"I cannot say that is to my taste, for I have no idea. I have passed so entirely beside everything that goes to make up the life of young women--marriage, wealth and liberty--that I am hardly acquainted with myself. I know that I have consumed two years in ennui and melancholy, and thus far in my solitude, except for these money troubles, which are exceedingly distasteful to me, but which I do my best to endure without bitterness, I find myself in a more tolerable condition than in those through which I have previously passed. It may be that my character lacks energy just as my mind lacks variety. Being driven to some occupation to kill time, I have taken a liking to quiet amusements. I read a great deal, I draw a little, I play on the piano, I embroider, I write occasional letters to my old friends at the convent. I receive four or five people of a serious turn of mind, but good-tempered, and always the same, so that I am habitually placid and free from excitement. In a word, I do not suffer, and I am not bored; and that is a good deal to one who has always suffered or yawned with ennui hitherto. So leave me as I am, my friend. Come to see me as often as you can without interfering with your pleasures, and do not worry about my lot, which is not so bad as it might be." "All this will do very well for a while, my dear, and you act like a woman of spirit by meeting misfortune with a stout heart; but all things have their day, and you must not sacrifice too much of the age of beauty and the advantages which it procures. You are not, be it said without offence, of very exalted birth, but your unfortunate marriage gave you a fine name and a title which placed you on a higher social level. You are a widow, which enables you to go about and be seen and known, and you have no children; so that you are still in all the bloom of your youth. You have no fortune; but, as your dower, overladen with debts as it is, will be no great loss, you can very well hold it cheap, and renounce it for a more eligible suitor than the first. If you choose to put yourself in my hands, I will undertake to arrange the sort of marriage for you to which you have a perfect right to aspire." "The sort of marriage? You surprise me; explain yourself!" "I mean to say that you are too fascinating not to be married for love." "Very good; but will it be someone whom I shall be able to love?" "If the man, instead of being a spendthrift and a fool, is really rich and well-born, for that is most important of all, and you cannot descend socially without blame; if he has breeding, tact, and the instincts of a man of quality; and, lastly, if he is an honorable man--what more can you ask? You must not expect that he will be in his first youth, and built like the hero of a novel.--We see but few of those magnificent creatures who are disposed to select a person of great merit for her lovely eyes; everybody is more or less hard up in these days!"