friends, proved by intercourse of fifteen
years, and some persons of great taste and good breeding, who knew the
world. By tacit agreement, perfectly carried out, at supper every one
renounced his pretensions to importance. Perfect equality set the tone.
But indeed there was no one present who was not very proud of being
himself.

Mademoiselle des Touches always insists on her guests remaining at table
till they leave, having frequently remarked the change which a move
produces in the spirit of a party. Between the dining-room and the
drawing-room the charm is destroyed. According to Sterne, the ideas
of an author after shaving are different from those he had before. If
Sterne is right, may it not be boldly asserted that the frame of mind of
a party at table is not the same as that of the same persons returned
to the drawing-room? The atmosphere is not heady, the eye no longer
contemplates the brilliant disorder of the dessert, lost are the happy
effects of that laxness of mood, that benevolence which comes over us
while we remain in the humor peculiar to the well-filled man, settled
comfortably on one of the springy chairs which are made in these days.
Perhaps we are not more ready to talk face to face with the dessert and
in the society of good wine, during the delightful interval when every
one may sit with an elbow on the table and his head resting on his
hand. Not only does every one like to talk then, but also to listen.
Digestion, which is almost always attent, is loquacious or silent, as
characters differ. Then every one finds his opportunity.

Was not this preamble necessary to make you know the charm of the
narrative, by which a celebrated man, now dead, depicted the innocent
jesuistry of women, painting it with the subtlety peculiar to persons
who have seen much of the world, and which makes statesmen such
delightful storytellers when, like Prince Talleyrand and Prince
Metternich, they vouchsafe to tell a story?

De Marsay, prime minister for some six months, had already given proofs
of superior capabilities. Those who had known him long were not indeed
surprised to see him display all the talents and various aptitudes of a
statesman; still it might yet be a question whether he would prove to
be a solid politician, or had merely been moulded in the fire of
circumstance. This question had just been asked by a man whom he had
made a prefet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a long time
been a journa