are solemn to women who have reached their age.

"Like you," resumed the princess, "I have received more love than most
women; but through all my many adventures, I have never found
happiness. I committed great follies, but they had an object, and that
object retreated as fast as I approached it. I feel to-day in my
heart, old as it is, an innocence which has never been touched. Yes,
under all my experience, lies a first love intact,--just as I myself,
in spite of all my losses and fatigues, feel young and beautiful. We
may love and not be happy; we may be happy and never love; but to love
and be happy, to unite those two immense human experiences, is a
miracle. That miracle has not taken place for me."

"Nor for me," said Madame d'Espard.

"I own I am pursued in this retreat by dreadful regret: I have amused
myself all through life, but I have never loved."

"What an incredible secret!" cried the marquise.

"Ah! my dear," replied the princess, "such secrets we can tell to
ourselves, you and I, but nobody in Paris would believe us."

"And," said the marquise, "if we were not both over thirty-six years
of age, perhaps we would not tell them to each other."

"Yes; when women are young they have so many stupid conceits," replied
the princess. "We are like those poor young men who play with a
toothpick to pretend they have dined."