The visitors looked at each other with some embarrassment; they seemed to be asking of each other who was to speak first. Pont-de-Veyle collected his thoughts, and spoke as follows: "Mademoiselle, we have been breakfasting together; we had a gay time of it, like men of spirit. Instead of bringing before us, as the Egyptians in olden times, mummies, in order to remind us that time is the most precious of all things, we called up all those gay phantoms which enchanted our youth: need I say that you were not the least charming of them? who did not love you? who did not desire to live with you one hour, even at the expense of a wound? Happiness never costs too much—" Mademoiselle Camargo interrupted the speaker: "O gentlemen, do not, I beg, blind me with the memory of the past; do not awaken a buried passion! Let me die in peace! See, the tears are in my eyes!"—The visitors, affected, looked with a certain degree of emotion at the poor old lady who had loved so much. "It is strange," said Helvetius to his neighbor, "we came here to laugh, but we are travelling quite another road; however, I must say, nothing could be more ludicrous than such a caricature, if it were not of a woman." "Proceed, sir," said Mademoiselle de Camargo to Pont-de-Veyle. "To tell you the truth, madame, the worst fellow in the company, or rather he who had drank the most, declared that he was, of all your lovers, the one you most loved. ’The mere talk of a man who has had too much wine,’ said one of us. But our impertinent emptied his glass, and backed his statement. The discussion became very lively. We talked, we drank, and we talked. When the last bottle was empty, and the dispute was likely to end in a duel, and we talked without knowing, probably, what we said, the most sober of the company proposed to go and ask you yourself which of your lovers you loved the most. Is it the Count de Melun? is it the Duke de Richelieu? is it the Marquis de Croismare? the Baron de Viomesnil? the Viscount de Jumilhac? is it Monsieur de Beaumont, or Monsieur d’Aubigny? is it a poet? is it a soldier? is it an abbé?" "Pshaw! pshaw!" said Mademoiselle de Camargo, smiling; "you had better refer to the _Court Calendar_!" "What we want to know is not the names of those who have loved you, but, I repeat, the name of him whom you loved the most." "You are fools," said Mademoiselle de Camargo, with an air of sadness and a voice that showed emotion; "I will not answer you. Let us leave our extinct passions in their tombs, in peace. Why unbury all those charming follies which have had their day?" "Come," says Grimm to Duclos, "do not let us grow sentimental; that would be too absurd. Mademoiselle de Camargo," said he, playing with the dogs at the same time, "which was the epoch of short petticoats? for that is one of the points of our philosophical dispute."