king.

"Both. I even confuse them up a little now in my old woman's memory, and
then I feel remorse."

"Then, madame, your acknowledgment is not to them, but to Love itself.
They were merely its interpreters."

"That is possible. But what interpreters!"

"Are you sure that you have not been, or that you might not have been,
loved as well or better by a simple man, but not a great man, who would
have offered to you his whole life and heart, all his thoughts, all his
days, his whole being, while these gave you two redoubtable rivals, Music
and Poetry?"

"No, monsieur, no!" she exclaimed emphatically, with that still youthful
voice, which caused the soul to vibrate. "Another one might perhaps have
loved me more, but he would not have loved me as these did. Ah! those two
sang to me of the music of love as no one else in the world could have
sung of it. How they intoxicated me! Could any other man express what
they knew so well how to express in tones and in words? Is it enough
merely to love if one cannot put all the poetry and all the music of
heaven and earth into love? And they knew how to make a woman delirious
with songs and with words. Yes, perhaps there was more of illusion than
of reality in our passion; but these illusions lift you into the clouds,
while realities always leave you trailing in the dust. If others have
loved me more, through these two I have understood, felt and worshipped
love."

Suddenly she began to weep.

She wept silently, shedding tears of despair.

I pretended not to see, looking off into the distance. She resumed, after
a few minutes:

"You see, monsieur, with nearly every one the heart ages with the body.
But this has not happened with me. My body is sixty-nine years old, while
my poor heart is only twenty. And that is the reason why I live all
alone, with my flowers and my dreams."

There was a long silence between us. She grew calmer and continued,
smiling:

"How you would laugh at me, if you knew, if you knew how I pass my
evenings, when the weather is fine. I am ashamed and I pity myself at the
same time."

Beg as I might, she would not tell me what she did. Then I rose to leave.

"Already!" she exclaimed.

And as I said that I wished to dine at Monte Carlo, she asked timidly:

"Will you not dine with me? It would give me a great deal of pleasure."

I accepted at once. She rang, delighted, and after giving some orders to
the little maid she took me over her house.