_Quod erat demonstrandum_--if one may be
permitted to apply scholastic formulae to the science of manners.
Upon one of those fine spring mornings, when the leaves, although
unfolded, are not yet green, when the sun begins to gild the roofs,
and the sky is blue, when the population of Paris issues from its
cells to swarm along the boulevards, glides like a serpent of a
thousand coils through the Rue de la Paix towards the Tuileries,
saluting the hymeneal magnificence which the country puts on; on one
of these joyous days, then, a young man as beautiful as the day
itself, dressed with taste, easy of manner--to let out the secret he
was a love-child, the natural son of Lord Dudley and the famous
Marquise de Vordac--was walking in the great avenue of the Tuileries.
This Adonis, by name Henri de Marsay, was born in France, when Lord
Dudley had just married the young lady, already Henri's mother, to an
old gentleman called M. de Marsay. This faded and almost extinguished
butterfly recognized the child as his own in consideration of the life
interest in a fund of a hundred thousand francs definitively assigned
to his putative son; a generosity which did not cost Lord Dudley too
dear. French funds were worth at that time seventeen francs, fifty
centimes. The old gentleman died without having ever known his wife.
Madame de Marsay subsequently married the Marquis de Vordac, but
before becoming a marquise she showed very little anxiety as to her
son and Lord Dudley.
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