all the circumspection demanded in such matters, we proceeded
naturally to the topic of our lady-loves. Young as we both were, we
still admired "the woman of a certain age," that is to say, the woman
between thirty-five and forty. Oh! any poet who should have listened to
our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have
reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very
tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections, our
blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence,
a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must remain young, no
doubt, to understand youth.

Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the essential
points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at the very outset,
that in theory and practice there was no such piece of driveling
nonsense in this world as a certificate of birth; that plenty of women
were younger at forty than many a girl of twenty; and, to come to the
point, that a woman is no older than she looks.

This theory set no limits to the age of love, so we struck out, in all
good faith, into a boundless sea. At length, when we had portrayed our
mistresses as young, charming, and devoted to us, women of rank, women
of taste, intellectual and clever; when we had endowed them with
little feet, a satin, nay, a delicately fragrant skin, then came the
admission--on his part that Madame Such-an-one was thirty-eight years
old, and on mine that I worshiped a woman of forty. Whereupon, as if
released on either side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences
came thick and fast, when we found that we were in the same
confraternity of love. It was which of us should overtop the other in
sentiment.

One of us had traveled six hundred miles to see his mistress for an
hour. The other, at the risk of being shot for a wolf, had prowled about
her park to meet her one night. Out came all our follies in fact. If it
is pleasant to remember past dangers, is it not at least as pleasant
to recall past delights? We live through the joy a second time. We told
each other everything, our perils, our great joys, our little pleasures,
and even the humors of the situation. My friend's countess had lighted
a cigar for him; mine made chocolate for me, and wrote to me every day
when we did not meet; his lady had come to spend three days with him at
the risk of ruin to her reputation; mine had done even better, or worse,