It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did not

by any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest with her admirable, her

respectable, relative. On the contrary, the fury of the old spinster

was beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca's situation, and how

audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's name, to get an entree

into Parisian society. Too much shaken in mind and body to compose a

letter in the French language in reply to that of her correspondent,

she dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue,

repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning the public to

beware of her as a most artful and dangerous person. But as Madame the

Duchess of X--had only been twenty years in England, she did not

understand a single word of the language, and contented herself by

informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next meeting, that she had

received a charming letter from that chere Mees, and that it was full

of benevolent things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to have

hopes that the spinster would relent.

Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen: and

had a little European congress on her reception-night. Prussians and

Cossacks, Spanish and English--all the world was at Paris during this

famous winter: to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's humble

saloon would have made all Baker Street pale with envy. Famous warriors

rode by her carriage in the Bois, or crowded her modest little box at

the Opera. Rawdon was in the highest spirits. There were no duns in

Paris as yet: there were parties every day at Very's or Beauvilliers';

play was plentiful and his luck good. Tufto perhaps was sulky. Mrs.

Tufto had come over to Paris at her own invitation, and besides this

contretemps, there were a score of generals now round Becky's chair,

and she might take her choice of a dozen bouquets when she went to the

play. Lady Bareacres and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and

irreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the success of the

little upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled in

their chaste breasts. But she had all the men on her side. She fought

the women with indomitable courage, and they could not talk scandal in

any tongue but their own.

So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of 1815-16 passed

away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who accommodated herself to polite life

as if her ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--and

who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited a place of honour

in Vanity Fair. In the early spring of 1816, Galignani's Journal

contained the following announcement in an interesting corner of the

paper: "On the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel Crawley,

of the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir."




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