“I could not help smiling at the Baroness’s clever coquetry, when I decided to follow the inspirations of my heart, instead of choosing selfish motives as my guide.  Every time I took her hand when dancing with her, I expected to feel a little claw ready to pierce the cold glove.  But, while waiting for the scratch, it was a very soft, velvety little hand that was given me; and I, who willingly lent myself to her deception, did not feel very much duped.  It was evident that the sort of halo which my merited or unmerited reputation had thrown over me had made me appear to her as a conquest of some value, a victim upon whom one could lavish just enough flowers in order to bring him to the sacrificial altar.  In order to wind the first chain around my neck, Mauleon and D’Arzenac, ‘a tutti quanti’, were sacrificed for me without my soliciting, even by a glance, this general disbandment.  I could interpret this discharge.  I saw that the fair one wished to concentrate all her seductions against me, so as to leave me no means of escape; people neglect the hares to hunt for the deer.  You must excuse my conceit.

“This conduct wounded me at first, but I afterward forgave her, when a more careful examination taught me to know this adorable woman’s character.  Coquetry was with her not a vice of the heart or of an unscrupulous mind; having nothing better to do, she enjoyed it as a legitimate pastime, without giving it any importance or feeling any scruples.  Like all women, she liked to please; her success was sweet to her vanity; perhaps flattery turned her head at times, but in the midst of this tumult her heart remained in perfect peace.  She found so little danger for herself in the game she played that it did not seem to her that it could be very serious for others.  Genuine love is not common enough in Parisian parlors for a pretty woman to conceive any great remorse at pleasing without loving.

“Madame de Bergenheim was thus, ingenuously, unsuspectingly, a matchless coquette.  Never having loved, not even her husband, she looked upon her little intriguing as one of the rights earned on the day of her marriage, the same as her diamonds and cashmeres.  There was something touching in the sound of her voice and in her large, innocent eyes which she sometimes allowed to rest upon mine, without thinking to turn them away, and which said, ‘I have never loved.’  As for myself, I believed it all; one is so happy to believe!

“Far from being annoyed at the trap she laid for me, I, on the contrary, ran my head into it and presented my neck to the yoke with a docility which must have amused her, I think; but I hoped not to bear it alone.  A coquette who coolly flaunts her triumphs to the world resembles those master-swimmers who, while spectators are admiring the grace of their poses, are struck by an unexpected current; the performer is sometimes swept away and drowned without his elegant strokes being of much service to him.  Throw Celimene into the current of genuine passion—­I do not mean the brutality of Alceste—­I will wager that coquetry will be swept away by love.  I had such faith in mine that I thought to be able to fix the moment when I should call myself victorious and sure of being obeyed.