"There is often
more pleasure in suffering than in happiness; look at the martyrs!"
"With a husband, my dear innocent, we live, as it were, in our own
life; but to love, is to live in the life of another," said the
Marquise d'Espard.
"A lover is forbidden fruit, and that to me, says all!" cried the
pretty Moina de Saint-Heren, laughing.
When she was not at some diplomatic rout, or at a ball given by rich
foreigners, like Lady Dudley or the Princesse Galathionne, the
Comtesse de Vandenesse might be seen, after the Opera, at the houses
of Madame d'Espard, the Marquise de Listomere, Mademoiselle des
Touches, the Comtesse de Montcornet, or the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu,
the only aristocratic houses then open; and never did she leave any
one of them without some evil seed of the world being sown in her
heart. She heard talk of completing her life,--a saying much in
fashion in those days; of being comprehended,--another word to which
women gave strange meanings. She often returned home uneasy, excited,
curious, and thoughtful. She began to find something less, she hardly
knew what, in her life; but she did not yet go so far as to think it
lonely.
CHAPTER IV
A CELEBRATED MAN
The most amusing society, but also the most mixed, which Madame Felix
de Vandenesse frequented, was that of the Comtesse de Montcornet, a
charming little woman, who received illustrious artists, leading
financial personages, distinguished writers; but only after subjecting
them to so rigid an examination that the most exclusive aristocrat had
nothing to fear in coming in contact with this second-class society.
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