them away,
and which said, 'I have never loved.' As for myself, I believed it all;
one is so happy to believe!

"Far from being annoyed at the trap she laid for me, I, on the contrary,
ran my head into it and presented my neck to the yoke with a docility
which must have amused her, I think; but I hoped not to bear it alone. A
coquette who coolly flaunts her triumphs to the world resembles those
master-swimmers who, while spectators are admiring the grace of their
poses, are struck by an unexpected current; the performer is sometimes
swept away and drowned without his elegant strokes being of much service
to him. Throw Celimene into the current of genuine passion--I do not mean
the brutality of Alceste--I will wager that coquetry will be swept away
by love. I had such faith in mine that I thought to be able to fix the
moment when I should call myself victorious and sure of being obeyed.

"You know that sadness and ennui were considered etiquette last winter,
in a certain society, which was thrown into mourning by the July
revolution. Reunions were very few; there were no balls or soirees;
dancing in drawing-rooms to the piano was hardly permissible, even with
intimate friends. When once I was installed in Mademoiselle de
Corandeuil's drawing-room upon a friendly footing, this cessation of
worldly festivities gave me an opportunity to see Clemence in a rather
intimate way.

"It would take too long to tell you now all the thousand and one little
incidents which compose the history of all passions. Profiting by her
coquetry, which made her receive me kindly in order to make me expiate my
success afterward, my love for her was soon an understood thing between
us; she listened to me in a mocking way, but did not dispute my right to
speak. She ended by receiving my letters, after being constrained to do
so through a course of strategies in which, truly, I showed incredible
invention. I was listened to and she read my letters; I asked for nothing
more.

"My love, from the first, had been her secret as well as mine; but every
day I made to sparkle some unexpected facet of this prism of a thousand
colors. Even after telling her a hundred times how much I adored her, my
love still had for her the attraction of the unknown. I really had
something inexhaustible in my heart, and I was sure, in the end, to
intoxicate her with this philtre, which I constantly poured out and which
she drank, while making sport of it like a child.