himself than with anybody else, that I could not but think these great brain-workers must look on us as things rather than persons.  When men of intellectual power love, they ought to give up writing, otherwise their love is not the real thing.  The lady of their heart does not come first in all their thoughts.  I seemed to read all this in the bearing of the man I speak of.  I am told he is a professor, orator, and author, whose ambition makes him the slave of every bigwig.

My mind was made up on the spot.  It was unworthy of me, I determined, to quarrel with society for not being impressed by my merits, and I gave myself up to the simple pleasure of dancing, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I heard a great deal of inept gossip about people of whom I know nothing; but perhaps it is my ignorance on many subjects which prevents me from appreciating it, as I saw that most men and women took a lively pleasure in certain remarks, whether falling from their own lips or those of others.  Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve.  It is a perfect maze of intrigue.  Yet I am fairly quick of sight and hearing, and as to my wits, Mlle. de Maucombe does not need to be told!

I returned home tired with a pleasant sort of tiredness, and in all innocence began describing my sensations to my mother, who was with me.  She checked me with the warning that I must never say such things to any one but her.

“My dear child,” she added, “it needs as much tact to know when to be silent as when to speak.”

This advice brought home to me the nature of the sensations which ought to be concealed from every one, not excepting perhaps even a mother.  At a glance I measured the vast field of feminine duplicity.  I can assure you, sweetheart, that we, in our unabashed simplicity, would pass for two very wide-awake little scandal-mongers.  What lessons may be conveyed in a finger on the lips, in a word, a look!  All in a moment I was seized with excessive shyness.  What! may I never again speak of the natural pleasure I feel in the exercise of dancing?  “How then,” I said to myself, “about the deeper feelings?”

I went to bed sorrowful, and I still suffer from the shock produced by this first collision of my frank, joyous nature with the harsh laws of society.  Already the highway hedges are flecked with my white wool!  Farewell, beloved.

V

Renee de Maucombe to Louise de Chaulieu
October.

How deeply your letter moved me; above all, when I compare our widely different destinies!  How brilliant is the world you are entering, how peaceful the retreat where I shall end my modest career!

In the Castle of Maucombe, which is so well known to you by description that I shall say no more of it, I found my room almost exactly as I left it; only now I can enjoy the splendid view it gives of the Gemenos valley, which my childish eyes used to see without comprehending.  A fortnight after my arrival, my father and mother took me, along with my two brothers, to dine with one of our neighbors, M. de l’Estorade, an old gentleman of good family, who has made himself rich, after the provincial fashion, by scraping and paring.