danger for herself in the game she played that it did not seem to her
that it could be very serious for others. Genuine love is not common
enough in Parisian parlors for a pretty woman to conceive any great
remorse at pleasing without loving.

"Madame de Bergenheim was thus, ingenuously, unsuspectingly, a matchless
coquette. Never having loved, not even her husband, she looked upon her
little intriguing as one of the rights earned on the day of her marriage,
the same as her diamonds and cashmeres. There was something touching in
the sound of her voice and in her large, innocent eyes which she
sometimes allowed to rest upon mine, without thinking to turn 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