"Because," she sweetly answered, "if it gives you pleasure to know, I have been twice married."
We both exclaimed with surprise.
"Ah!" she said, "no doubt you think me younger [bocou plus jeune] than I really am. What do you suppose is my age?"
Suzanne replied: "You look younger than Françoise, and she is sixteen."
"I am twenty-three," replied Alix, laughing again and again.
Another time my sister took a book, haphazard, from the shelves. Ordinarily [audinaremend] Alix herself chose our reading, but she was busy embroidering. Suzanne sat down and began to read aloud a romance entitled "Two Destinies."
"Ah!" cried my sister, "these two girls must be Françoise and I."
"Oh no, no!" exclaimed Alix, with a heavy sigh, and Suzanne began her reading. It told of two sisters of noble family. The elder had been married to a count, handsome, noble, and rich; and the other, against her parents' wish, to a poor workingman who had taken her to a distant country, where she died of regret and misery. Alix and I listened attentively; but before Suzanne had finished, Alix softly took the book from her hands and replaced it on the shelf.
"I would not have chosen that book for you; it is full of exaggerations and falsehoods."
"And yet," said Suzanne, "see with what truth the lot of the countess is described! How happy she was in her emblazoned coach, and her jewels, her laces, her dresses of velvet and brocade! Ah, Françoise! of the two destinies I choose that one."