“Certainly not; that is precisely the result I desire.”
“And if you find, on the contrary, that he complains of you, or if he does not complain, that he suffers from your treatment, will your conscience tell you absolutely nothing?”
“It will tell me that I am doing right, and that I could not do otherwise.”
“And if success attends him and fame with its hundred voices talks of him, how will you think of him?”
“As I think of Monsieur Thiers and Monsieur Berryer.”
“And Nais, who adores him and will probably say, the first time he dines with you, ‘Ah! mamma, how well he talks!’—”
“If you are going to argue on the chatter of a child—”
“And Monsieur de l’Estorade, who already irritates you? He is beginning to-day to sacrifice him to the spirit of party; shall you silence him every time he makes some malevolent insinuation about Monsieur de Sallenauve, and denies his honor and his talent?—you know the judgment people make on those who do not think as we do.”
“In short,” said Madame de l’Estorade, “you are trying to make me admit that the surest way to think of a person is to put him out of sight.”
“Listen to me, my dear,” said Madame de Camps, with a slight touch of gravity. “I have read and re-read your letters. You were there your own self, more natural and less quibbling than you are now, and an impression has remained upon my mind: it is that Monsieur de Sallenauve has touched your heart, though he may not have entered it.”