he Chamber. Consequently, he
is held to be one of the best husbands in France. Though not susceptible
of lively interest, he never scolds, unless, to be sure, he is kept
waiting. His friends have named him "dull weather,"--aptly enough, for
there is neither clear light nor total darkness about him. He is like
all the ministers who have succeeded one another in France since the
Charter. A woman with principles could not have fallen into better
hands. It is certainly a great thing for a virtuous woman to have
married a man incapable of follies.

Occasionally some fops have been sufficiently impertinent to press the
hand of the marquise while dancing with her. They gained nothing in
return but contemptuous glances; all were made to feel the shock of that
insulting indifference which, like a spring frost, destroys the germs of
flattering hopes. Beaux, wits, and fops, men whose sentiments are fed
by sucking their canes, those of a great name, or a great fame, those of
the highest or the lowest rank in her own world, they all blanch before
her. She has conquered the right to converse as long and as often as she
chooses with the men who seem to her agreeable, without being entered on
the tablets of gossip. Certain coquettish women are capable of following
a plan of this kind for seven years in order to gratify their fancies
later; but to suppose any such reservations in the Marquise de Listomere
would be to calumniate her.

I have had the happiness of knowing this phoenix. She talks well; I know
how to listen; consequently I please her, and I go to her parties. That,
in fact, was the object of my ambition.

Neither plain nor pretty, Madame de Listomere has white teeth, a
dazzling skin, and very red lips; she is tall and well-made; her foot
is small and slender, and she does not put it forth; her eyes, far from
being dulled like those of so many Parisian women, have a gentle glow
which becomes quite magical if, by chance, she is animated. A soul
is then divined behind that rather indefinite form. If she takes an
interest in the conversation she displays a grace which is otherwise
buried beneath the precautions of cold demeanor, and then she is
charming. She does not seek success, but she obtains it. We find that
for which we do not seek: that saying is so often true that some day
it will be turned into a proverb. It is, in fact, the moral of this
adventure, which I should not allow myself to tell if it were not
echoing at th