I accepted the invitation; and after exchanging my evening robe for a dressing-gown, hastened to the chamber. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I entered! She was seated on a richly embroidered cushion on the floor, dressed in Turkish fashion, loose trousers of gold-sprigged muslin, with a small fez of scarlet cloth on her head, and a jacket of the same colored velvet almost concealed beneath its golden embroidery; a splendid scimitar lay beside her, and a most costly pipe, in pure Turkish taste, which, however, she did not make use of, but smoked a small paper cigarette instead.

"Come, dearest," said she, "turn the key in the door, and light your cigar; here we are at length free and happy." It was in vain that I assured her I never had tried to smoke. At first she would n't believe, and then she actually screamed with laughter at me. "One would fancy," said she, "that you had only left England yesterday. Why, child, where have you lived and with whom?" I cannot go over all she said; nor need I repeat the efforts I made to palliate my want of knowledge of life, which she really appeared to grieve over. "I should never think of asking your sister here," said she; "there is a frivolity in all her gayety—a light-heartedness, without sentiment—that I cannot abide; but you, ma chère, you have a nature akin to my own. You ought, and, indeed, must be one of us."

So far as I could collect, Kitty,—for remember, I was smoking my first cigarette all this time, and not particularly clear of head,—there is a set in Parisian society, the most exclusive and refined of all, who have voted the emancipation of women from all the slavery and degradation to which the social usages of the world at large would condemn them. Rightly judging that the expansion of intelligence is to be acquired only in greater liberty of action, they have admitted them to a freer community and participation in the themes which occupy men's thoughts, and the habits which accompany their moods of reflection.

Gifted, as we confessedly are, with nicer and more acute perceptions, finer powers of discrimination and judgment, greater delicacy of feeling, and more apt appreciation of the beautiful and the true, why should we descend to an intellectual bondage? As dearest Josephine says, "Our influence, to be beneficial, should be candidly and openly exercised, not furtively practised, and cunningly insinuated. Let us leave these arts to women who want to rule their husbands; our destiny be it—to sway mankind!" Her theory, so far as I understand it, is that men will not endure petty rivalries, but succumb at once to superior attainments. Thus, your masculine young lady, Kitty,—your creature of boisterous manners, slang, and slap-dash,—is invariably a disgust; but your true "lionne," gifted yet graceful, possessing every manly accomplishment and yet employing her knowledge to enhance the charms of her society and render herself more truly companionable, the equal of men in culture, their superior in taste and refinement, exercises a despotic influence around her.

Men will quit the salon for the play-table. Let us, then, be gamblers for the nonce, and we shall not be deserted. They smoke, that they may get together and talk with a freedom and a license not used before us. Let us adopt the custom, and we are no longer debarred from their intimacy and the power of infusing the refining influences of our sex through their barbarism! As Josephine says, "We are the martyrs now, that we may be the masters hereafter!"

I grew very faint, once or twice, while she was talking; and, indeed, at last was obliged to lie down, and have my temples bathed with eau-de-Cologne, so that I unluckily lost many of her strongest arguments and happiest illustrations; but, from frequent conversations since, and from reading some of the beautiful romances of "Georges Sand," I have attained to, if not a full appreciation, at least an unbounded admiration of this beautiful system.

Have I forgotten to tell you that we met the Prince of Pontremoli on our way here?—a Serene Highness, Kitty! but as easy and as familiar as my brother James. The drollest thing is that he has lived while in England with all the "fast people," and only talks a species of conventional slang in vogue amongst them; but for all that he is delightful,—full of gayety and good spirits, and has the wickedest dark eyes you ever beheld.

Dear Josephine's caprices are boundless! Yesterday she read of a black Arabian that the Imaum of somewhere was sending as a present to General Lamoricière, and she immediately said, "Oh, the General is exiled now, he can't want a charger,—send and get him for me." Poor James is out all the morning in search of some one to despatch on this difficult service; but how it is to be accomplished—not to speak of where the money is to come from—is an unreadable riddle to

Your affectionate and devoted