Page:Ten Years Later.djvu/301

Rh "Yes, yes; I approve everything Athenais has just said; only "

"Only what?"

"Well, I cannot carry it out. I have the firmest principles; I form resolutions beside which the laws of the Stadtholder and of the King of Spain are child's play; but when the moment arrives to put them into execution, nothing comes of them."

"Your courage fails?" said Athenais scornfully.

"Miserably so."

"Great weakness of nature," returned Athenais. "But at least you make a choice."

"Why, no. It pleases fate to disappoint me in everything; I dream of emperors, and I find only "

"Aure, Aure!" exclaimed La Valliere, "for pity's sake, do not, for the pleasure of saying something witty, sacrifice those who love you with such devoted affection."

"Oh, I do not trouble myself much about that; those who love me are sufficiently happy that I do not dismiss them altogether. So much the worse for myself if I have a weakness for any one, but so much the worse for others if I revenge myself upon them for it."

"You are right," said Athenais, "and perhaps you, too, will reach the same goal. In other words, young ladies, that is termed being a coquette. Men, who are very silly in most things, are particularly so in confounding, under the term of coquetry, a woman's pride and her variableness. I, for instance, am proud; that is to say, impregnable. I treat my admirers harshly, but without any pretension to retain them. Men call me a coquette, because they are vain enough to think I care for them. Other women — Montalais, for instance — have allowed themselves to be influenced by flattery; they would be lost were it not for that most fortunate principle of instinct which urges them to change suddenly, and punish the man whose devotion they had so recently accepted."

"A very learned dissertation," said Montalais, in the tone of thorough enjoyment.

"It is odious!" murmured Louise.

"Thanks to this sort of coquetry, for, indeed, that is genuine coquetry," continued Mlle. de Tonnay-Charente, "the lover who, a little while since, was puffed up with pride, in a minute afterward is suffering at every pore of his vanity and self-esteem. He was, perhaps, already beginning to assume the airs of a conqueror, but now he Rh