If I had still doubted the keen sentiment inspired in me by the charming Camille, the doubt would have been swept away by the cruel emotion I experienced at this cynical speech. I could see the reality of the drama in which I was concerned as a witness; as in some duels the sight of a life very dear to him in danger makes the second paler than the duellist, Little Favier’s passionate love served Jacques as an attack upon the vanity of the _blasé_ woman of the world who was coquettish and coldly perverse without doubt, but also elegant, envied and rich, and afterwards whom his vanity and curiosity attracted. The heart of the poor little actress which had remained naïve and romantic in spite of his disenchanting existence, her true heart—which I had felt to be so true, which had opened with such spontaneity in an hour of inward suffering—was about to be broken, torn and crushed between two prides fighting one against the other—and what prides they were! This most ferocious and implacable of all prides, that of an almost great lady and an almost great author, both gangrened with egoism by their habitual display, was withered by their constant and detestable study of the effect produced, without which a person does not retain the world’s uncertain prestige. By frightfully certain intuition, I at once measured the depth of the abyss in which my friend of the previous evening unknown to herself was plunged. The extreme clearness of this vision prevented me answering Jacques with indignation, as he no doubt expected and was prepared to amuse himself at my simplicity. He would have chaffed me, and that would have annoyed me. He would have told me in words what his enigmatic smile expressed. “If she pleases you so there is a place for you to take at once as her consoler.” I can give myself the credit for not using that ugly expression. But I lay claim to no other merit. Is there any merit in not profaning in oneself an image which only pleases when it is tender and pure? Strange though it may seem to apply this word to a girl whom I knew to be the mistress of one of my comrades, I respected in Camille that foolish illusion by which her twenty-two years risked on a single card their precious treasure of delicate dreams, naïve tenderness and noble chimeras. I respected in her the dream which she had already made me dream.