tted that of falling in love with a
virtuous woman."

Some ten days after the scheme plotted on the boulevard between Maxime
and his henchman, the seductive Charles-Edouard, the latter, to whom
Nature had given, no doubt sarcastically, a face of charming melancholy,
made his first irruption into the nest of the dove of the rue de
Chartres, who took for his reception an evening when Calyste was obliged
to go to a party with his wife.

If you should ever meet La Palferine you will understand perfectly
the success obtained in a single evening by that sparkling mind, that
animated fancy, especially if you take into consideration the admirable
adroitness of the showman who consented to superintend this debut.
Nathan was a good comrade, and he made the young count shine, as a
jeweller showing off an ornament in hopes to sell it, makes the diamonds
glitter. La Palferine was, discreetly, the first to withdraw; he left
Nathan and the marquise together, relying on the collaboration of the
celebrated author, which was admirable. Seeing that Beatrix was quite
astounded, Raoul put fire into her heart by pretended reticences which
stirred the fibres of a curiosity she did not know she possessed. Nathan
hinted that La Palferine's wit was not so much the cause of his success
with women as his superiority in the art of love; a statement which
magnified the count immensely.

This is the place to record a new effect of that great law of
contraries, which produces so many crises in the human heart and
accounts for such varied eccentricities that we are forced to remember
it sometimes as well as its counterpart, the law of similitudes. All
courtesans preserve in the depths of their heart a perennial desire to
recover their liberty; to this they would sacrifice everything. They
feel this antithetical need with such intensity that it is rare to meet
with one of these women who has not aspired several times to a return
to virtue through love. They are not discouraged by the most cruel
deceptions. On the other hand, women restrained by their education, by
the station they occupy, chained by the rank of their families, living
in the midst of opulence, and wearing a halo of virtue, are drawn at
times, secretly be it understood, toward the tropical regions of love.
These two natures of woman, so opposed to each other, have at the bottom
of their hearts, the one that faint desire for virtue, the other that
faint desire for libertinism which Jean