rved. They will believe we love each other, and as
we have not that pleasure, it is useless to incur the penalties. Since
I am still in the midst of the court of Charles Tenth, I pity you, with
your black coat and round hat. Good-night."

"I thank you very much," replied Camors, taking the hand she extended to
him coldly, and left the box. He met M. de Campvallon in the passage.

"Parbleu! my dear friend," said the General, seizing him by the arm.
"I must communicate to you an idea which has been in my brain all the
evening."

"What idea, General?"

"Well, there are here this evening a number of charming young girls.
This set me to thinking of you, and I even said to my wife that we must
marry you to one of these young women!"

"Oh, General!"

"Well, why not?"

"That is a very serious thing--if one makes a mistake in his
choice--that is everything."

"Bah! it is not so difficult a thing. Take a wife like mine, who has a
great deal of religion, not much imagination, and no fancies. That is
the whole secret. I tell you this in confidence, my dear fellow!"

"Well, General, I will think of it."

"Do think of it," said the General, in a serious tone; and went to join
his young wife, whom he understood so well.

As to her, she thoroughly understood herself, and analyzed her own
character with surprising truth.

Madame de Campvallon was just as little what her manner indicated as
was M. de Camors on his side. Both were altogether exceptional in French
society. Equally endowed by nature with energetic souls and enlightened
minds, both carried innate depravity to a high degree. The artificial
atmosphere of high Parisian civilization destroys in women the sentiment
and the taste for duty, and leaves them, nothing but the sentiment and
the taste for pleasure. They lose in the midst of this enchanted and
false life, like theatrical fairyland, the true idea of life in general,
and Christian life in particular. And we can confidently affirm that all
those who do not make for themselves, apart from the crowd, a kind of
Thebaid--and there are such--are pagans. They are pagans, because the
pleasures of the senses and of the mind alone interest them, and they
have not once, during the year, an impression of the moral law, unless
the sentiment, which some of them detest, recalls it to them. They
are pagans, like the beautiful, worldly Catholics of the fifteenth
century--loving luxury, rich stuffs, precious furniture, litera