"Why that is an age, Raoul! are you not dying to see her again by this time. At your age, I was far more gallant."
"With your permission, sir, I will go now and make my compliments to her."
"Not only my permission, Raoul, but my advice to make your best haste thither. If you go straight-ways, you will be sure to find her at home, for the ladies are sure not to have ventured abroad with all this uproar in the streets. Take Martin, the equerry, with you, and three of the grooms. What will you ride? The new Barb I bought for you last week? Yes! as well him as any; and, hark you, boy, tell them to send Martin to me first, I will speak to him while you are beautifying yourself to please the beaux yeux of Mademoiselle Melanie."
"I am not sure that you are doing wisely, Louis," said the lady, as her son left the saloon, her eye following him wistfully, "in bringing Raoul up as you are doing."
"Nor I, Marie," replied her husband, gravely. "We poor, blind mortals cannot be sure of any thing, least of all of any thing the ends of which are incalculably distant. But in what particular do you doubt the wisdom of my method?"
"In talking to him as you do, as though he were a man already; in opening his eyes so widely to the sins and vices of the world; in discussing questions with him such as those you spoke of with him but now. He is a mere boy, you will remember, to hear tell of such things."
"Boys hear of such things early enough, I assure you—far earlier than you ladies would deem possible. For the rest, he must hear of them one day, and I think it quite as well that he should hear of them, since hear he must, with the comments of an old man, and that old man his best friend, than find them out by the teachings, and judge of them according to the light views of his young and excitable associates. He who is forewarned is fore-weaponed. I was kept pure, as it is termed—or in other words, kept ignorant of myself and of the world I was destined to live in, until one fine day I was cut loose from the apron-strings of my lady mother, and the tether of my abbé tutor, and launched head-foremost into that vortex of temptation and iniquity, the world of Paris, like a ship without a chart or a compass. A precious race I ran in consequence, for a time; and if I had not been so fortunate as to meet you, Marie, whose bright eyes brought me out, like a blessed beacon, safe from that perilous ocean, I know not but I should have suffered shipwreck, both in fortune, which is a trifle, and in character, which is every thing. No, no; if that is all in which you doubt, your fears are causeless."
"But that is not all. In this you may be right—I know not; at all events you are a fitter judge than I. But are you wise in encouraging so very strongly his fancy for Melanie d'Argenson?"
"I'faith, it is something more than a fancy, I think; the boy loves her."
"I see that, Louis, clearly; and you encourage it."