“That little simpleton Gatien has, I suppose, related to you a speech I made simply to make him confess that he adored you,” said Etienne.  “Your silence, during dinner the day before yesterday and throughout the evening, was enough to betray one of those indiscretions which we never commit in Paris.—­What can I say?  I do not flatter myself that you will understand me.  In fact, I laid a plot for the telling of all those stories yesterday solely to see whether I could rouse you and Monsieur de Clagny to a pang of remorse.—­Oh! be quite easy; your innocence is fully proved.

“If you had the slightest fancy for that estimable magistrate, you would have lost all your value in my eyes.—­I love perfection.

“You do not, you cannot love that cold, dried-up, taciturn little usurer on wine casks and land, who would leave any man in the lurch for twenty-five centimes on a renewal.  Oh, I have fully recognized Monsieur de la Baudraye’s similarity to a Parisian bill-discounter; their nature is identical.—­At eight-and-twenty, handsome, well conducted, and childless—­I assure you, madame, I never saw the problem of virtue more admirably expressed.—­The author of Paquita la Sevillane must have dreamed many dreams!

“I can speak of such things without the hypocritical gloss lent them by young men, for I am old before my time.  I have no illusions left.  Can a man have any illusions in the trade I follow?”

By opening the game in this tone, Lousteau cut out all excursions in the Pays de Tendre, where genuine passion beats the bush so long; he went straight to the point and placed himself in a position to force the offer of what women often make a man pray for, for years; witness the hapless Public Prosecutor, to whom the greatest favor had consisted in clasping Dinah’s hand to his heart more tenderly than usual as they walked, happy man!

And Madame de la Baudraye, to be true to her reputation as a Superior Woman, tried to console the Manfred of the Press by prophesying such a future of love as he had not had in his mind.

“You have sought pleasure,” said she, “but you have never loved.  Believe me, true love often comes late in life.  Remember Monsieur de Gentz, who fell in love in his old age with Fanny Ellsler, and left the Revolution of July to take its course while he attended the dancer’s rehearsals.”

“It seems to me unlikely,” replied Lousteau.  “I can still believe in love, but I have ceased to believe in woman.  There are in me, I suppose, certain defects which hinder me from being loved, for I have often been thrown over.  Perhaps I have too strong a feeling for the ideal—­like all men who have looked too closely into reality——­”