iled in sense, in tact, in
capacity, and they deserve their fate. Are they not queens in France?
They can play with you as they like, when they like, and as much as they
like." Here she danced her vinaigrette with an airy movement of feminine
impertinence and mocking gayety. "I have often heard miserable little
specimens of my sex regretting that they were women, wishing they were
men; I have always regarded them with pity. If I had to choose, I should
still elect to be a woman. A fine pleasure, indeed, to owe one's triumph
to force, and to all those powers which you give yourselves by the
laws you make! But to see you at our feet, saying and doing foolish
things,--ah! it is an intoxicating pleasure to feel within our souls
that weakness triumphs! But when we triumph, we ought to keep silence,
under pain of losing our empire. Beaten, a woman's pride should gag her.
The slave's silence alarms the master."

This chatter was uttered in a voice so softly sarcastic, so dainty, and
with such coquettish motions of the head, that d'Arthez, to whom this
style of woman was totally unknown, sat before her exactly like a
partridge charmed by a setter.

"I entreat you, madame," he said, at last, "to tell me how it was
possible that a man could make you suffer? Be assured that where, as you
say, other women are common and vulgar, you can only seem distinguished;
your manner of saying things would make a cook-book interesting."

"You go fast in friendship," she said, in a grave voice which made
d'Arthez extremely uneasy.

The conversation changed; the hour was late, and the poor man of genius
went away contrite for having seemed curious, and for wounding the
sensitive heart of that rare woman who had so strangely suffered. As
for her, she had passed her life in amusing herself with men, and was
another Don Juan in female attire, with this difference: she would
certainly not have invited the Commander to supper, and would have got
the better of any statue.

It is impossible to continue this tale without saying a word about
the Prince de Cadignan, better known under the name of the Duc de
Maufrigneuse, otherwise the spice of the princess's confidences would
be lost, and strangers would not understand the Parisian comedy she was
about to play for her man of genius.

The Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a true son of the old Prince de Cadignan,
is a tall, lean man, of elegant shape, very graceful, a sayer of witty
things, colonel by the g