exclaimed, when he saw the gold and jewels offered at Rome in such profusion by the pious, 'Holy Saints! how profitable has this fable of Christianity been to us!' You poets may well exclaim, 'How profitable has this fable of love been to us!'
"'Ah, madam, you have never loved!' replied a young gentleman, who, like many others of his kind, delighted in talking of what he knew nothing about.
"'Love!' replied she; 'as far as my own experience goes, I do not understand the word: I have never loved. A lover is the personification of weariness; to see the same face, to hear the voice, to separate variety from amusement, in order to centre it all in one—to find a single suffrage sufficient for your vanity. Ah! to love, is in reality the verb the Prussian prince conjugated at Potsdam;’ and she sank back on her seat, as if fatigued by the mere recapitulation.
"Notwithstanding her art, Laura was wrong in her calculation. Of all she said I retained only the one delicious phrase, 'I have never loved.' Instead of her indifference, I recalled her beauty, as she leant back on the sofa, one delicate hand balancing her cup, while her perfect figure was half hidden—only to be more gracefully displayed—in a large cloak, which she had drawn round her with the prettiest shiver possible. Day by day my situation became more wretched; one resource alone was left me,—the gaming table; and there a transient success added suspense to my other miseries.
