Tel est la loi du monde: il en faut être esclave.
Facile à qui s'en rit, sévère à qui le brave,
Débonnaire et terrible, il ne compte pour rien
Qu'on se moque de lui, si l'on s'en moque bien:
Tout s'excuse ici bas, hormis la maladresse.

A. DE MUSSET.

DE CRESSY.

CHAPTER I.

Oh! if no faces were beheld on earth

But toiling Manhood and repining Age,
No welcome eyes of Innocence and Mirth
To look upon us kindly, who would wage.
The gloomy battle for himself alone?

Or through the dark of the o'erhanging cloud
Look wistfully for light? Who would not groan
Beneath his daily task, and weep aloud?

F. TENNYSON.

"WHY, De Cressy! - the last person in the world pected to meet!" "Well, Enmore?"

Such was the greeting exchanged between the two ng men, who met one hot June day in the most ded part of New Bond-street. Both the speakers, ever differing in other respects, were alike nguished by the air and carriage, more easily gnised than described, peculiar to Englishmen of birth.

"I thought it was you," resumed the first speaker, a still more, I thought it was your dog. Nettle ws at your heels as faithfully, and with as little uragement as ever. I declare, you deserve to lose

”

Cressy.

1

"You reverse the order of the proverb," said Lord De Cressy, drily; "with you it runs, 'Love my dog, love me.' "By no means; but the canine race is more easily recognised than the human in this whirl of life. Besides, I thought that you were half round the world by this time in India, or some other region remote from Bond-street. Have you dropped from the clouds, or rather, are you in the clouds still?"

"I crossed by the Dover packet last night." "Very matter of fact yet you have only answered the first part of my question, and not that fully. However, I am not surprised that you are bewildered by the noise; come with me to the Club, that we may have a little rational conversation."

But Lord De Cressy shook off his friend rather unceremoniously, saying that he had an appointment to keep, and he continued to thread his way through the throng, with Nettle at his heels. After crossing Grosvenor-square, he paused before the narrow entrance to the mews which run out of Audley-street, behind the south side of the square. He seemed perplexed, and did not turn down without consulting a direction, written in a lady's hand, which he then carefully replaced in his pocket-book. The corner house is, or was, a small grocer's shop, numbered in Audley-street, although the door opens into Adam's Mews.

Lord De Cressy entered the shop, and asked, in the tone of one who expects a negative reply, "Is this Mr. Lisle's?"

"Yes, sir; step up stairs, if you please," said the mistress of the shop. And she followed up the invitation by summoning an untidy maid-of-all-work "to show the gentleman up to the first-floor lodger's."