in his own language to Madame de Ventadour; and the conversation between
them generally began in French, and glided away into English. Madame de
Ventadour was eloquent, and so was Maltravers; yet a more complete
contrast in their mental views and conversational peculiarities can
scarcely be conceived. Madame de Ventadour viewed everything as a woman
of the world: she was brilliant, thoughtful, and not without delicacy
and tenderness of sentiment; still all was cast in a worldly mould. She
had been formed by the influences of society, and her mind betrayed its
education. At once witty and melancholy (no uncommon union), she was a
disciple of the sad but caustic philosophy produced by /satiety/. In
the life she led, neither her heart nor her head was engaged; the
faculties of both were irritated, not satisfied or employed. She felt
somewhat too sensitively the hollowness of the great world, and had a
low opinion of human nature. In fact, she was a woman of the French
memoirs--one of those charming and /spirituelles/ Aspasias of the
boudoir, who interest us by their subtlety, tact, and grace, their
exquisite tone of refinement, and are redeemed from the superficial and
frivolous, partly by a consummate knowledge of the social system in
which they move, and partly by a half-concealed and touching discontent
of the trifles on which their talents and affections are wasted. These
are the women who, after a youth of false pleasure, often end by an old
age of false devotion. They are a class peculiar to those ranks and
countries in which shines and saddens that gay and unhappy thing--/a
woman without a home/!

Now this was a specimen of life--this Valerie de Ventadour--that
Maltravers had never yet contemplated, and Maltravers was perhaps
equally new to the Frenchwoman. They were delighted with each other's
society, although it so happened that they never agreed.