"It was my intention to explain to you in what the happiness of a man
consists when he is not a shareholder (out of compliment to Couture).
Well, now, do you not see at what a price Godefroid secured the
greatest happiness of a young man's dreams? He was trying to
understand Isaure, by way of making sure that she should understand
him. Things which comprehend one another must needs be similar.
Infinity and Nothingness, for instance, are like; everything that lies
between the two is like neither. Nothingness is stupidity; genius,
Infinity. The lovers wrote each other the stupidest letters
imaginable, putting down various expressions then in fashion upon bits
of scented paper: 'Angel! Aeolian harp! with thee I shall be complete!
There is a heart in my man's breast! Weak woman, poor me!' all the
latest heart-frippery. It was Godefroid's wont to stay in a
drawing-room for a bare ten minutes; he talked without any pretension
to the women in it, and at these times they thought him very clever. In
short, judge of his absorption; Joby, his horses and carriages, became
secondary interests in his life. He was never happy except in the
depths of a snug settee opposite the Baroness, by the dark-green
porphyry chimney-piece, watching Isaure, taking tea, and chatting with
the little circle of friends that dropped in every evening between
eleven and twelve in the Rue Joubert. You could play bouillotte there
safely. (I always won.) Isaure sat with one little foot thrust out in
its black satin shoe; Godefroid would gaze and gaze, and stay till
every one else was gone, and say, 'Give me your shoe!' and Isaure
would put her little foot on a chair and take it off and give it to
him, with a glance, one of those glances that--in short, you
understand.

"At length Godefroid discovered a great mystery in Malvina. Whenever