s coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit;
it was for such as these that women threw themselves away. The gilded
wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither more nor less,
had neither the antecedents of the _petits maitres_ of the time of the
Fronde, nor the rough sterling worth of Napoleon's heroes, not the wit
and fine manners of their grandsires; but something of all three they
meant to be without any trouble to themselves. Brave they were, like
all young Frenchmen; ability they possessed, no doubt, if they had had
a chance of proving it, but their places were filled up by the old
worn-out men, who kept them in leading strings. It was a day of
small things, a cold prosaic era. Perhaps it takes a long time for a
Restoration to become a Monarchy.

For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had been leading
this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits, objectless
triumphs, and the transient loves that spring up and die in an evening's
space. All eyes were turned on her when she entered a room; she reaped
her harvest of flatteries and some few words of warmer admiration, which
she encouraged by a gesture or a glance, but never suffered to penetrate
deeper than the skin. Her tone and bearing and everything else about her
imposed her will upon others. Her life was a sort of fever of vanity
and perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head. She was daring enough in
conversation; she would listen to anything, corrupting the surface, as
it were, of her heart. Yet when she returned home, she often blushed at
the story that had made her laugh; at the scandalous tale that supplied
the details, on the strength of which she analyzed the love that she had
never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not
with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how
to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each
other than corrupted by men.

There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is loved
will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit. What does a
husband prove? Simply that a girl or woman was endowed with wealth, or
well brought up; that her mother managed cleverly that in some way she
satisfied a man's ambitions. A lover constantly bears witness to her
personal perfections. Then followed the discovery still in Mme de
Langeais' early womanhood, that it was possible to be loved without
committing herself, withou