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[Patrias <cha...@fi...>]

Im. He returned a grimace. "Messieurs," said Monsieur de St. Gre,
turning to us, "dinner will soon be ready--if you will be so good as to
pardon me until then." Nick followed Mademoiselle with his eyes until
she had disappeared beyond the hall. She did not so much as turn. Then
he took me by the arm and led me to a bench under a magnolia a little
distance away, where he seated himself, and looked up at me
despairingly. "Behold," said he, "what was once your friend and cousin,
your counsellor, sage, and guardian. Behold the clay which conducted you
hither, with the heart neatly but painfully extracted. Look upon a
woman's work, Davy, and shun the sex. I tell you it is better to go
blindfold through life, to have--pardon me--your own blunt features,
than to be reduced to such a pitiable state. Was ever such a refinement
of cruelty practised before? Never! Was there ever such beauty, such
archness, such coquetry,--such damned elusiveness? Never! If there is a
cargo going up the river, let me be salted and lie at the bottom of it.
I'll warrant you I'll not come to life." "You appear to have suffered
somewhat," I said, forgetting for the moment in my laughter the thing
that weighed upon my mind. "Suffered!" he cried; "I have been tossed
high in the azure that I might sink the farther into the depths. I have
been put in a grave, the earth stamped down, resurrected, and flung into
the dust-heap. I have been taken up to the gate of heaven and dropped a
hundred and fifty years through darkness. Since I have seen you I have
been the round of all the bright places and all the bottomless pits in
the firmament." "It seems to have made you literary," I remarked
judicially. "I burn up twenty times a day," he continued, with a wave of
the hand to express the completeness of the process; "there is nothing
left. I see her, I speak to her, and I burn up." "Have you had many
tete-a-tetes?" I asked. "Not one," he retorted fiercely; "do you think
there is any sense in the damnable French custom? I