what are called feelings. Encourage your vanities, your follies, your wishes, and you lay up perpetual sources of delight in their gratification. But feeling! why cherish the serpent that will sting, and the fire that will consume—dreaming of a return which is never made, and of some impossible happiness which never comes?"
"And yet," replied Francesca, "there is that in the deep or the lofty feeling that redeems itself. I cannot waste the precious thoughts of my solitude on objects which are utterly unworthy—the petty triumph or the transient amusement."
"Oh!" cried the Comtesse, laughing, "I cry you mercy, if you come to the romantic imaginings of which solitude is the inexhaustible mother. I know that my own is the very worst company I can be in, and I therefore fly from it as much as possible."
"We shall never agree," replied Francesca. "The life in which you are involved would weary me to death."
"Nevertheless," exclaimed Madame de Soissons, "you must bear it for the next week, during which we intend to trespass on your hospitality. There will be time enough for your king to have his head turned by my pretty sister, and for you to develope the incipient inclination of De
