et
my game be seen--weakness, mistake! I know nothing more despicable than
strength outwitted by cunning. Can I initiate myself with a laugh into
the ambassador's part, if indeed diplomacy is as difficult as life? I
doubt it. Have you any ambition? Would you like to become something?"

"But, Henri, you are laughing at me--as though I were not sufficiently
mediocre to arrive at anything."

"Good Paul! If you go on laughing at yourself, you will soon be able to
laugh at everybody else."

At breakfast, by the time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began to
see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of great
intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not at once
penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed with the
faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so to speak,
the essence of it and assimilating it, his second-sight had need of a
sort of slumber before it could identify itself with causes. Cardinal
de Richelieu was so constituted, and it did not debar in him the gift of
foresight necessary to the conception of great designs.

De Marsay's conditions were alike, but at first he only used his weapons
for the benefit of his pleasures, and only became one of the most
profound politicians of his day when he had saturated himself with
those pleasures to which a young man's thoughts--when he has money and
power--are primarily directed. Man hardens himself thus: he uses woman
in order that she may not make use of him.

At this moment, then, De Marsay perceived that he had been fooled by
the girl of the golden eyes, seeing, as he did, in perspective, all that
night of which the delights had been poured upon him by degrees until
they had ended by flooding him in torrents. He could read, at last,
that page in effect so brilliant, divine its hidden meaning. The purely
physical innocence of Paquita, the bewilderment of her joy, certain
words, obscure at first, but now clear, which had escaped her in the
midst of that joy, all proved to him that he had posed for another
person. As no social corruption was unknown to him, as he professed a
complete indifference towards all perversities, and believed them to be
justified on the simple ground that they were capable of satisfaction,
he was not startled at vice, he knew it as one knows a friend, but he
was wounded at having served as sustenance for it. If his presumption
was right, he had been outraged in the