is almost equal
to being loved even as I would wish to be; nay, it is even superior in
its purity and absence of self. When I compare the existence I now
venture to anticipate with the shameful and degraded lot I was preparing
for myself, my own reproaches become more bitter and severe."

"I should, indeed, be grieved," said Rodolph, smiling, "were that to be
the case, since all my desire is to make you forget the past, and to
prove to you that there are various modes of recreating and distracting
our minds; the means of good and evil are very frequently nearly the
same: it is the end, only, which differs. In a word, if good is as
attractive, as amusing, as evil, why should we prefer the latter? I am
going to use a very commonplace and hackneyed simile. Why do many women
take as lovers men not nearly as worthy of that distinction as their own
husbands? Because the greatest charm of love consists in the
difficulties which surround it; for once deprived of the hopes, the
fears, the anxieties, difficulties, mysteries, and dangers, and little
or nothing would remain, merely the lover, stripped of all the prestige
derivable from these causes, and a very every-day object he would
appear; very much after the fashion of the individual who, when asked by
a friend why he did not marry his mistress, replied, 'Why, I was
thinking of it; but, if I did, where should I go to pass my evenings?'"

"Your picture is coloured after nature, my lord," said Madame
d'Harville, smiling.

"Well, then, if I can find the means of enabling you to experience the
fears, the anxieties, the excitement, which seem to have such charms for
you, if I can render useful your natural love for mystery and romance,
your inclination for dissimulation and artifice,--you see my bad opinion
of your sex will peep out in spite of me," added Rodolph, gaily,--"shall
I not change into fine and generous qualities instincts which otherwise
are mere ungovernable and unmanageable impulses, excellent, if well
employed, most fatal, if directed badly? Now, then, what do you say?
Shall we get up all manner of benevolent plots and charitable
dissipations? We will have our rendezvous, our correspondence, our
secrets, and, above all, we will carefully conceal all our doings from
the marquis, for your visit of to-day to the Morels has, in all
probability, excited his suspicions. There, you see, it only requires
your consent to commence a regular intrigue."

"I accept with joy