“I was seventeen,” de Marsay went on; “the Restoration was being consolidated; my old friends know how impetuous and fervid I was then. I was in love for the first time, and I was—I may say so now—one of the handsomest young fellows in Paris. I had youth and good looks, two advantages due to good fortune, but of which we are all as proud as of a conquest. I must be silent as to the rest.—Like all youths, I was in love with a woman six years older than myself. No one of you here,” said he, looking carefully round the table, “can suspect her name or recognize her. Ronquerolles alone, at the time, ever guessed my secret. He had kept it well, but I should have feared his smile. However, he is gone,” said the Minister, looking round. “He would not stay to supper,” said Madame de Nucingen. “For six months, possessed by my passion,” de Marsay went on, “but incapable of suspecting that it had overmastered me, I had abandoned myself to that rapturous idolatry which is at once the triumph and the frail joy of the young. I treasured her old gloves; I drank an infusion of the flowers she had worn; I got out of bed at night to go and gaze at her window. All my blood rushed to my heart when I inhaled the perfume she used. I was miles away from knowing that woman is a stove with a marble casing.” “Oh! spare us your terrible verdicts,” cried Madame de Montcornet with a smile. “I believe I should have crushed with my scorn the philosopher who first uttered this terrible but profoundly true thought,” said de Marsay. “You are all far too keen-sighted for me to say any more on that point. These few words will remind you of your own follies. “A great lady if ever there was one, a widow without children—oh! all was perfect—my idol would shut herself up to mark my linen with her hair; in short, she responded to my madness by her own. And how can we fail to believe in passion when it has the guarantee of madness?