"How difficult it is," he exclaimed, "to live in this world without being thought ill of! One ought really never to talk of anything but the weather and hunting, or eagerly to discuss with your old friends the reports of their benevolent societies." He picked up a paper from the table near him. "Come, here is your lace-cleaner's bill. Let us discuss that, sweetheart; then you cannot say I am ill-tempered." "Really, Auguste, you amaze me...." "This handwriting puts me in mind of a letter I found this morning. I must explain that I have fits of untidiness occasionally, and I was arranging my papers. Well, then, I found a love-letter from a dressmaker with whom I fell in love at sixteen. She had a trick of writing each word most fantastically, and her style was equal to her writing. Well, I was foolish enough then to be vexed that my mistress could not write as well as Madame de Sévigné, and I left her abruptly. In reading over this letter to-day I see that this dressmaker really did love me." "Really! a woman whom you kept?" "In line style on fifty francs a month. But I could not afford more, as my guardian only allowed me a little money at a time, for he said that youths who had money ruined themselves and others." "What became of this woman?" "How should I know?... Probably she died in a hospital." "Auguste,... if that were true you would not speak so flippantly." "Well, then, to tell you the truth, she is married to a respectable man, and when I came of age I gave her a small dowry." "How good of you!... But why do you try to make yourself out so evil?" "Oh, I am good enough.... The more I think of it the more I persuade myself that this woman really did care for me.... But on the other hand, it is difficult to discern true feeling under such a ridiculous expression of it." "You ought to have shown me your letter. I should not have been jealous.... We women have finer tact than you, and we can tell at a glance, from the style of a letter, whether the writer is sincere, or feigning a passion he does not really feel." "But what a number of times you have allowed yourself to be taken in by fools and rogues!" As he spoke he looked at the Etruscan vase with a threatening glance, to which his voice responded, but Mathilde went on without noticing anything. "Come, now, all you men wish to pose as Don Juans. You fancy you are making dupes when often you have encountered only Doña Juana, who is much more cunning than yourselves." "I perceive that with your superior wit you ladies scent out rakes in every place. I doubt not also that our friend Massigny, who was both a stupid and a coxcomb, became, when dead, spotless and a martyr." "Massigny? He was not a fool; then too there are silly women to be found. I must tell you a story about Massigny. But surely have I not told it you already?" "Never," replied Saint-Clair tremblingly.