long, said so much, varied so often the topics of discourse,
that it was not difficult to perceive she had a particular aim in thus
detaining me. Her mere words could have afforded no clue to this
aim, but her countenance aided; while her lips uttered only affable
commonplaces, her eyes reverted continually to my face. Her glances were
not given in full, but out of the corners, so quietly, so stealthily,
yet I think I lost not one. I watched her as keenly as she watched me;
I perceived soon that she was feeling after my real character; she was
searching for salient points, and weak; points, and eccentric points;
she was applying now this test, now that, hoping in the end to find some
chink, some niche, where she could put in her little firm foot and stand
upon my neck--mistress of my nature, Do not mistake me, reader, it was
no amorous influence she wished to gain--at that time it was only the
power of the politician to which she aspired; I was now installed as a
professor in her establishment, and she wanted to know where her mind
was superior to mine--by what feeling or opinion she could lead me.

I enjoyed the game much, and did not hasten its conclusion; sometimes I
gave her hopes, beginning a sentence rather weakly, when her shrewd eye
would light up--she thought she had me; having led her a little way, I
delighted to turn round and finish with sound, hard sense, whereat her
countenance would fall. At last a servant entered to announce dinner;
the conflict being thus necessarily terminated, we parted without having
gained any advantage on either side: Mdlle. Reuter had not even given
me an opportunity of attacking her with feeling, and I had managed to
baffle her little schemes of craft. It was a regular drawn battle. I
again held out my hand when I left the room, she gave me hers; it was a
small and white hand, but how cool! I met her eye too in full--obliging
her to give me a straightforward look; this last test went against
me: it left her as it found her--moderate, temperate, tranquil; me it
disappointed.

"I am growing wiser," thought I, as I walked back to M. Pelet's. "Look
at this little woman; is she like the women of novelists and romancers?
To read of female character as depicted in Poetry and Fiction, one would
think it was made up of sentiment, either for good or bad--here is
a specimen, and a most sensible and respectable specimen, too, whose
staple ingredient is abstract reason. No Talleyrand was ever