eation? Here they find what
they want. Do they not meet in this pliant, yielding, dependent being
the best supplement to their dominant natures, the most touching
submission to their higher will, an accurately-toned echo of all their
most excellent wishes and thoughts? Afterward, when the purpose of the
pretty comedy has been attained, the mask is laid aside quickly enough;
we good lambs show that we, too, have a will and a mind and a power of
our own, and the beautiful delusion is rudely dissipated. As soon as I
had come to clearly recognize this, I felt the bitterest disgust for
it. Soon, however, I was forced to laugh, and to say to myself, this
farce is as old as the world! If, notwithstanding this, the proud lords
of creation still permit themselves to be deceived, they must, in one
way or another, find some advantage in it. But I could not even then
bring myself to join in the game, as I saw all the rest do. I cared
nothing for the object which made these petty means holy to all the
others. Merely to please the men in general? To do this I had no need
to exert myself especially, for I resembled my mother, who had passed
for a beauty. And to have won the _love_ of a man it would have been
necessary for him to have first taken _my_ fancy, for him to have first
become dangerous to _me_. But it never came to that. Really, I often
thought, have you a heart, or have you none, since it feels nothing at
all in the society of these gay officers, students, and artists, who
are such good dancers, have such a triumphant mien, and such faultless
white cravats, and who, with the most condescending superiority, allow
themselves to be enticed into the share by all these timid, blushing,
demure, sweet creatures, who are all the while secretly laughing in
their sleeves."

Julie paused for a while with downcast eyes. "It is strange," said she,
with a sigh, "how we happened to come upon these old stories! You must
know, my dear, they are _really_ very old--older than you think. I
shall soon be thirty-one years old! When I first began to make these
observations I was eighteen--now you can subtract for yourself. If I
had married then, I might now have had a daughter twelve years old.
Instead of that I am a well-preserved old maid, and my only admirer is
a silly painter, who has fallen in love with me merely out of a whim
for color."

"No," said Angelica, who, in the mean time, had zealously gone on with
her painting, "I won't be put