ame arrested my steps. I was not noticed, and heard all the
conversation, which I hasten to communicate to you word for word.

"I have not been able to conceal from your penetration, my inclination
for M. de Sevigne," said the Countess, "and you can not reconcile the
serious nature of so decided a passion with the frivolity attributed
to me in society. You will be still more astonished when I tell you
that my exterior character is not my true one, that the seriousness
you notice in me now, is a return to my former disposition; I was
never giddy except through design. Perhaps you may have imagined that
women can only conceal their faults, but they sometimes go much
farther, sir, and I am an instance. They even disguise their virtues,
and since the word has escaped me, I am tempted, at the risk of
wearying you, to explain by what strange gradation I reached that
point.

"During my married life I lived retired from the world. You knew the
Count and his taste for solitude. When I became a widow, there was the
question of returning to society, and my embarrassment as to how I was
to present myself was not small. I interrogated my own heart; in vain
I sought to hide it from my own knowledge, I had a strong taste for
the pleasures of society; but at the same time I was determined to add
to it purity of morals. But how to reconcile all this? It seemed to me
a difficult task to establish a system of conduct which, without
compromising me, would not at the same time deprive me of the
pleasures of life.

"This is the way I reasoned: Destined to live among men, formed to
please them, and to share in their happiness, we are obliged to suffer
from their caprices, and above all fear their malignity. It seems that
they have no other object in our education than that of fitting us for
love, indeed, it is the only passion permitted us, and by a strange
and cruel contrariety, they have left us only one glory to obtain,
which is that of gaining a victory over the very inclination imposed
upon us. I therefore endeavored to ascertain the best means of
reconciling in use and custom, two such glaring extremes, and I found
predicaments on all sides.

"We are, I said to myself, simple enough when we enter society, to
imagine that the greatest happiness of a woman should be to love and
be loved. We then are under the impression that love is based on
esteem, upheld by the knowledge of amiable qualities, purified by
delicacy of sentiment, dive