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.

"You know that sadness and ennui were considered etiquette last winter,
in a certain society, which was thrown into mourning by the July
revolution. Reunions were very few; there were no balls or soirees;
dancing in drawing-rooms to the piano was hardly permissible, even
with intimate friends. When once I was installed in Mademoiselle de
Corandeuil's drawing-room upon a friendly footing, this cessation of
worldly festivities gave me an opportunity to see Clemence in a rather
intimate way.

"It would take too long to tell you now all the thousand and one little
incidents which compose the history of all passions. Profiting by her
coquetry, which made her receive me kindly in order to make me expiate
my success afterward, my love for her was soon an understood thing
between us; she listened to me in a mocking way, but did not dispute
my right to speak. She ended by receiving my letters, after being
constrained to do so through a course of strategies in which, truly, I
showed incredible invention. I was listened to and she read my letters;
I asked for nothing more.

"My love, from the first, had been her secret as well as mine; but every
day I made to sparkle some unexpected facet of this prism of a thousand
colors. Even after telling her a hundred times how much I adored her,
my love still had for her the attraction of the unknown. I really had
som