist, and the silence around is only broken by the mystic music of the rushing waters, the soft whirr of the night-birds' wings, or the distant chime of a village clock faintly tolling through the air--Caramba, messieurs! I beg your pardon! I don't know why I poetise in Vicq d'Azyr. I went there to slay, not to sketch, with a rifle, not with a stylus, to kill izzards and chamois, not to indite a poem à la mode, with double-barrelled adjectives, no metre, and a "purpose," nor to add my quota to the luckless loaded walls of the Academy by a pre-Raphaelite landscape of arsenical green, with the effete trammels of perspective gallantly disregarded, and trees like Dr. Syntax's wife, "roundabout and rather squat," with just two-dozen-and-seven leaves apiece for liberal allowance. I went to Vicq d'Azyr, amongst other places, last August, for chamois-hunting with Dunbar, of the Queen's Bays, taking up our abode at the Toison d'Or, whither all artists, tourists, men who come for the sport, women who come for its scenery,