“And you call that pleasure?” asked Count Lavretsky.

“It isn’t hedonism, at any rate,” said Paul.

“I call it life,” said the Princess.  “Don’t you?”—­she turned to Doon.

“I think what Mr. Savelli calls the emotive force of mankind helps to balance our own personal emotions,” said be.

“Or isn’t it rather a wear and tear on the nervous system?” laughed his wife.

“It seems so to me,” said Count Lavretsky.  “Perhaps, being a Russian, I am more primitive and envy a nobleman of the time of Pharaoh who never heard of devastations in Mexico, did not feel his heart called upon to pulsate at anything beyond his own concerns.  But he in his wisdom at his little world was vanity and was depressed.  We moderns, with our infinitely bigger world and our infinitely greater knowledge, have no more wisdom than the Egyptian, and we see that the world is all the more vanity and are all the more overwhelmed with despair.”

“But—­” said Paul.

“But—­” cried the Princess.

Both laughed, and paused.  Paul bowed with a slight gesture.

“I am not overwhelmed with despair,” the Princess continued.

“Neither am I,” said Paul.

“I am keeping my end up wonderfully,” said Lady Angela.

“I am in a nest of optimists,” Count Lavretsky groaned.  “But was it not you, Lady Angela, who talked of wear and tear.

“That was only to contradict my husband.”

“What is all this about?” asked the Countess Lavretsky, who had been discussing opera with Lord Bantry and Mademoiselle de Cressy.

Doon scientifically crystallized the argument.  It held the octette, while men-servants in powder and gold-laced livery offered poires Zobraska, a subtle creation of the chef.  Lord Bantry envied the contemplative calm which unexciting circumstances allowed the literary ancient.  Mademoiselle de Cressy advanced the feminist view in favour of the modern world.  The talk became the light and dancing interplay of opinion and paradox common to thousands of twentieth-century dinner-tables.

“All the same,” said Count Lavretsky, “they wear you out, these emotive forces.  Nobody is young nowadays.  Youth is a lost art.”

“On the contrary,” cried Mademoiselle de Cressy in French.  “Everybody is young to-day.  This pulsation of the heart keeps you young.  It is the day of the young woman of forty-five.”

Count Lavretsky, who was fifty-nine, twirled a grey moustache.  “I am one of the few people in the world who do not regret their youth.  I do not regret mine, with its immaturity, its follies and subsequent headaches.  I would sooner be the scornful philosopher of sixty than the credulous lover of twenty.”

“He always talks like that,” said the Countess to Paul; “but when he met me first he was thirty-five—­and”—­she laughed—­“and now voila—­for him there is no difference between twenty and sixty.  Expliquez-moi ca.”