ss
seen than formerly. It is not when every one rushes to their window and
cries "Thief!" and lights the streets, that robbers abound. It is true
that during those years so fruitful of turmoil--urban, political,
and moral--a few matrimonial catastrophes took place; but these were
exceptional, and less observed than they would have been under the
Restoration. Nevertheless, women talked a great deal together about
books and the stage, then the two chief forms of poesy. The lover thus
became one of their leading topics,--a being rare in point of act and
much desired. The few affairs which were known gave rise to discussions,
and these discussions were, as usually happens, carried on by immaculate
women.

A fact worthy of remark is the aversion shown to such conversations by
women who are enjoying some illicit happiness; they maintain before the
eyes of the world a reserved, prudish, and even timid countenance;
they seem to ask silence on the subject, or some condonation of their
pleasure from society. When, on the contrary, a woman talks freely of
such catastrophes, and seems to take pleasure in doing so, allowing
herself to explain the emotions that justify the guilty parties, we may
be sure that she herself is at the crossways of indecision, and does not
know what road she might take.

During this winter, the Comtesse de Vandenesse heard the great voice of
the social world roaring in her ears, and the wind of its stormy gusts
blew round her. Her pretended friends, who maintained their reputations
at the height of their rank and their positions, often produced in
her presence the seductive idea of the lover; they cast into her soul
certain ardent talk of love, the "mot d'enigme" which life propounds to
woman, the grand passion, as Madame de Stael called it,--preaching by
example. When the countess asked naively, in a small and select circle
of these friends, what difference there was between a lover and a
husband, all those who wished evil to Felix took care to reply in a way
to pique her curiosity, or fire her imagination, or touch her heart, or
interest her mind.

"Oh! my dear, we vegetate with a husband, but we live with a lover,"
said her sister-in-law, the marquise.

"Marriage, my dear, is our purgatory; love is paradise," said Lady
Dudley.

"Don't believe her," cried Mademoiselle des Touches; "it is hell."

"But a hell we like," remarked Madame de Rochefide. "There is often more
pleasure in suffering than in