“Parbleu, one never knows,” Florian replied, as he lay smiling lazily at the smiling cupids who held up the bed-canopies. “It is a very beautiful feature of my character that at thirty-five I am still the optimist. When I marry I always believe the ceremony to begin a new and permanent era.” “Oh, very naturally, since everywhere that frame of mind is considered appropriate to a bridegroom.” The girl had turned her sleek brown head a little, resting it more comfortably upon the pillow, and she regarded Florian with appraising eyes. “My friend, in this, as in much else, I find your subserviency to convention almost excessive. It becomes a notorious mania with you to do nothing whatever without the backing of logic and good precedent—” “My father, mademoiselle, impressed upon me a great while ago the philosophy of these virtues.” “Yes, all that is very fine. Yet I at times suspect your logic and your precedents to be in reality patched-up excuses for following the moment’s whim: or else I seem to see you adjusting them, like colored spectacles, to improve in your eyes the appearance of that which you have in hand.” “Now you misjudge me, mademoiselle, with the ruthlessness of intimate personal acquaintance—” “But indeed, indeed, those precedents which you educe are often rather far-fetched. You are much too ready to refer us to the customs of the Visigoths, or to cite the table-talk of Aristotle, or to appeal to the rulings of Quintilian. It sounds well: I concede that. Yet these, and the similar sonorous pedantries with which you are so glib to justify your pranks, do not, my friend, let me assure you, seem always wholly relevant to the conditions of modern life—” “My race descends from a most notable scholar, mademoiselle, and it well may be the great Jurgen has bequeathed to me some flavor of his unique erudition. For that I certainly need not apologize—” “No, you should rather apologize because that ancient hero appears also to have bequeathed to you a sad tendency to self-indulgence in matrimony. Now to get married has always seemed to me an indelicate advertising of one’s intentions: and I assuredly cannot condone in anybody a selfish habit which to-day leads to my being turned out of doors—” “A pest! you talk as if I too did not sincerely regret those social conventions which make necessary your departure—” “Yet it is you who evoke those silly conventions by marrying again.” “—But in a grave matter like matrimony one must not be obstinate and illiberal. Raoul assures me, you conceive, that his little sister-in-law is a delightful creature. He thinks that as a co-heiress of Nérac, without any meddlesome male relatives, she is the person logically suited to be my wife. And I like to indulge the dear fellow’s wishes.”