"Some days later the author found himself in the company of two ladies. The first had been one of the most humane and most intellectual women of the court of Napoleon. Having attained a high social position, the Restoration surprised her and caused her downfall; she had become a hermit. The other, young, beautiful, was playing at that time, in Paris, the role of a fashionable woman. They were friends, for the one being forty years of age, and the other twenty-two, their aspirations rarely caused their vanity to appear on the same scene. 'Have you noticed, my dear, that in general women love only fools?'--'/What are you saying, Duchess?/' "[*] [*] M. Turquain states that Madame Hamelin is one of these women and that the Duchesse d'Abrantes in incontestably the other. For a different opinion, see the chapter on Madame Gay. The italics are the present writer's. In /La Femme abandonnee/, Madame de Beauseant resembles the Duchess as portrayed in this description: "All the courage of her house seemed to gleam from the great lady's brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel audacity or scorn, for they were full of tenderness and gentleness. The outline of that little head, . . . the delicate, fine features, the subtle curve of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony suggestive of craft and insolence. It would have been difficult to refuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings in her in thinking of her misfortunes, of the passion that had almost cost her her life. Was it not an imposing spectacle (still further magnified by reflection) to see in that vast, silent salon this woman, separated from the entire world, who for three years had lived in the depths of a little valley, far from the city, alone with her memories of a brilliant, happy, ardent youth, once so filled with fetes and constant homage, now given over to the horrors of nothingness? The smile of this woman proclaimed a high sense of her own value."