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and departed with a salute to his wife, but I saw very well that after the scene just enacted, my anacreontic reverence would not produce much effect. 'He must be a fool,' thought I, 'to talk of a thousand pounds to a law student!'
"Five days later, I found myself at midnight at Madame 's ball. In the middle of the most brilliant of the quadrilles I beheld the wives of my friend and the mathematician. Madame Alexander had a ravishing toilette, of which a few flowers and white muslin comprised the entire expense. She wore a little cross, à la Jeanette, attached to a black velvet ribbon which enhanced the whiteness of her perfumed skin, and long pears of filigree gold adorned her ears; upon the neck of Madame de M. scintillated a superb diamond cross. 'This is droll!' said I to a personage who had as yet neither read in the great book of the world, nor deciphered a single woman's heart. That personage was myself. If I had just then the desire of proposing a dance to these two pretty women, it was only because I perceived a secret of conversation which emboldened my timidity.
"'Well, Madame, you have your cross ?' said I to the first.
"'But I earned it dearly!' she replied with an indefinable smile.
"'How, no diamonds?' I inquired of my friend's wife.
"'Ah,' said she, 'I enjoyed them during an entire breakfast! But, you observe, I ended by conquering Alexander.'
"'Was he easily seduced?'
"She answered me with a look of triumph."
In this little story resides a whole treatise on domestic happiness. It is not that Monsieur de M. was a learned fool, nor that Alexander was a doting hypocrite. It is that woman has a perfect horror of conviction; that she is easily persuaded to give that which no force can extort from
