"Hold, hold," exclaimed the Count, "that is a very different thing; to my mind satiety is the exhaustion of our own powers of enjoying, not the discovery of the want of a power of conferring enjoyment in other things. Because a man loses the sense of smelling, that will not deprive the rose of its sweet odour. Does a tyrant cut out my tongue? the delicious flavour of the peach will remain, though I taste it not; though he blind my eyes, the face of nature will flourish and look fair as much as ever. No, no, satiety is the deprivation, by over enjoyment, of our own powers of receiving; and not a just estimate of the powers of other things in giving pleasure." "But you will own," said the Chevalier, "that a deep and minute acquaintance with any source of enjoyment naturally tends to diminish the gratification that we at first received from it. You will not deny that moralist and philosopher, from Solomon down to our own days, have all been right in pointing out the vanity of all things. _Vanitas vanitatis_, my dear Count, has been the stamp fixed by every great mind that the world has yet produced upon the objects of human enjoyment. This has been the acme, this the conclusion at which wisdom has arrived; and surely the sooner we ourselves arrive at it in life the better." "Heaven forbid," exclaimed the Count; "Heaven forbid, either that it should be so, or that such should be your real and mature opinion. You say that a minute acquaintance with the sources of enjoyment diminishes the gratification they afford. There is undoubtedly something lost in every case of such minute acquaintance; but it is by the loss of a peculiar and distinct source of pleasure accompanying every other enjoyment the first time it is tasted, and never going beyond. I mean novelty--the bloom upon the ripe plum, which renders it beautiful to the eye as well as refreshing to the taste--brush away the bloom, the plum is no longer so beautiful, but the taste no less refreshing. Setting aside the diminution made for the loss of that novelty, I deny your position." The Chevalier laughed at his friend's eagerness. "You will not surely deny, Morseiul," he said, "that there is no pleasure, no enjoyment, really satisfactory to the human heart; and, consequently, the more intimately we become acquainted with it, the more clearly do we see its emptiness." "Had you said at the first," replied the Count, "that our acquaintance with pleasures show their insufficiency, I should have admitted the truth of your assertion; but to discover the insufficiency of one pleasure seems to me only a step towards the enjoyment of pleasures of a higher quality." "But we may exhaust them all," said the Chevalier, "and then comes--what but satiety?"