E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe (http://www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/verywomansixtine00gouriala
Translated from the French by J. L. Barrets
I The Dead Leaves XXI The Mystic Bark II Madame Du Boys XXII The Simoniac III Travel Notes XXIII The Adorer IV Reflections XXIV The Color of Marriage V More Travel Notes XXV Departure VI Dream Figure XXVI The Adorer VII Marcelle and Marceline XXVII The Education of Maidens VIII The Transparent Curtain XXVIII The Esthetic Thrill of Time IX The Promenade of Sin XXIX Pantomime X The Unleavened Dough XXX The Man and the Pretty Beast XI Diamond Dust XXXI The Infamy of Being Happy XII The Adorer XXXII Intoxication XIII Christus Patiens XXXIII An Evening in Society XIV The Faun XXXIV Poetic Rapture XV The Carnal Hour XXXV The Adorer XVI The Ideal Bees XXXVI Anger XVII The Adorer XXXVII The Adorer XVIII A Complete Woman XXXVIII Pride XIX New Suggestions XXXIX The Key to the Coffer XX The Twenty-eighth of XL Ultimate Peace December
"When Nature produces these masterpieces, she rarely offers them to the man who could best appreciate and be worthy of possessing them." Kant: _Essay on the Beautiful_.
They walked side by side, under the gloomy old firs whose heavy branches leaned towards the yellowing lawn.
Countess Aubry, with her charm of a negotiator of worldly loves, had just hastily brought them together, as though they were predestined for each other.
They were slightly acquainted already. They remembered having met during the past winter in the Marigny Avenue Salon, that haunt of miscarried glories, and, during the past week that they had been staying at the Château de Rabodanges (among several invalids of distinction) they had succeeded in exchanging a few vaguely suggestive words, a few affected witticisms, not without disdain for such a vain communion.
The one knew that Madame Sixtine Magne, a widow, had never held out her neck towards a new necklace--and believed it. The other knew that Hubert d'Entragues had dedicated himself, by inclination rather than by necessity, to the imperious craft of a man of letters. Her first impulse had been to consider him a cavalry captain, but the name captivated her, that name faded in history, so far as a pretty woman was concerned, and which a young man restored to all its freshness, under her eyes. Amorous and royal reminiscences whose auricular remembrance had remained in her head like a viol sound, like ripplings on fading silks, and suddenly with rustlings of steel--an admission with which her preciosity amused itself, perhaps, for she was very artful, through pride.