aited a kiss; but she was far too sacred to him for that.
Feeling cold, the princess returned to her easy-chair; her feet were
frozen.

"It will take a long time," she said to herself, looking at Daniel's
noble brow and head.

"Is this a woman?" thought that profound observer of human nature. "How
ought I to treat her?"

Until two o'clock in the morning they spent their time in saying to each
other the silly things that women of genius, like the princess, know how
to make adorable. Diane pretended to be too worn, too old, too faded;
D'Arthez proved to her (facts of which she was well convinced) that her
skin was the most delicate, the softest to the touch, the whitest to the
eye, the most fragrant; she was young and in her bloom, how could she
think otherwise? Thus they disputed, beauty by beauty, detail by detail
with many: "Oh! do you think so?"--"You are beside yourself!"--"It is
hope, it is fancy!"--"You will soon see me as I am.--I am almost forty
years of age. Can a man love so old a woman?"

D'Arthez responded with impetuous and school-boy eloquence, larded with
exaggerated epithets. When the princess heard this wise and witty writer
talking the nonsense of an amorous sub-lieutenant she listened with an
absorbed air and much sensibility; but she laughed in her sleeve.

When d'Arthez was in the street, he asked himself whether he might not
have been rather less respectful. He went over in memory those strange
confidences--which have, naturally, been much abridged here, for they
needed a volume to convey their mellifluous abundance and the graces
which accompanied them. The retrospective perspicacity of this man, so
natural, so profound, was baffled by the candor of that tale and its
poignancy, and by the tones of the princess.

"It is true," he said to himself, being unable to sleep, "there are such
dramas as that in society. Society covers great horrors with the flowers
of its elegance, the embroidery of its gossip, the wit of its lies. We
writers invent no more than the truth. Poor Diane! Michel had penetrated
that enigma; he said that beneath her covering of ice there lay
volcanoes! Bianchon and Rastignac were right; when a man can join the
grandeurs of the ideal and the enjoyments of human passion in loving
a woman of perfect manners, of intellect, of delicacy, it must be
happiness beyond words."

So thinking, he sounded the love that was in him and found it infinite.

CHAPTER V. A TRIAL OF FAIT