"I have said I would tell you all, Maria," replied Clémence, "and I will tell you all. I never have loved any one before; and how could I, surrounded as I have been by the empty, and the vain, and the vicious,--by a crowd so full of vices, and so barren of virtues, that a man thought himself superior to the whole world, if he had but one good quality to recommend him: and what were the qualities on which they piqued themselves? If a man had wit, he thought himself a match for an empress; if he had courage, though that, to say the truth, was the most general quality, he felt himself privileged to be a libertine, and a gamester, and an atheist; and, instead of feeling shame, he gloried in his faults. How could I love any of such men? How could I esteem them--the first step to love? I have but heard one instance of true affection in the court of France--that of poor Conti to the King's daughter; and I never fancied myself such a paragon as to be the second woman that could raise such attachment. Nothing less, however, would satisfy me, and therefore I determined to shape my course accordingly. I resolved to let the crowd that chose it follow, and flatter, and affect to worship, as much as ever they so pleased. It was their doing, not mine. I mean not to say that it did not please and amuse me: I mean not to say that I did not feel some sort of satisfaction--which I now see was wrong to feel--in using as slaves, in ordering here and there, in trampling upon and mortifying a set of beings that I contemned and despised, and that valued me alone for gifts which I valued not myself. Had there been one man amongst them that at all deserved me--that gave one thought to my mind or to my heart, rather than to my beauty or my fortune--he would have hated me for the manner in which I treated him and others; and I might have learned to love him, even while he learned to contemn me. Such was not the case, however, for there was not one that did so. Had I declared my determination of never marrying, to be the slave of a being I despised, they would soon have put me in a convent, or at least have tried to do so; and I feared they might. Therefore it was I went on upon the same plan, sitting like a waxen virgin in a shrine, letting adorers come and worship as much as they pleased, and taking notice of none. There is not one of them that can say that I ever gave him aught but a cutting speech, or an expression of my contempt It is now several years ago, but you must remember it well, when we were first with the Duke at Ruffigny." "Oh, I remember it well," replied the attendant, "and the hunting, and your laying down the bridle like a wild careless girl, as you then were, and the horse running away with you, and this very Count de Morseiul saving you by stopping it Ay, I remember it all well, and you told me how gallant and handsome he looked, and all he had said; and I laughed, and told you you were in love with him."