Besides she was as yet only at the earlier pages. She willingly talked in a low tone, and laughing, about the extraordinary circumstances of the tender attachment between Suzanne Haffner and Adeline d'Espanet, of the questionable calling of Madame de Lauwerens, and of the kisses which the Countess Vanska gave at a fixed price; but she still contemplated these things from afar off, with a vague notion of perhaps tasting them, and this indeterminate desire which at evil moments rose within her, increased her turbulent anxiety still more and urged her on in her mad search for an unique exquisite enjoyment of which she alone would partake. Her first lovers had not spoiled her; she had on three occasions fancied herself seized with a great passion; love burst forth in her brain like a cracker, the sparks of which did not reach her heart. She was mad for a month, showed herself throughout Paris with her dear lord; and then one morning, amid all the racket of her love, she became conscious of depressing silence and immense vacuity. The first, the young Duke de Rozan, was barely more than a breakfast of sunshine; Renée who had noticed him on account of his gentleness and excellent manners, found him altogether superficial, washed out, and plaguy when they were alone together. Mr. Simpson, an attaché of the American embassy, who came next, almost beat her, and for that reason remained with her for nearly a year. Then she smiled on an aide-de-camp of the Emperor, the Count de Chibray, a vain handsome man who was beginning to tire her when the Duchess de Sternich took it into her head to fall in love with him and carry him off from her; thereupon she wept for him and let her friends understand that her heart was crushed, and that she should never love again. She thus progressed to the most insignificant being in the world, Monsieur de Mussy, a young man who was making his way in the diplomatic career by conducting cotillons with especial gracefulness; she never exactly knew why she had given herself to him but she retained him for a long time, feeling lazy, disgusted with an unknown land which one discovers in half an hour, and deferring the worry attendant upon a change until she had met with some extraordinary adventure. At twenty-eight years of age she already felt terribly wearied. Ennui appeared to her all the more insupportable, as her middle-class virtues profited by the hours when she was bored to complain and worry her. She closed her door, she had frightful headaches. Then when the door opened again it was a flood of silk and lace that swept forth with a great racket, a being of luxury and joy without a care or a flush upon the brow.