asked me what I thought of
this and that young man, and of some girls whom I had met in several
houses. I replied with quite inane remarks on the color of their hair,
their faces, and the difference in their figures. My father seemed
disappointed at my crassness, and inwardly blamed himself for having
asked me.

"Still, father," I added, "don't suppose I am saying what I really
think: mother made me afraid the other day that I had spoken more
frankly than I ought of my impressions."

"With your family you can speak quite freely," my mother replied.

"Very well, then," I went on. "The young men I have met so far strike
me as too self-centered to excite interest in others; they are much more
taken up with themselves than with their company. They can't be accused
of lack of candor at any rate. They put on a certain expression to talk
to us, and drop it again in a moment, apparently satisfied that we don't
use our eyes. The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the
husband. The girls, again, are so artificial that it is impossible to
know what they really are, except from the way they dance; their figures
and movements alone are not a sham. But what has alarmed me most in this
fashionable society is its brutality. The little incidents which take
place when supper is announced give one some idea--to compare small
things with great--of what a popular rising might be. Courtesy is only
a thin veneer on the general selfishness. I imagined society very
different. Women count for little in it; that may perhaps be a survival
of Bonapartist ideas."

"Armande is coming on extraordinarily," said my mother.

"Mother, did you think I should never get beyond asking to see Mme. de
Stael?"

My father smiled, and rose from the table.

Saturday.

My dear, I have left one thing out. Here is the tidbit I have reserved
for you. The love which we pictured must be extremely well hidden; I
have seen not a trace of it. True, I have caught in drawing-rooms now
and again a quick exchange of glances, but how colorless it all is!
Love, as we imagined it, a world of wonders, of glorious dreams, of
charming realities, of sorrows that waken sympathy, and smiles that make
sunshine, does not exist. The bewitching words, the constant interchange
of happiness, the misery of absence, the flood of joy at the presence
of the beloved one--where are they? What soil produces these radiant
flowers of the soul? Which is wrong? We or the world?