While you love to praise yourself, it pleases me to believe that you are more natural with me, by which I mean less insincere, than you are in society. There are in you so many contradictions that I am terribly puzzled to reach an exact conclusion; that is to say, to the sum total + so many good qualities, — so many bad ones = x. It is this x that I find confusing.
When I saw you at the home of our friend Madame V., just as you were leaving Paris, your extreme elegance and style astonished me greatly. The cakes that you devour so hungrily, after the fatigue of the opera, have astonished me still more. Not that I do not place love of admiration and epicureanism among the chief of your faults, but I supposed that these faults had a mental rather than a tangible form; I imagined that you cared very little for dress, and that eating was to you only a diversion; that you enjoyed making an impression by your beautiful eyes and your clever sayings, rather than by your gowns. See how mistaken I was!
But this time you shall not reproach me with pessimism, for while you have been falling from grace day by day, I fancy that I have improved. It is unreasonably late and I have abandoned a highly learned company of Greeks and Romans to write to you.
I am just reminded that I must rise early to-morrow—that is, to-day—which prevents me from explaining in what way I am better than I used to be, while you have been amusing yourself teasing me about Madame.... I will defer my own praises for another time; besides, I have come to the end of my paper.
XXIX
Paris, December 2, 1842.
There is in some old Spanish romance a very pleasing tale. A barber had his shop at the corner of the street, and the shop had two doors. Through one of these doors he used to pass out into the street, stab a passer-by, then hurrying into the shop, he went out the other door and bandaged the wounds of his victim. Gelehrten ist gut predigen.
I bear no grudge against your blue cashmere or your cakes; all such things are perfectly natural. I even admire coquetry and greediness, but only when one confesses them frankly. But you, who very justly aspire to be something more than a mere woman of the world, why should you have its defects? Why are you never frank with me? To give you an example of frankness, will you, or will you not, come with me to the Museum next Tuesday? If you are not willing, or if it will inconvenience or embarrass you to come, you shall receive your Etruscan seal in a little box Tuesday evening, and it will be delivered to you as naturally as possible.
Your propensity for coquetry is very amusing. You chide me for being indifferent, but if I were not so, or if I did not make a show of indifference, you would drive me mad. Why does one carry an umbrella? Because it rains.
Notwithstanding your wishes, Madame de M. will certainly come to Paris. She has to purchase the trousseau of her daughter, who is to be married in the spring. Unless an unforeseen revolution occurs, the said trousseau will be made in Paris, and the marriage, also, may take place here.