ed, to take everything seriously?
There were enough of miseries in the world without creating fresh ones.
Nothing was worth the cost of a single pang. Madame Dambreuse raised her
eyelids with a sort of vague approval.

This agreement in their views of life impelled Frederick to take a
bolder course. His former miscalculations now gave him insight. He went
on:

"Our grandsires lived better. Why not obey the impulse that urges us
onward?" After all, love was not a thing of such importance in itself.

"But what you have just said is immoral!"

She had resumed her seat on the little sofa. He sat down at the side of
it, near her feet.

"Don't you see that I am lying! For in order to please women, one must
exhibit the thoughtlessness of a buffoon or all the wild passion of
tragedy! They only laugh at us when we simply tell them that we love
them! For my part, I consider those hyperbolical phrases which tickle
their fancy a profanation of true love, so that it is no longer possible
to give expression to it, especially when addressing women who possess
more than ordinary intelligence."

She gazed at him from under her drooping eyelids. He lowered his voice,
while he bent his head closer to her face.

"Yes! you frighten me! Perhaps I am offending you? Forgive me! I did not
intend to say all that I have said! 'Tis not my fault! You are so
beautiful!"

Madame Dambreuse closed her eyes, and he was astonished at his easy
victory. The tall trees in the clouds streaked the sky with long strips
of red, and on every side there seemed to be a suspension of vital
movements. Then he recalled to mind, in a confused sort of way, evenings
just the same as this, filled with the same unbroken silence. Where was
it that he had known them?

He sank upon his knees, seized her hand, and swore that he would love
her for ever. Then, as he was leaving her, she beckoned to him to come
back, and said to him in a low tone:

"Come by-and-by and dine with us! We'll be all alone!"

It seemed to Frederick, as he descended the stairs, that he had become a
different man, that he was surrounded by the balmy temperature of
hot-houses, and that he was beyond all question entering into the higher
sphere of patrician adulteries and lofty intrigues. In order to occupy
the first rank there all he required was a woman of this stamp. Greedy,
no doubt, of power and of success, and married to a man of inferior
calibre, for whom she had done prodigious servi