The converse which Victurnien held with the Duchess can be kept up at his age without too great a strain.  He was young enough and ignorant enough of life in Paris to feel no necessity to be upon his guard, no need to keep a watch over his lightest words and glances.  The religious sentimentalism, which finds a broadly humorous commentary in the after-thoughts of either speaker, puts the old-world French chat of men and women, with its pleasant familiarity, its lively ease, quite out of the question; they make love in a mist nowadays.

Victurnien was just sufficient of an unsophisticated provincial to remain suspended in a highly appropriate and unfeigned rapture which pleased the Duchess; for women are no more to be deceived by the comedies which men play than by their own.  Mme. de Maufrigneuse calculated, not without dismay, that the young Count’s infatuation was likely to hold good for six whole months of disinterested love.  She looked so lovely in this dove’s mood, quenching the light in her eyes by the golden fringe of their lashes, that when the Marquise d’Espard bade her friend good-night, she whispered, “Good! very good, dear!” And with those farewell words, the fair Marquise left her rival to make the tour of the modern Pays du Tendre; which, by the way, is not so absurd a conception as some appear to think.  New maps of the country are engraved for each generation; and if the names of the routes are different, they still lead to the same capital city.

In the course of an hour’s tete-a-tete, on a corner sofa, under the eyes of the world, the Duchess brought young d’Esgrignon as far as Scipio’s Generosity, the Devotion of Amadis, and Chivalrous Self-abnegation (for the Middle Ages were just coming into fashion, with their daggers, machicolations, hauberks, chain-mail, peaked shoes, and romantic painted card-board properties).  She had an admirable turn, moreover, for leaving things unsaid, for leaving ideas in a discreet, seeming careless way, to work their way down, one by one, into Victurnien’s heart, like needles into a cushion.  She possessed a marvelous skill in reticence; she was charming in hypocrisy, lavish of subtle promises, which revived hope and then melted away like ice in the sun if you looked at them closely, and most treacherous in the desire which she felt and inspired.  At the close of this charming encounter she produced the running noose of an invitation to call, and flung it over him with a dainty demureness which the printed page can never set forth.

“You will forget me,” she said.  “You will find so many women eager to pay court to you instead of enlightening you. . . .  But you will come back to me undeceived.  Are you coming to me first? . . .  No.  As you will.—­For my own part, I tell you frankly that your visits will be a great pleasure to me.  People of soul are so rare, and I think that you are one of them.—­Come, good-bye; people will begin to talk about us if we talk together any longer.”