After wandering about from street to street, I decided to call on one of my friends who was to present me at a house where, according to what he told me, I should see a world of pretty women--a collection of flesh and blood idealities--the wherewithal to satisfy a score of poets.--There are some there to suit all tastes:--aristocratic beauties with eagle glances, sea-green eyes, straight noses, chins haughtily elevated, queenly hands, and the gait of a goddess; silver lilies mounted upon golden stalks;--modest violets, pale of hue, sweet of perfume, with melting, downcast eyes, slender neck, transparent flesh;--animated, piquant beauties; devout beauties, beauties of all sorts;--for the house is a genuine seraglio, minus the eunuchs and the Kislar aga.--My friend tells me that he has already had five or six affairs there--quite as many as that;--that seemed to me a prodigious record and I am very much afraid that I shall not have the like success; De C---- says yes, and that I shall succeed much better than I shall care to. According to him I have only one fault, which I am certain to correct as I grow older and go more into society--he says I think too much of woman and not enough of women.--It may well be that there's some truth in that.--He says that I will be perfectly lovable when I rid myself of that little failing. God grant it! It must be that women feel that I despise them; for a compliment, which they would consider adorable and delightful to the last degree in the mouth of another, in mine displeases them and makes them angry, as if it were the most savage epigram. That probably has something to do with the fault De C---- refers to. My heart beat a little faster as I went up the stairs, and I had barely recovered from my emotion when De C----, taking me by the elbow, brought me face to face with a woman of about thirty--not ill-looking--dressed with dissembled magnificence and extreme affectation of childlike simplicity--which did not prevent her being daubed with rouge like a carriage-wheel:--it was the lady of the house. De C----, assuming the shrill, mocking voice which is so different from his ordinary voice, and which he uses in society when he wants to be fascinating, said to her, half aloud, with abundant demonstrations of ironical respect, in which the most profound contempt could plainly be detected: "This is the young man of whom I spoke to you the other day--a man of very distinguished merit; he is of unexceptionable birth and I think that it cannot be otherwise than agreeable to you to receive him; that is why I have taken the liberty to present him to you." "Assuredly, monsieur, you have done well," rejoined the lady, with a most outrageously affected manner. Then she turned to me, and after looking me over out of the corner of her eye, like a clever connoisseur, and in a way that made me blush to my ears, she said: "You may consider yourself invited once for all, and come as often as you have an evening to waste."