"You?"
"I; and from that hour I have watched your career, sedulously, and with satisfaction, though unseen."
"This is folly or raving!" exclaimed Ninon, gathering courage, and stretching out her beautiful hand towards a bell; but a sharp, fierce glance from the old man's great goggle eyes restrained her, and she said, gently, "What is your object?"
"To inquire what lot you wish for yourself in life."
"My present one is brilliant enough. I have an income of ten thousand livres, a house here in Paris, another at the Cordeliers, a circle of delightful friends, and lovers in plenty."
"Friends change and lovers too; beauty fades, youth becomes age, and age becomes wearisome and hideous."
"True; but I am only seventeen—for seventeen years more, at least, I shall be beautiful."
"You will then be four-and-thirty, mademoiselle, when beauty begins to fade and the ripe bloom of youth is past. Then old age will come, and that is what my friend De la Rochefoucault terms 'the hell of women.'
"Your object, I repeat, monsieur?" asked Ninon, glancing at the clock and yawning without disguise.
"I come to give you the choice of three gifts; firstly, the highest honours in France; secondly, splendid wealth; and thirdly, eternal beauty. The world does not possess another being who could make you the same offers as I."