THE HANDSOME MODEL. 



Entrez ! entrez ! Monsieur Rossignol we are right glad to see 

 you in England. To confess the truth, we were just on the brink of 

 importing you ourself, when all of a sudden you unexpectedly start 

 up before us, clad in an English attire, and surrounded by those in 

 whose society we first made your acquaintance. It will rejoice us to 

 introduce you to our friends, but we must necessarily keep you 

 waiting for a brief space, while we explain who these people are 

 among whom you are seen. It will not do merely to say this is 

 Pere Bernard, the water-carrier this Manette, his pretty daughter 

 this Andrew the Savoyard, and this Monsieur Pierre, his good- 

 natured brother we owe it to those among whom you will in future 

 live, to tell them, not merely who your companions are, but what 

 they have been. 



Let us fancy ourselves among the precipices, in the vicinity of 

 Mont Blanc little Andrew and Pierre, with half-frozen fingers, are 

 pelting each other with snow-balls. What glorious sport! But 

 every thing pleasant must have a termination. Their mother calls 

 them day is deserting them the light is going out in the midst of 

 the game, and they must be off to bed. The felicity of supper has, 

 however, to intervene, and while gobbling down their coarse soup, 

 they hear cries of distress. Out rushes their father, and soon returns 

 with a gentleman, his valet, and a lovely little girl fast asleep. In 

 another moment the postillion would have dashed over a precipice, 

 but Georget, the boys' father, saves them, and they are compelled to 

 pass the night in his cottage. The gentleman is one-eyed, horribly 

 selfish, and very sulky; he is a Count, though the Compte de 

 Francornard ; the valet is Monsieur Champagne, his rascally valet ; 

 the little girl Adolphine, his exquisite little daughter. The Countess, 

 a beautiful and accomplished young woman, patronizes one Dermilly, 

 a painter : they are always sketching together the Count can never 

 catch his wife, poor man ! They are very good friends, but he finds 

 it remarkably difficult to see her. If while sojourning at Paris, he 

 hears that she is on a visit to any friend's chateau in the country, he 

 he instantly sets out post-haste to pounce upon her ; but two days 

 before his arrival, she invariably starts for a distant part of the 

 country. He has, however, by extraordinary good luck, lately 

 surprised her, and by a splendid project flatters himself that he has 

 completely turned the tables that henceforth she will run after 

 him for he has purloined the child, to whom she is devotedly 

 attached. 



During the night Georget breaks his head in clambering over the 

 precipices to fetch a smith the Count's carriage being broken. At 

 day-break the visiters depart, accidentally leaving a miniature which 

 had been suspended round Adolphine's neck. With this, Andrew 

 and Pierre their father having died, and their mother being unable 

 to support them set out for Paris, there to make fortunes by the 

 glorious art of chimney-sweeping. Shortly after their arrival in the 



