manufactures
newspaper accounts of the last words of all the great men that die
without saying anything!"

"Come, get on," put in Finot.

"It was my intention to explain to you in what the happiness of a man
consists when he is not a shareholder (out of compliment to Couture).
Well, now, do you not see at what a price Godefroid secured the greatest
happiness of a young man's dreams? He was trying to understand Isaure,
by way of making sure that she should understand him. Things which
comprehend one another must needs be similar. Infinity and Nothingness,
for instance, are like; everything that lies between the two is like
neither. Nothingness is stupidity; genius, Infinity. The lovers wrote
each other the stupidest letters imaginable, putting down various
expressions then in fashion upon bits of scented paper: 'Angel! Aeolian
harp! with thee I shall be complete! There is a heart in my man's
breast! Weak woman, poor me!' all the latest heart-frippery. It was
Godefroid's wont to stay in a drawing-room for a bare ten minutes; he
talked without any pretension to the women in it, and at these times
they thought him very clever. In short, judge of his absorption; Joby,
his horses and carriages, became secondary interests in his life. He was
never happy except in the depths of a snug settee opposite the Baroness,
by the dark-green porphyry chimney-piece, watching Isaure, taking tea,
and chatting with the little circle of friends that dropped in every
evening between eleven and twelve in the Rue Joubert. You could play
bouillotte there safely. (I always won.) Isaure sat with one little foot
thrust out in its black satin shoe; Godefroid would gaze and gaze, and
stay till every one else was gone, and say, 'Give me your shoe!' and
Isaure would put her little foot on a chair and take it off and give
it to him, with a glance, one of those glances that--in short, you
understand.

"At length Godefroid discovered a great mystery in Malvina. Whenever
du Tillet knocked at the door, the live red that colored Malvina's face
said 'Ferdinand!' When the poor girl's eyes fell on that two-footed
tiger, they lighted up like a brazier fanned by a current of air. When
Ferdinand drew her away to the window or a side table, she betrayed her
secret infinite joy. It is a rare and wonderful thing to see a woman so
much in love that she loses her cunning to be strange, and you can read
her heart; as rare (dear me!) in Paris as the Singing Flower in t