“You have become to me almost my judge,” she said, with a desperate air.  “I must speak now, in virtue of the right that all calumniated beings have to show their innocence.  I have been, I am still (if a poor recluse forced by the world to renounce the world is still remembered) accused of such light conduct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I cannot be driven.  Hitherto I have always considered self-justification an insult to innocence; and that is why I have disdained to defend myself.  Besides, to whom could I appeal?  Such cruel things can be confided to none but God or to one who seems to us very near Him—­a priest, or another self.  Well!  I do know this, if my secrets are not as safe there,” she said, laying her hand on d’Arthez’s heart, “as they are here” (pressing the upper end of her busk beneath her fingers), “then you are not the grand d’Arthez I think you—­I shall have been deceived.”

A tear moistened d’Arthez’s eyes, and Diane drank it in with a side look, which, however, gave no motion either to the pupils or the lids of her eyes.  It was quick and neat, like the action of a cat pouncing on a mouse.

D’Arthez, for the first time, after sixty days of protocols, ventured to take that warm and perfumed hand, and press it to his lips with a long-drawn kiss, extending from the wrist to the tip of the fingers, which made the princess augur well of literature.  She thought to herself that men of genius must know how to love with more perfection than conceited fops, men of the world, diplomatists, and even soldiers, although such beings have nothing else to do.  She was a connoisseur, and knew very well that the capacity for love reveals itself chiefly in mere nothings.  A woman well informed in such matters can read her future in a simple gesture; just as Cuvier could say from the fragment of a bone:  This belonged to an animal of such or such dimensions, with or without horns, carnivorous, herbivorous, amphibious, etc., age, so many thousand years.  Sure now of finding in d’Arthez as much imagination in love as there was in his written style, she thought it wise to bring him up at once to the highest pitch of passion and belief.

She withdrew her hand hastily, with a magnificent movement full of varied emotions.  If she had said in words:  “Stop, or I shall die,” she could not have spoken more plainly.  She remained for a moment with her eyes in d’Arthez’s eyes, expressing in that one glance happiness, prudery, fear, confidence, languor, a vague longing, and virgin modesty.  She was twenty years old! but remember, she had prepared for this hour of comic falsehood by the choicest art of dress; she was there in her armchair like a flower, ready to blossom at the first kiss of sunshine.  True or false, she intoxicated Daniel.

It if is permissible to risk a personal opinion we must avow that it would be delightful to be thus deceived for a good long time.  Certainly Talma on the stage was often above and beyond nature, but the Princesse de Cadignan is the greatest true comedian of our day.  Nothing was wanting to this woman but an attentive audience.  Unfortunately, at epochs perturbed by political storms, women disappear like water-lilies which need a cloudless sky and balmy zephyrs to spread their bloom to our enraptured eyes.