Then she relapsed into silence, her lips pressed firmly together. The line of vehicles still wended its way round the lake, with an uniform trot, and a noise greatly resembling that of some distant cataract. Now, on the left, between the water and the roadway, rose little clumps of evergreens with thin straight stems, forming curious clusters of tiny columns. On the right, the copses and low bushes had come to an end; the Bois had expanded into large lawns, immense carpets of turf, with groups of tall trees planted here and there; the greensward continued, with gentle undulations, as far as the Porte de la Muette, the low iron gates of which, looking like a piece of black lace drawn across the ground, could be seen far away in the distance; and, on the slopes, at the parts where the earth sank in, the grass had quite a bluey look. Renée gazed with fixed eyes, as though this enlargement of the horizon, these soft meads, all reeking with the night dew, had caused her to feel more keenly than ever the emptiness of her existence. At the end of a pause she repeated, with the accents of subdued anger: "Oh! I feel bored, I feel bored to death." "You're not over lively, you know," said Maxime, quietly. "It's your nerves, I'm sure." The young woman threw herself back again on her cushions. "Yes, it's my nerves," retorted she, sharply. Then she became quite maternal. "I am growing old, my dear child; I shall soon be thirty. It's terrible. I take pleasure in nothing. At twenty, you cannot understand this." "Did you ask me to come with you to listen to your confession?" interrupted the young man. "It will be terribly long." She received this impertinent remark with a feeble smile, as though dealing with a spoilt child to whom everything is permitted. "You're a nice one to complain," continued Maxime; "you spend more than a hundred thousand francs a year on your dress, you live in a splendid mansion, you possess some superb horses, your caprices become law, and the newspapers mention every new dress you wear as though they were relating something of the highest importance; all the women are jealous of you, every man would give ten years of his life just to kiss the tips of your fingers. Is it not so?" She nodded her head affirmatively, but did not otherwise answer. With eyes cast down, she was again curling the hairs of the bearskin. "Ah! do not be modest," resumed Maxime; "admit at once that you are one of the pillars of the Second Empire. Between ourselves, we can speak of these things. Everywhere, at the Tuileries, at the ministries, at the mansions of the mere millionaires, over the highest and the lowest, you reign with sovereign power. There is not a pleasure you have not partaken of, and if I dared, if the respect I owe you did not restrain me, I would say--" He paused for a few seconds, laughing the while; then he cavalierly finished his sentence. "I would say that you have tasted of every apple." She did not wince.