To see Louise Guerin quietly seated in my mother’s room, was as electrifying as if you, on going home some morning, were to find Irene de Chateaudun engaged in smoking one of your cigars.  Did some strange chance, some machiavellian combination introduce Louise at Richeport?  I shall soon know.

What a queer way to avoid men, to take up one’s abode among them!  Only prudes have such ideas.  At any rate it is a gross insult to my powers of fascination.  I am not such a patriarch as all that!  My head still counts a few hairs, and I can walk very well without a cane!

What does it matter, after all?  Louise lives under the same roof with me, my mother treats her in the most gracious manner, like an equal.  And, indeed, one would be deceived by her; she seems more at her ease here than at Madame Taverneau’s, and what would be a restraint on a woman of her class, on the contrary gives her more liberty.  Her manners have become charming, and I often ask myself if she is not the daughter of one of Madame de Meilhan’s friends.  With wonderful tact she immediately put herself in unison with her surroundings; women alone can quickly become acclimated in a higher sphere.  A man badly brought up always remains a booby.  Any danseuse taken from the foot-lights of the Opera by the caprice of a great lord, can be made a fine lady.  Nature has doubtless provided for these sudden elevations of fortune by bestowing upon women that marvellous facility of passing from one position to another without exhibiting surprise or being thrown out of their element.  Put Louise into a carriage having a countess’s crown upon the panel of the door, and no one would doubt her rank.  Speak to her, and she would reply as if she had had the most brilliant education.  The auspicious opening of a flower transplanted into a soil that suits it, shone through Louise’s whole being.  My manner towards her partakes of a tenderer playfulness, a more affectionate gallantry.  After all, Richeport is better than Pont de l’Arche, for there is nothing like fighting on your own ground.

Come then, my friend, and be a looker-on at the courteous tournay.  We expect Raymond every day; we have all sorts of paradoxes to convert into truths; your insight into such matters might assist us. A bientot.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN.

XVII.

IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN to MME. LA VICOMTESSE DE BRAIMES,
Hotel of the Prefecture, Grenoble (Isere).

RICHEPORT, June 29th 18—.

I am at Richeport, at Madame de Meilhan’s house!...  This astonishes you, ... so it does me; you don’t understand it, ... neither do I. The fact is, that when you can’t control events, the best thing to be done is to let events control you.