Bellac. (Bowing to the Duchess) And yet, it exists. Noble spirits have felt it, great poets sung its praises, and in the seats of Heaven, the apotheosis of our dreams, we see, enshrined about with haloes of ethereal brightness, those immortal figures, everlasting proof of an undying and psychic love: Beatrice, Laura——
Duchess. Laura, the mother of eleven, my dear Monsieur!
Ladies. Duchess!
Duchess. Eleven! And you call her love psychic!
Mme. de Loudan. They were not Petrarch’s, Duchess; let’s have fair play.
Bellac. Héloise——
Duchess. Oh, she!
Bellac. And their sisters of more recent date: Elvira, Eloa, and many others, known and unknown. That cohort of pure and unknown loves, is growing from day to day—I call all womankind to witness!
Ladies. Ah, my dear, how true!
Bellac. The soul has a language all its own; its aspirations, its pleasures and its tortures belong to it: are its very existence. And if it be chained to the body, it is like the wing of a bird: in order to raise it to the heights!