This was the goal, the sanctuary of happiness, nay, bliss itself. All that we have hitherto spoken of led up to this all-engrossing object, for love was the supreme end, and speech is the vehicle of love. A circle of men about a lady, and she talking or making them talk,—this was the supreme and final formula of life. Conversation, then, was the great art of the platonists, infinitely greater than painting or sculpture, greater than music, poetry or oratory, because it alone established real communication between soul and soul, it alone was privileged to body forth a whole realm of unexpressed emotions which would freeze at the end of a pen or pencil, and which music itself would render but ill. Words that well up with the eloquence of spontaneity possess an indescribable vital force impossible to analyse; innumerable details contribute to it—the inflection of the voice, the gesture, the expression of the eyes, the movement of the lips, the play of all the features. A mineral water taken at its source has, as every one knows, singular virtues which are impoverished if it is carried to a distance, and which the most skilful chemist cannot restore. So also the fount of human intelligence must be drunk at its source. If need be, it is well worth a journey. Without women there would be no conversation. For a man who thinks he can converse without wearing the feminine yoke there is nothing but to go off by himself like Cardan, that intolerable chatterbox, who, though the author of two hundred and fifty-five volumes, had the audacity to publish a book _In Praise of Silence_. “Never,” he exclaims, “am I more truly with those I love than when I am alone.” Our opinion would rather coincide with that of the amiable emigré whom his friends urged to marry the object of his passion, and who answered, “But then, where should I spend my evenings?” To draw a man out and show him what he is capable of, it is necessary for a woman to throw out the bait; an ambition to please, an instinct of sympathy, a thousand fleeting intangible nothings, veritable microbes of sentiment, will do the rest. But we do not hesitate to add that, without men, women would hardly know how to talk. Men have often inveighed against the loquacity,[253] the backbiting,[254] the imprudence, the frivolity, the paltry and scandalmongering spirit of the rudimentary and inartistic conversations that women engage in when left to themselves; this kind of conversation can no more be called conversation than certain intrigues can be called love, or than daubing a house front can be called painting a picture.