'Tis a most appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing
the finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her
very heart. Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious
of respect; without esteem they cannot exist, esteem is the first
demand that they make of love. The most corrupt among them feels that
she must, in the first place, pledge the future to buy absolution for
the past, and strives to make her lover understand that only for
irresistible bliss can she barter the respect which the world
henceforth will refuse to her.

Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for the first
time and alone receives a visit from a young man; and this especially
when, like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever.
And similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some
secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the
instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman
like the Marquise d'Aiglemont.

Mme. d'Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de Vandenesse was
announced; and as for him, he was almost confused in spite of the
assurance which is like a matter of costume for a diplomatist. But not
for long. The Marquise took refuge at once in the friendliness of
manner which women use as a defence against the misinterpretations of
fatuity, a manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the
way to sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), tempering the
transition through the ordinary forms of politeness. In this ambiguous
position, where the four roads leading respectively to Indifference,
Respect, Wonder, and Passion meet, a woman may stay as long as she
pleases, but only at thirty years does she understand all the
possibilities of the situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all