The Wichita daily eagle., 1894-01-28

| MES. 1LSAdA DO1lCu L II W . ~
much contemporaneously fashionable
| litera ture. Ever since NJ. Bourget came
! to New York, with letters of introduc-
| ton to the Astors and the Crugers and
| the Van Rensselaers and all the rest Of
! them, he has been gathering material
| for work of fiction, in accordance
with an assignment, to speak journal
istically, that was given him by we'll
known American Frenchman. But it
was not until chance remark of NJ.
Bourgeois own had enlightened some
| of the Four Hundred that the full sig
| niicance of that fact was realized.
| M. Bourget was at ball not many
days ago, at which he proved the terror
of the evening. Every New York
| woman of society present was in dread
lest she would be put in that forth
coming book which, as matter OF
course, will be so naughty as to be un-
reada BILE, or rather unprintable, in lit
eral English. However, even the ter
ror inspired by these considerations
was not sufficient to cause more than
! suppressed sensation. Now, how
ever, that affair has become terribly
serious. NJ. Bourget has selected one
/ of the most fashionable of New York's
fashiona BILE beauties as his heroine.
| She is Mrs. Fernando Yznaga.
This lady will surely live in the his
tory of the Four Hundred as the first
intellectual beauty that institution
has produced. Not only is she unusu-
ally well educated and women in the
Four Hundred have, as rule, no more
learning than is polite-but her ac-
| complishments are amazing. To her
Spinoza is the first reading book and
geometry an intellectual feather AS
for beauty-well. she could give odds
of nose and chin to Helen of Troy
and then beat her all to pieces, as they
say at the Union club.
When it began to be whispered that
IYznaga was to be done into copy
the men of the Four Hundred re-
solved to rescue her from a fate so
dire. All this time, be it understood,
the lady was innocent of any knowl-
edge of her coming doom. There was
consultation at the Union club, in
yhich wealthy and economical gen.
tleman in mourning was conspicuous.
The difficulty of the thing was how to
attain the object. Literary warfare is
not the strong point of the Four Hun
dred. In the midst of the talk an in
dividual whose wife also writes"
rushed in breathlessly to announce
that NJ. Bourget had selected another
victim-Mrs. Paran Stevens.
1t was really getting too awful, as
one of the party said subsequently.
He'd be having Ward McAllister next.
Here was an idea A committee Of
one was appointed to wait upon Nc
Allister But he was not in, and when
he heard what the trouble was it
seems he only smiled. And in the
midst of the agony came the news
that Mrs. Yznaga had heard all about
it and didn't care bit.
ONow the question of the hour ia:
What sort of a hero will he make for
these two ladies'? VIII Mrs. Yznaga
have it said of her that she ''pleurait
pleurait," as Herbert went away
''navre de douleur?" There are even
bets as to the ''bons mots' that will
be put into Mrs. Yznaga's S mouth and
the degrees of the ''agonie' which
is the back bone of the Bourget crea-
tion.
1t is understood that Mrs. Van Rens-
selaer Cruger first passed the tip
around among the Four Hundred as to
what Bourget was up to. But so far
there has been no direct evidence of
this.
Altogether, the Bourget episode is
York's aristocracy.