"Her? Whom? I have not been in Paris for six years, you know. What can I tell of its idols, as I remember of old that they change every hour?"
"True! but, bon Dieu! not to know la Dumarsais! What it must be to have been buried in those benighted Britannic Isles! Did you not see her in Richelieu's carriage?"
"No. I saw a carriage driving off with such an escort and such fracas, that I thought it could belong to nobody less than to Madame Lenormand d'Etioles; but I did not observe it any further. Who is this beauty I ought to have seen?"
"Thargélie Dumarsais, for whom we are all ruining ourselves with the prettiest grace in the world, and for whom you will do the same when you have been once to the Français; that is, if you have the good fortune to attract her eyes and please her fancy, which you may do, for the fogs have agreed with you, Léon!—I should not wonder if you become the fashion, and set the women raving of you as 'leur zer zevalier!'"
"Thanks for the prophecy, but I shall not stay long enough to fulfil it, and steal your myrtle crowns. I leave again to-morrow."
"Leave? Sapristi! See what it is to have become half English, and imbibed a taste for spleen and solitude! Have you written another satire, or have you learned such barbarism as to dislike Paris?"
"Neither; but I leave for Lorraine to-morrow. It is five years since I saw my old pine-woods."
"Dame! it is ten years since I saw the wilds of Bretagne, and I will take good care it shall be a hundred before I see them again. Hors de Paris, c'est hors du monde. Come with me to La Dumarsais's petit souper to-night, and you will soon change your mind."
"My good Armand, you have not been an exile, as I have; you little know how I long for the very scent of the leaves, the very smell of the earth at Grande Charmille! But bah! I talk in Hebrew to you. You have been lounging away your days in titled beauties, petits salons, making butterfly verses, learning their broidery, their lisp, and their perfumes, talking to their parrots, and using their cosmétiques, till you care for no air but what is musk-scented! But what of this Dumarsais of yours—does she equal Lecouvreur?"
"Eclipses her!—with Paris as with Maurice de Saxe. Thargélie Dumarsais is superb, mon cher—unequalled, unrivalled! We have had nothing like her for beauty, for grace, for talent, nor, pardieu! for extravagance! She ruined me last year in a couple of months. Richelieu is in favor just now—with what woman is he not? Thargélie is very fond of the Marshals of France! Saxe is fettered to her hand and foot, and the Duchesse de Bouillon hates her as rancorously as she does Adrienne. Come and see her play Phèdre to-night, and you will renounce Lorraine. I will take you to supper with her afterwards; she will permit any friend of mine entry, and then, generous man that I am, I shall have put you en chemin to sun yourself in her smiles and ingratiate yourself in her favor. Don't give me too much credit for the virtue though, for I confess I should like to see Richelieu supplanted."