In the eyes of the world I have a mistress whom several desire and envy me, and whom no one would disdain. My desire is gratified, therefore, in appearance, and I no longer have the right to pick a quarrel with fate. However, it seems to me that I have no mistress; I can convince myself that I have by arguing it out, but I do not feel it, and if anybody should ask me unexpectedly if I had one, I think I should answer no.--However, the possession of a woman who has beauty, youth, and wit, constitutes what, in all times and in all countries, has been and still is called having a mistress, and I think there is no other way. That doesn't prevent my having the strangest doubts in that connection, and it has gone so far that if several people should unite to convince me that I am not Rosette's favored lover, I should end by believing them in the face of the palpable evidence to the contrary. Do not think from what I say that I do not love her or that she is displeasing to me in any way; on the contrary, I am very fond of her and I see in her what everybody else would see in her: a pretty, alluring creature. I simply do not feel that I possess her, that is all. And yet no woman ever gave me so much pleasure, and if I have ever known bliss, it has been in her arms.--A single one of her kisses, the most chaste of her caresses makes me shiver to the soles of my feet and sends all my blood back to my heart. Explain it all if you can. The facts, however, are as I tell them to you. But the human heart is full of such absurdities; and if we were obliged to reconcile all the contradictions it exhibits, we should have a heavy task on our hands. How does it happen? Verily, I have no idea. I see her all day, and all night too, if I choose. I bestow as many caresses on her as I please; I have her naked or dressed, in town or in the country. Her good humor is inexhaustible, and she enters heart and soul into my whims however eccentric they may be; one evening the fancy seized me to possess her in the middle of the salon, with all the candles lighted, the fire blazing on the hearth, the chairs arranged in a circle as if for a grand evening reception, she, in a _toilette de bal_ with her bouquet and her fan, all her diamonds on her fingers and her neck, feathers in her hair--the most magnificent costume imaginable--and I dressed like a bear; she consented.--When everything was ready, the servants were greatly surprised to receive orders to close the doors and admit no one; they acted as if they had not the slightest comprehension of what it all meant, and went away with a dazed look that made us laugh heartily. They certainly thought that their mistress was stark mad; but what they thought or did not think mattered little to us.