listened,
but with no loss of intelligence, though the talk drifted into satire,
anecdote, and gossip. Conversation, hitherto confined to the inevitable
circle of racing, horses, hammerings on the Bourse, the different
occupations of the _lions_ themselves, and the scandals of the town,
showed a tendency to break up into intimate _tete-a-tete_, the dialogues
of two hearts.

And at this stage, at a signal from Carabine to Leon de Lora, Bixiou, la
Palferine, and du Tillet, love came under discussion.

"A doctor in good society never talks of medicine, true nobles never
speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not discuss their works,"
said Josepha; "why should we talk business? If I got the opera put off
in order to dine here, it was assuredly not to work.--So let us change
the subject, dear children."

"But we are speaking of real love, my beauty," said Malaga, "of the
love that makes a man fling all to the dogs--father, mother, wife,
children--and retire to Clichy."

"Talk away, then, 'don't know yer,'" said the singer.

The slang words, borrowed from the Street Arab, and spoken by these
women, may be a poem on their lips, helped by the expression of the eyes
and face.

"What, do not I love you, Josepha?" said the Duke in a low voice.

"You, perhaps, may love me truly," said she in his ear, and she smiled.
"But I do not love you in the way they describe, with such love as makes
the world dark in the absence of the man beloved. You are delightful
to me, useful--but not indispensable; and if you were to throw me over
to-morrow, I could have three dukes for one."

"Is true love to be found in Paris?" asked Leon de Lora. "Men have not
even time to make a fortune; how can they give themselves over to true
love, which swamps a man as water melts sugar? A man must be enormously
rich to indulge in it, for love annihilates him--for instance, like
our Brazilian friend over there. As I said long ago, 'Extremes
defeat--themselves.' A true lover is like an eunuch; women have ceased
to exist for him. He is mystical; he is like the true Christian, an
anchorite of the desert!--See our noble Brazilian."

Every one at table looked at Henri Montes de Montejanos, who was shy at
finding every eye centred on him.

"He has been feeding there for an hour without discovering, any more
than an ox at pasture, that he is sitting next to--I will not say, in
such company, the loveliest--but the freshest woman in all Paris."

"Everyth