'Estorade, laughing.

"Your last letter, my dear, simply frightened me."

"Why? Because I told you I was trying to keep a man at a distance?"

"Yes. Why keep him at a distance? If Monsieur de Camps or Monsieur
Gaston or Monsieur de Rastignac were to make a practice of coming here
habitually, would you trouble yourself about them?"

"No; but they have not the same claim upon me: it is that I fear."

"Tell me, do you think Monsieur de Sallenauve loves you?"

"No; I am now quite sure to the contrary; and I also think that on my
side--"

"We'll talk about that presently; now I want to ask if you desire
Monsieur de Sallenauve to love you?"

"Heaven forbid!"

"Well, then, the best possible way to make him do so is to wound his
self-love, and show yourself unjust and ungrateful to him; you will only
force him to think the more of you."

"But, my dear friend, isn't that a very far-fetched observation?"

"Did you never observe that men are more taken by our snubs than by our
caresses? Severity fixes their attention upon us."

"If that were so, all the men we disdain and never think of would sigh
for us."

"Oh! my dear, don't make me talk such nonsense. To take fire, a man must
have some degree of combustibility; and if that _other_ person is lost
to him forever, why shouldn't he, as you said yourself, ricochet upon
you?"

"That other person is not lost to him; he expects, more than ever, to
find her by the help of a very clever seeker, the mother-superior of a
convent at Arcis."

"Very good; then why employ the delay in holding him at arm's-length,--a
proceeding which will only draw him towards you?"

"My dear moralist, I don't admit your theory in the least. As for
Monsieur de Sallenauve, he will be much too busy with his duties in
the Chamber to think of me. Besides, he is a man who is full of
self-respect; he will be mortified by my manner, which will seem to him
both ungrateful and unjust. If I try to put two feet of distance between
us, he will put four; you may rely on that."

"And _you_, my dear?" asked Madame de Camps.

"How do you mean?--I?"

"You who are not busy, who have no Chamber to occupy your mind; you who
have, I will agree, a great deal of self-respect, but who know as little
about the things of the heart as the veriest school-girl,--what
will become of you under the dangerous system you are imposing upon
yourself?"

"If I don't love him when near, I shall certainly love him still less