"That's so; at the first difficulty you renounce it. Well, but I am maddened. I have driven from my heart all that is not you, and none but you shall hear of my new flames."
"With regard to the present one at least, will you pledge me your honor?"
"Ah! you are in great fear lest I compromise her?"
"That would give me serious pain."
"Bah! Come now, why?"
"Because she is proud, sensitive perhaps, and would leave my mother, who dotes upon her,—have you not observed that?"
"Yes, and it is that very thing which has turned my head. She must really be a girl of great cleverness and a deal of heart. Our mother has such perfect tact. This evening, in taking me to task a little for what she considered my attempt at teasing, she held the sugarplum very high, saying, 'Your conduct toward Caroline was neither proper nor agreeable. She is a person of whom you are not permitted to think.' The deuce! A fellow always has the right to dream; that certainly harms no one. But see though how pretty she is; how alive in the midst of all those plastered women! One can look at the contour of her face in the nearest and most trying light; one will not see there those dull, sticky lines which make the others look like plaster casts. It is true she is too pretty to be any one's young-lady companion. My mother can never keep her; every one will fall in love with her, and if she continues to be well-behaved some one will want to marry her."
"Then," rejoined the Marquis, "you cannot think of her."
"Why so, pray?" demanded the Duke. "Am I not to-day a poor devil with nothing in the world? Is she not of good birth? Is not her reputation spotless? I should like to know what my mother would find to say against it,—she who already calls the young lady her daughter, and who wishes us to respect her as if she were our own sister."
"You, sir, carry your enthusiasm or your joke to great lengths," said the Marquis, stunned by what he heard.