you are responsible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest again--" "You will make a mistake, monsieur," she laughed; "vanity should be left to those who have nothing else to recommend them." The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual way, over a multitude of topics--art and literature, politics, men and things --till insensibly they fell to talking of the eternal theme in France and all the world over--love, sentiment, and women. "We are bond-slaves." "You are queens." This was the gist and substance of all the more or less ingenious discourse between Charles and the Marquise, as of all such discourses --past, present, and to come. Allow a certain space of time, and the two formulas shall begin to mean "Love me," and "I will love you." "Madame," Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his breath, "you have made me bitterly regret that I am leaving Paris. In Italy I certainly shall not pass hours in intellectual enjoyment such as this has been." "Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness is worth more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that are said every evening in Paris." Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a farewell call on the Marquise d'Aiglemont, and very lucky did he feel himself when the form of words in which he expressed himself for once was used in all sincerity; and that night, and all day long on the morrow, he could not put the thought of the Marquise out of his mind. At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what she had meant when she asked him to come to see her, and thought supplied an inexhaustible commentary. Again it seemed to him that he had discovered the motives of her curiosity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or frigidly sober with each new construction put upon that piece of commonplace civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes nothing. He made up his mind at last that he would not yield to this inclination, and--went to call on Mme. d'Aiglemont. There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we do not so much as suspect their existence. If at first sight this assertion appears to be less a truth than a paradox, let any candid inquirer look into his own life and he shall find abundant confirmation therein. Charles went to Mme. d'Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, pre-existent germs of thought, of which our experience and our intellectual gains and achievements are but later and tangible developments.