fashion? That is not right; yesterday you did not seem in the least disposed to go. The post has not come, and so you have received no letters, and are without any motive. You had granted us a fortnight longer, and now you are taking it back; you have really no right to do so: what has been given cannot be taken away again. See how Rosette is looking at you, and how angry she is with you; I warn you that I shall be at least as angry as she is, and look quite as sternly at you, and a stern face at sixty-eight is a little more terrible than one at twenty-three. See to what you are voluntarily exposing yourself: the wrath both of aunt and niece, and all on account of some caprice which has suddenly entered your head at dessert.'
“Alcibiades, giving the table a great blow with his fist, swore that he would barricade the doors of the mansion and hamstring my horse sooner than let me go.
“Rosette cast another look upon me, and one so sad and supplicating that nothing short of the ferocity of a tiger that had been fasting for a week could have failed to be moved by it. I did not withstand it, and though it gave me singular annoyance, I made a solemn promise to stay. Dear Rosette would willingly have fallen on my neck and kissed me on the mouth for this kindness; Alcibiades enclosed my hand in his huge one and shook my arm so violently that he nearly dislocated my shoulder, made my rings oval instead of round, and cut three of my fingers somewhat deeply.
“The old lady, rejoicing, took an immense pinch of snuff.
“Rosette, however, did not completely recover her gaiety; the idea that I might go away and that I wished to do so, an idea which had never yet come clearly before her mind, plunged her deep in thought. The color which had been chased from her cheeks by the announcement of my departure did not return to them with the same brilliance as before; there still was paleness on her cheek and disquiet in the depths of her soul. My conduct towards her surprised her more and more. After the marked advances which she had made, she could not understand the motives which induced me to put so much restraint into my relations with her; her object was to lead me up to a perfectly decisive engagement before my departure, not doubting that afterwards she would find it extremely easy to keep me as long as she liked.
“In this she was right, and, had I not been a woman, her calculation would have been correct; for, whatever may have been said about the satiety of pleasure and the distaste which commonly follows possession, every man whose heart is at all in the right place, and who is not miserably used up and without resource, feels his love increased by his good fortune, and frequently the best means of retaining a lover who is ready to leave you is to surrender yourself unreservedly to him.
“Rosette intended to bring me to something decisive before my departure. Knowing how difficult it is to subsequently take up a liaison just where it had been dropped, and being besides not at all sure of finding me again under such favorable circumstances, she neglected no opportunity that presented itself of placing me in a position to speak out clearly and abandon the evasive demeanor behind which I had entrenched myself. As on my part, I had the most formal intention of avoiding every species of meeting similar to that in the rustic pavilion, and yet could not, without being ridiculous, affect much coolness towards Rosette and assume girlish prudery in my relations with her, I scarcely knew how to behave, and tried always to have a third person with us.
“Rosette, on the contrary, did everything in her power to secure being alone with me, and, as the mansion was at a distance from the town and seldom visited by the neighboring nobility, she frequently succeeded in her design. My obtuse resistance saddened and surprised her; there were moments when she had doubts and hesitations about the power of her charms, and, seeing herself so little loved, she was sometimes not far from believing herself ugly. Then she would redouble her attention and coquetry, and although her mourning did not permit her to make use of all the resources of the toilet, she nevertheless knew how to give it grace and variety in such a manner as to be twice or thrice as charming every day-which is Baying a great deal. She tried everything; she was playful, melancholy, tender, impassioned, kind, coquettish, and even affected; she put on in succession all those adorable masks which become women so well that it is impossible to say whether they are veritable masks or real faces;-she assumed eight or ten contrasted individualities one after another in order to see which pleased me, and to fix upon it. In herself alone she provided me with a complete seraglio wherein I had only to throw the handkerchief; but she had, of course, no success.
“The failure of all these strategems threw her into a state of profound stupefaction. She would, indeed, have turned Nestor's brain, and melted the ice of the chaste Hippolytus himself, — and I appeared to be anything but Nestor or Hippolytus. I am young, and I had a lofty and determined air, boldness of speech and everywhere except in solitary interviews, a resolute countenance.
“She might have thought that all the witches of Thrace and Thessaly had cast their spells upon my person, or that I was at least unmanned, and have formed a most detestable opinion of my virility, which is in fact poor enough. Apparently, however, the idea did not occur to her, and she attributed this singular reserve only to my lack of love for her.
“The days passed away without any advancement of her interests, and she was visibly affected by it; an expression of restless sadness had taken the place of the ever fresh-blooming smile on her lips; the corners of her mouth, so joyously arched, had become sensibly lower, and formed a firm and serious line; a few little veins appeared in a more marked fashion on her tender eyelids; her cheeks, lately so like the peach, had now nothing of it left save its imperceptible velvet down. I often saw her, from my window, crossing the garden in a morning gown; scarcely raising her feet, she would walk as though she were gliding along, both arms loosely crossed upon her breast, her head bent more than a willow-branch dipping into the water, and with something undulating and sinking about her like a drapery which is too long and the edge of which touches the ground. At such moments she looked like one of the amorous women of antiquity, victims to the wrath of Venus, and furiously assailed by the pitiless goddess; it is thus, to my fancy, that Psyche must have been when she had lost Cupid.
“On the days when she did not endeavor to vanquish my coldness and reluctance, her love had a simple and primitive manner which might have charmed me; it was a silent and confiding surrender, a chaste facility of caress, an exhaustless abundance and plenitude of heart, all the treasures of a fine nature poured forth without reserve. She had none of that bitterness and meanness to be seen in nearly all women, even in those that are the best endowed; she sought no disguise, and tranquilly suffered me to see the whole extent of her passion. Her self-love did not revolt for an instant at my failure to respond to so many advances, for pride leaves the heart on the day that love enters it; and if ever anyone was truly loved, I was loved by Rosette.
“She suffered, but without complaint or bitterness, and she attributed the failure of her attempts only to herself. Nevertheless her paleness increased every day; a mighty combat had been waged on the battle-field of her cheeks between the lilies and the roses, and the latter had been decisively routed; it distressed me, but in all truth I was less able than anyone to remedy it. The more gentle and affectionate my words and the more caressing my manner, the more deeply I plunged into her heart the barbed arrow of impossible love. To comfort her to-day I made ready a much greater despair for the future; my remedies poisoned her wound while appearing to soothe it. I repented in a measure of all the agreeable things I had ever said to her, and owing to my extreme friendship for her, I would fain have discovered the means to make her hate me. Disinterestedness could not be carried further, for such a result would unquestionably have greatly grieved me;-but it would have been better.
“I made two or three attempts to speak harshly to her, but I soon turned to madrigals, for I dread her tears even more than her smile. On such occasions, although the honesty of my intention fully acquitted me in my conscience, I was more touched than I should have been, and felt something not far removed from remorse. A tear can scarcely be dried except by a kiss; the office cannot decently be left to a handkerchief, be it of the finest cambric in the world. I undid what I had done, the tear was quickly forgotten, more quickly than the kiss, and there always ensued an increase of embarrassment for me.
“Rosette, seeing that I am going to escape her, again fastens obstinately and miserably upon the remnants of her hope, and my position is growing more and more complicated. The strange sensation which I experienced in the little hermitage, and the inconceivable confusion into which I was thrown by the ardent caresses of my fair mistress, have been several times renewed though with less violence; and often when seated beside Rosette with her hand in mine, and listening to her speak to me in her soft cooing voice, I fancy that I am a man as she believes me to be, and that it is pure cruelty on my part not to respond to her love.
“One evening, by some chance or other, I happened to be alone with the old lady in the green room;-she had some tapestry work in her hand, for, in spite of her sixty-eight years, she never remained idle, wishing, as she said, to finish before she died a task which she had commenced and at which she had now wrought for a long time. Feeling somewhat fatigued, she laid her work aside and lay back in her large easy-chair. She looked at me very attentively, and her grey eyes sparkled through her spectacles with strange vivacity; she passed her hand two or
