The scheme was grand and ignoble both; but to
carry it out you should have chosen either a common man or one so
preoccupied by noble thoughts that you could easily deceive him. You
thought me simple and easy to mislead as a man of genius. I am not a
man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as such I have divined you.
When I made that eulogy yesterday on women of your age, explaining to
you why Calyste had loved you, do you suppose I took to myself your
ravished, fascinated, fazzling glance? Had I not read into your soul?
The eyes were turned on me, but the heart was throbbing for Calyste.
You have never been loved, my poor Maupin, and you never will be after
rejecting the beautiful fruit which chance has offered to you at the
portals of that hell of woman, the lock of which is the numeral 50!"
"Why has love fled me?" she said in a low voice. "Tell me, you who
know all."
"Because you are not lovable," he answered. "You do not bend to love;
love must bend to you. You may perhaps have yielded to some follies of
youth, but there was no youth in your heart; your mind has too much
depth; you have never been naive and artless, and you cannot begin to
be so now.
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