Before--before? Woman is wilful, and sometimes
we wring her heart that we may afterwards comfort it."

"Your views have somewhat changed," I answered. "I mind when you talked
less sweetly."

He shrugged a shoulder. "That man is lost who keeps one mind concerning
woman. I will trust the chastity of no woman, yet I will trust
her virtue--if I have her heart. They a foolish tribe, and all
are vulnerable in their vanity. They of consequence to man, of no
consequence in state matters. When they meddle there, we have La
Pompadour and war with England, and Captain Moray in the Bastile of New
France."

"You come from a court, monsieur, which believes in nothing, not even in
itself."

"I come from a court," he rejoined, "which has made a gospel of
artifice, of frivolity a creed; buying the toys for folly with the
savings of the poor. His most Christian Majesty has set the fashion
of continual silliness and universal love. He begets children in the
peasant's oven and in the chamber of Charlemagne alike. And we are
all good subjects of the King. We are brilliant, exquisite, brave, and
naughty; and for us there is no to-morrow."

"Nor for France," I suggested.

He laughed, as he rolled a kernel of parched corn on his tongue. "Tut,
tut! that is another thing. We the fashion of an hour, but France is a
fact as stubborn as the natures of you English; for beyond stubbornness
and your Shakespeare you have little. Down among the moles, in the
peasants' huts, the spirit of France never changes--it is always the
same; it is for all time. You English, nor all others, you can not blow
out that candle which is the spirit of France. I remember of the Abbe
Bobon preaching once upon the words, 'The spirit of man is the candle of
the Lord'; well, the spirit of France is the candle of Europe, and you
English will be its screen against the blowing out, though in spasms of
stupidity you flaunt the extinguisher. You--you have no imagination, no
passion, no temperament, no poetry. Yet I am wrong. The one thing you
have--"

He broke off, nodding his head in amusement. "Yes, you have, but it is a
secret. You English are the true lovers, we French the true poets; and I
will tell you why. You are a race of comrades, the French of gentlemen;
you cleave to a thing, we to an idea; you love a woman best when she
is near, we when she is away; you make a romance of marriage, we of
intrigue; you feed upon yourselves, we upon the world; you have fever