of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe
of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those
dark and comic dramas to which that of _Tartuffe_ is mere child's play,
--dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are
natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which
may be characterized as not vice, only the other side of it.

The princess began by sending for d'Arthez's books, of which she had
never, as yet, read a single word, although she had managed to
maintain a twenty minutes' eulogism and discussion of them without a
blunder. She now read them all. Then she wanted to compare these books
with the best that contemporary literature had produced. By the time
d'Arthez came to see her she was having an indigestion of mind.
Expecting this visit, she had daily made a toilet of what may be
called the superior order; that is, a toilet which expresses an idea,
and makes it accepted by the eye without the owner of the eye knowing
why or wherefore. She presented an harmonious combination of shades of
gray, a sort of semi-mourning, full of graceful renunciation,--the
garments of a woman who holds to life only through a few natural ties,
--her child, for instance,--but who is weary of life. Those garments
bore witness to an elegant disgust, not reaching, however, as far as
suicide; no, she would live out her days in these earthly galleys.

She received d'Arthez as a woman who expected him, and as if he had
already been to see her a hundred times; she did him the honor to
treat him like an old acquaintance, and she put him at his ease by
pointing to a seat on a sofa, while she finished a note she was then
writing. The conversation began in a commonplace manner: the weather,
the ministry, de Marsay's illness, the hopes of the legitimists.
D'Arthez was an absolutist; the princess could not be ignorant of the