“Really, madame” (this madame was meant to remove from the discussion anything like familiarity), “really, this affectation of virtuous decorum is highly becoming to you! Is it not to the sallies of your imagination, and to your extravagant ideas, that I owe what in me displeases you? What right have you to go on those pleasant excursions so often, without taking me with you? Have I ever complained about your attending the meetings in the Empyrean or in the Elysian fields, your conversations with the celestial intelligences, your profound speculations (a little raillery here, you see), your castles in the air, and your transcendental systems? And have I not a right, when you leave me in this way, to enjoy the blessings bestowed upon me by Nature, and the pleasures she places before me?” My soul, surprised at so much vivacity and eloquence, did not know how to reply. In order to settle the dispute amicably, she endeavored to veil with the semblance of good-nature the reproaches that had escaped her. But, that she might not seem to take the first steps towards reconciliation, she affected a formal tone. “_Madame_,” she said, with assumed cordiality.... If the reader thought the word misplaced when addressed to my soul, what will he say of it now, if he call to mind the cause of the quarrel? But my soul did not feel the extreme absurdity of this mode of expression, so much does passion obscure the intellect! “Madame,” she said, “nothing, be assured, would give me so much pleasure as to see you enjoy those pleasures of which your nature is susceptible, if even I did not participate in them, were it not that such pleasures are harmful to you, injuriously affecting the harmony which....” Here my soul was rudely interrupted, “No, no, I am not the dupe of your pretended kindness. The sojourn we are compelled to make together in this room in which we travel; the wound which I received, which still bleeds, and which nearly destroyed me,--is not all this the fruit of your overweening conceit and your barbarous prejudices? My comfort, my very existence, is counted as nothing when your passions sway you: and then, forsooth, you pretend that you take an interest in my welfare, and that your insults spring from friendship.” My soul saw very well that the part she was playing on this occasion was no flattering one. She began, too, to perceive that the warmth of the dispute had put the cause of it out of sight. Profiting from this circumstance, she caused a further distraction by saying to Joannetti, who at that moment entered the room, “Make some coffee!” The noise of the cups attracted all the rebel’s attention, who forthwith forgot everything else. In like manner we show children a toy to make them forget the unwholesome fruit for which they beg and stamp.