ters, there are always idiots to be found who will believe
it. The best form of discretion is that of women when they want to take
the change out of their husbands. It consists in compromising a woman
with whom we are not concerned, or whom we do not love, in order to save
the honor of the one whom we love well enough to respect. It is what is
called the _woman-screen_.... Ah! here is Laurent. What have you got for
us?"

"Some Ostend oysters, Monsieur le Comte."

"You will know some day, Paul, how amusing it is to make a fool of the
world by depriving it of the secret of one's affections. I derive an
immense pleasure in escaping from the stupid jurisdiction of the crowd,
which knows neither what it wants, nor what one wants of it, which takes
the means for the end, and by turns curses and adores, elevates and
destroys! What a delight to impose emotions on it and receive none from
it, to tame it, never to obey it. If one may ever be proud of anything,
is it not a self-acquired power, of which one is at once the cause and
effect, the principle and the result? Well, no man knows what I love,
nor what I wish. Perhaps what I have loved, or what I may have wished
will be known, as a drama which is accomplished is known; but to let
my game be seen--weakness, mistake! I know nothing more despicable than
strength outwitted by cunning. Can I initiate myself with a laugh into
the ambassador's part, if indeed diplomacy is as difficult as life? I
doubt it. Have you any ambition? Would you like to become something?"

"But, Henri, you are laughing at me--as though I were not sufficiently
mediocre to arrive at anything."

"Good Paul! If you go on laughing at yourself, you will soon be able to
laugh at everybody else."

At breakfast, by the time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began to
see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of great
intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not at once
penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed with the
faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so to speak,
the essence of it and assimilating it, his second-sight had need of a
sort of slumber before it could identify itself with causes. Cardinal
de Richelieu was so constituted, and it did not debar in him the gift of
foresight necessary to the conception of great designs.

De Marsay's conditions were alike, but at first he only used his weapons
for the benefit of his