he will come,
punctual to the minute, beautiful, beautifully dressed, and enchanting.
And she is a married woman, with all the complications and duties of a
household. The fibs that she must invent, the reasons she must find
for conforming to my whims would tax the ingenuity of some of us!...
Claudine never wearies; you can always count upon her. It is not love,
I tell her, it is infatuation. She writes to me every day; I do not read
her letters; she found that out, but still she writes. See here; there
are two hundred letters in this casket. She begs me to wipe my razors
on one of her letters every day, and I punctually do so. She thinks, and
rightly, that the sight of her handwriting will put me in mind of her.'

"La Palferine was dressing as he told us this. I took up the letter
which he was about to put to this use, read it, and kept it, as he did
not ask to have it back. Here it is. I looked for it, and found it as I
promised.

"_Monday (Midnight)._

"'Well, my dear, are you satisfied with me? I did not even ask
for your hand, yet you might easily have given it to me, and I
longed so much to hold it to my heart, to my lips. No, I did not
ask, I am so afraid of displeasing you. Do you know one thing?
Though I am cruelly sure that anything I do is a matter of perfect
indifference to you, I am none the less extremely timid in my
conduct: the woman that belongs to you, whatever her title to call
herself yours, must not incur so much as the shadow of blame. In
so far as love comes from the angels in heaven, from whom are no
secrets hid, my love is as pure as the purest; wherever I am I
feel that I am in your presence, and I try to do you honor.

"'All that you said about my manner of dress impressed me very
much; I began to understand how far above others are those that
come of a noble race. There was still something of the opera girl
in my gowns, in my way of dressing my hair. In a moment I saw the
distance between me and good taste. Next time you will receive a
duchess, you shall not know me again! Ah! how good you have been
to your Claudine! How many and many a time I have thanked you for
telling me those things! What interest lay in those few words! You
have taken thought for that thing belonging to you called
Claudine? _This_ imbecile would never have opened my eyes; he
thinks that everything I do is right; and besides, he is much too
humdrum, too matter-of-fact