himself a political character! oh! oh!"

"But, my dear Flavie, half the absurdities of life are the result of
such conspiracies; and men are not alone in these deceptions. In how
many families one sees the husband, children, and friends persuading a
silly mother that she is a woman of sense, or an old woman of fifty
that she is young and beautiful. Hence, inconceivable contrarieties
for those who go about the world with their eyes shut. One man owes
his ill-savored conceit to the flattery of a mistress; another owes
his versifying vanity to those who are paid to call him a great poet.
Every family has its great man; and the result is, as we see it in the
Chamber, general obscurity of the lights of France. Well, men of real
mind are laughing to themselves about it, that's all. You are the mind
and the beauty of this little circle of the petty bourgeoisie; it is
this superiority which led me in the first instance to worship you. I
have since longed to drag you out of it; for I love you sincerely
--more in friendship than in love; though a great deal of love is
gliding into it," he added, pressing her to his heart under cover of
the recess of a window to which he had taken her.

"Madame Phellion will play the piano," cried Colleville. "We must all
dance to-night--bottles and Brigitte's francs and all the little
girls! I'll go and fetch my clarionet."

He gave his empty coffee-cup to his wife, smiling to see her so
friendly with la Peyrade.

"What have you said and done to my husband?" asked Flavie, when
Colleville had left them.