"Faith! monsieur le baron, I begin to think that you are right." "To horse, then, Monsieur Ménard, and _vive la gaieté_! To-morrow, I will take you to dine with our friend Chambertin." "Really, monsieur le baron?" "And I promise you that we'll make an entry into the village that will cause a sensation." "I don't understand you, monsieur le baron; but you arrange things so well, that I rely on you." And Ménard, overjoyed at the prospect of going to Monsieur Chambertin's the next day, dug his heels into his horse's sides for the first time in his life,--to be sure, he had no spurs,--and trotted along at Dubourg's side. "Still, it's a great pity that my pupil has made this new acquaintance," he said; "a woman sometimes makes a man commit many follies! Cato said that wisdom and common sense were incompatible with a woman's mind." "Oh! probably Cato was unlucky in love, Monsieur Ménard." "Saint Bernard calls woman the _organum diaboli_." "But Confucius declares that a woman's mind is the masterpiece of the Creator." "Juvenal says that the thought of vengeance has more attraction for a woman than for a man." "Which proves, Monsieur Ménard, that she bears some resemblance to the gods." "And Origen says: 'Woman is the key to sin.'" "I had always supposed that she was only the lock." "Agnès Sorel enfeebled the courage of Charles VII." "And another woman restored it." "Joanna of Naples caused her husband to be strangled." "Jeanne Hachette saved Beauvais." "On the whole, monsieur le baron, it seems to be about an even thing." Let us leave our two friends to return to Grenoble, discussing the nature of womankind,--a discussion which might lead them very far, and leave them without any additional knowledge of the subject; for a learned man has said that a woman's heart has as many varying moods as there are grains of sand on the seashore (and he must have been learned, indeed, to know the number of the latter),--and let us return to Frédéric. He breathed more freely when Dubourg had left him, and ere long he heard the steps of the horses which bore his companions away. Thereupon, as well pleased as Crates, who cried, after throwing all his money into the sea: "Now I am free!" he felt more at liberty to abandon himself to his passion for the dumb girl, since he was rid of Dubourg and Ménard; and he hurried away to the cabin. Frédéric did not look beyond the present; he did not reflect; for he was twenty-one years old, and he was passionately in love!