little too much to hear her praised.

"And now what am I to do?" I said to Madame de Malouet.

She reflected for a moment, and replied with a slight shrug of her
shoulders:

"_Ma foi!_ nothing; that's the best thing you can do."

The least breath causes a full cup to overflow; thus the little
unpleasantness of this scene seems to have intensified this feeling of
ennui which has scarce left me since my advent into this abode of joy.
This continuous gayety, this restless agitation, this racing and dancing
and dining, this ceaseless merry-making, and this eternal round of
festivity importune me to the point of disgust. I regret bitterly the time
I have wasted in reading and investigations which in no wise concern my
official mission and have but little advanced its termination; I regret
the engagements which the kind entreaties of my hosts have extorted from
my weakness; I regret my vale of Tempe; above all, Paul, I regret you.
There are certainly in this little social center a sufficient number of
superior and kindly disposed minds to form the elements of the pleasantest
and even the most elevated relations; but these elements are fairly
submerged in the worldly and vulgar throng, and can only be eliminated
from it with much trouble and difficulty, and never without admixture.
Monsieur and Madame de Malouet, Monsieur de Breuilly even, when his insane
jealously does not deprive him of the use of his faculties, certainly
possess choice minds and hearts; but the mere difference of age opens an
abyss between us. As to the young men and the men of my own age whom I
meet here, they all march with more or less eager step in Madame de
Palme's wake. It is enough that I should decline to follow them in that