might be a better consoler than your _Phedre_?"

"Madame is a wonderful woman. She has brains, she has heart, she has
tact--she is admirable."

"And yet she has one gift too many."

"And that is?"

"Age."

"Pooh! What matter her years when she can carry them like thirty?
What an eye! What an arm! And besides, my friends, he is not himself a
boy any longer."

"Ah, but that is another thing."

"A man's age is an incident, a woman's a calamity."

"Very true. But a young man consults his eye, and an older man his ear.
Over forty, it is the clever tongue which wins; under it, the pretty
face."

"Ah, you rascal! Then you have made up your mind that five-and-forty
years with tact will hold the field against nine-and-thirty with beauty.
Well, when your lady has won, she will doubtless remember who were the
first to pay court to her."

"But I think that you are wrong, Racine."