"Ha! ha!" said Alfred; "you followed my example, and took a horse. Faith, we are equally well mounted. It is agreed that everything is common between us, until the little one has made her choice, and that cannot be long. It would be a deuced strange thing, agreeable and comely as we both are, if one of us should not succeed in pleasing a peasant girl, after making so many conquests at Paris!"
Edouard did not share Alfred’s merriment; he did not treat so lightly as his friend the sentiment that he felt for Isaure.
"My friend," said he, "I am really sorry that you are thinking of that girl."
"What’s that? Why so? You are thinking of her yourself."
"But I am thinking of her in rather a different way."
"Oh! my dear Edouard, you can’t make me believe that you have formed a plan of marrying this little goatherd! You would like perhaps to have me suppose so, so that then,—respecting so pure and spotless a love, I would not go again to talk nonsense to the girl. That would be very clever!"
"Alfred, you judge your friend very ill!"
"I know that friends cease to be friends as soon as love comes in between them. However, because you pretend to love this girl seriously, why should you not believe that I may love her too?"
"Look you, Alfred, a very bright woman said to me not long ago, at Paris: ‘There’s a vast difference between desire and love’; you desire to possess Isaure, but you do not really love her."
"My dear Edouard, your lady friend told you nothing new; I learned long ago that to desire and to love are not synonymous; but because one loves, that is no reason for not desiring; and the fact that one desires does not prove that one does not love. You may say that to the lady from me, when you see her.—However, how do you know that Isaure won’t prefer me to you?"