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284 Martine, and make her appreciate all his beauties, and enjoy my interesting and pathetic manner of reading aloud, but I had no sort of success; she did not like Greece or Rome any more than a fish would like apples for his dinner. Sometimes she would listen for a few moments, just from politeness, but she could not keep her mind on it, or rather her thoughts were elsewhere, flying up, down and all around, so that at the most exciting part of the narrative when I was working up to my effect, with a trembling voice, she would interrupt me, calling out to Glodie, or to Florimond at the other end of the house. This vexed me, of course, but I had to give it up, and resign myself to the fact that woman rarely shares our visions with us. She is half of us, but which half? The upper, of course, but suppose it should be the other? One thing is very sure, whatever the sexes have in common, it is not their brain, for each has its own, like a case full of baubles; or rather, they are like two sprouts from the same stem with one root between them—the heart.

I have a great many visitors these days, old graybeard as I am, ruined and lame into the bargain; all the pretty young housewives of the neighborhood gather round my bed, ostensibly to bring me the news, or to ask to have something mended.