reason that she cherished a refined religion of the
senses, and revered them as an adorable and divine manifestation,
Adrienne had all sorts of delicate scruples and nice repugnances, unknown
to the austere spirituality of those ascetic prudes who despise vile
matter too much to take notice of its errors, and allow it to grovel in
filth, to show the contempt in which they hold it. Mdlle. de Cardoville
was not one of those wonderfully modest creatures who would die of
confusion rather than say plainly that they wished for a young and
handsome husband, at once ardent and pure. It is true that they generally
marry old, ugly, and corrupted men, and make up for it by taking two or
three lovers six months after. But Adrienne felt instinctively how much
of virginal and celestial freshness there is in the equal innocence of
two loving and passionate beings--what guarantees for the future in the
remembrance which a man preserves of his first love!

We say, then, that Adrienne was only half-satisfied, though convinced by
the vexation of Rose-Pompon that Djalma had never entertained a serious
attachment for the grisette.

"And why do you detest me, miss?" said Adrienne mildly, when Rose-Pompon
had finished her speech.

"Oh! bless me, madame!" replied the latter, forgetting altogether her
assumption of triumph, and yielding to the natural sincerity of her
character; "pretend that you don't know why I detest you!--Oh, yes!
people go and pick bouquets from the jaws of a panther for people that
they care nothing about, don't they? And if it was only that!" added
Rose-Pompon, who was gradually getting animated, and whose pretty face,
at first contracted into a sullen pout, now assumed an expression of real
and yet half-comic sorrow.

"And if it was only the nosegay!" resumed she. "Though it gave me a
dreadful turn to see Prince Charming leap like a kid upon the stage, I
might have said to myself: 'Pooh! these Indians have their own way of
showing politeness. Here, a lady drops her nosegay, and a gentleman picks
it up and gives it to her; but in India it is quite another thing; the
man picks up the nosegay, and does not return it to the woman--he only
kills a panther before her eyes.' Those are good manners in that country,
I suppose; but what cannot be good manners anywhere is to treat a woman
as I have been treated. And all thanks to you, madame!"

These complaints of Rose-Pompon, at once bitter and laughable, did not at
all agr