ir, like an image of Amazement, at the constant surprises
that Paris has for a stranger. She had learned to breathe that witty,
vitalizing, teeming atmosphere where clever people feel themselves in
their element, and which they can no longer bear to quit.

One morning, as she read the papers, for Lousteau had them all, two
lines carried her back to Sancerre and the past, two lines that seemed
not unfamiliar--as follows:

"Monsieur le Baron de Clagny, Public Prosecutor to the Criminal Court
at Sancerre, has been appointed Deputy Public Prosecutor to the Supreme
Court in Paris."

"How well that worthy lawyer loves you!" said the journalist, smiling.

"Poor man!" said she. "What did I tell you? He is following me."

Etienne and Dinah were just then at the most dazzling and fervid stage
of a passion when each is perfectly accustomed to the other, and yet
love has not lost its freshness and relish. The lovers know each other
well, but all is not yet understood; they have not been a second time
to the same secret haunts of the soul; they have not studied each other
till they know, as they must later, the very thought, word, and gesture
that responds to every event, the greatest and the smallest. Enchantment
reigns; there are no collisions, no differences of opinion, no cold
looks. Their two souls are always on the same side. And Dinah would
speak the magical words, emphasized by the yet more magical expression
and looks which every woman can use under such circumstances.

"When you cease to love me, kill me.--If you should cease to love me, I
believe I could kill you first and myself after."

To this sweet exaggeration, Lousteau would reply:

"All I ask of God is to see you as constant as I shall be. It is you who
will desert me!"

"My love is supreme."

"Supreme," echoed Lousteau. "Come, now? Suppose I am dragged away to
a bachelor party, and find there one of my former mistresses, and she
makes fun of me; I, out of vanity, behave as if I were free, and do not
come in here till next morning--would you still love me?"

"A woman is only sure of being loved when she is preferred; and if you
came back to me, if--Oh! you make me understand what the happiness would
be of forgiving the man I adore."

"Well, then, I am truly loved for the first time in my life!" cried
Lousteau.

"At last you understand that!" said she.

Lousteau proposed that they should each write a letter setting forth the
reasons which would comp