d has made laws
to combat our instincts--it was necessary to make them; but our
instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too
much, because they come from God, while the laws only come from men.
If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,
darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to
take it just as it is."

Berthe opened her eyes widely in astonishment. She murmured:

"Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once."

The grandmother raised her trembling hands towards Heaven, as if
again to invoke the defunct God of gallantries. She exclaimed
indignantly:

"You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the
Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have
attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every
corner of existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion.
People have written verses telling you that people have died of love.
In my time verses were written to teach men to love every woman. And
we! when we liked a gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when
a fresh caprice came into our hearts, we were not slow in getting rid
of the last lover--unless we kept both of them."

The old woman smiled with a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery
twinkled in her gray eye, the sprightly, skeptical roguery of those
people who did not believe that they were made of the same clay as the
others, and who lived as masters for whom common beliefs were not
made.

The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:

"So then women have no honor?"

The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of
Voltaire's irony, she had also a little of Jean-Jaques's glowing
philosophy: "No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even
boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies
in France, were to live without a lover, she would have the entire
court laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only
to enter a convent. And you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will
love you alone all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be the case.
I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that Society
should exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you
understand? There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.
And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as
something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bough