youth of Paris was mad, he hardly thought. The idea of death, expressed
in the midst of their pleasure, and the fear of which had more than once
darkened the brow of that beautiful creature, who held to the houris of
Asia by her mother, to Europe by her education, to the tropics by her
birth, seemed to him merely one of those deceptions by which women seek
to make themselves interesting.

"She is from Havana--the most Spanish region to be found in the New
World. So she preferred to feign terror rather than cast in my teeth
indisposition or difficulty, coquetry or duty, like a Parisian woman. By
her golden eyes, how glad I shall be to sleep."

He saw a hackney coach standing at the corner of Frascati's waiting for
some gambler; he awoke the driver, was driven home, went to bed, and
slept the sleep of the dissipated, which for some queer reason--of which
no rhymer has yet taken advantage--is as profound as that of innocence.
Perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial axiom, _extremes meet_.

About noon De Marsay awoke and stretched himself; he felt the grip of
that sort of voracious hunger which old soldiers can remember having
experienced on the morrow of victory. He was delighted, therefore, to
see Paul de Manerville standing in front of him, for at such a time
nothing is more agreeable than to eat in company.

"Well," his friend remarked, "we all imagined that you had been shut up
for the last ten days with the girl of the golden eyes."

"The girl of the golden eyes! I have forgotten her. Faith! I have other
fish to fry!"

"Ah! you are playing at discretion."

"Why not?" asked De Marsay, with a laugh. "My dear fellow, discretion
is the best form of calculation. Listen--however, no! I will not say
a word. You never teach me anything; I am not disposed to make you a
gratuitous present of the treasures of my policy. Life is a river which
is of use for the promotion of commerce. In the name of all that is most
sacred in life--of cigars! I am no professor of social economy for the
instruction of fools. Let us breakfast! It costs less to give you a
tunny omelette than to lavish the resources of my brain on you."

"Do you bargain with your friends?"

"My dear fellow," said Henri, who rarely denied himself a sarcasm,
"since all the same, you may some day need, like anybody else, to use
discretion, and since I have much love for you--yes, I like you! Upon my
word, if you only wanted a thousand-franc note to keep you