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Updated: June 4, 2025
"I hope our acquaintance is not to end here, monsieur," said Madame de Marignan. "I live in the Rue Castellane, and am at home to my friends every Wednesday evening." I bowed almost to my boots. "And to my intimates, every morning from twelve to two," she added very softly, with a dimpled smile that went straight to my heart, and set it beating like the paddle-wheels of a steamer.
And with this, I told him the whole story from beginning to end, confessing all my follies without reservation. Surprised, amused, sometimes unable to repress a smile, sometimes genuinely compassionate, he heard my narrative through, accompanying it from time to time with muttered comments and ejaculations, none of which were very flattering to Madame de Marignan.
I pointed him out to you the other night at the Comedie Française a pale, handsome boy, of about nineteen or twenty, with brown curling hair, and very fine eyes, which were riveted on Madame de Marignan the whole evening. Poor fellow! I cannot help pitying him." "Then then, you think she really does not love him?" I said. And this time my voice was hoarse enough, without any need of feigning.
I had not been to a theatre since that night with Josephine, nor to the Italian Opera since I used to go with Madame de Marignan. As I went in listlessly and took my place, the lights, the noise, the multitude of faces, confused and dazzled me. Presently the curtain rose, and the piece began. The opera was I Capuletti. I do not remember who the singers were, I am not sure that I ever knew.
As yet the plains of Pisa had not been reduced to marsh-lands by the combined negligence and jealousy of the Florentine Republic, neither had the rich country that lay around Rome been converted into a barren desert by the wars of the Colonna and Orsini families; not yet had the Marquis of Marignan razed to the ground a hundred and twenty villages in the republic of Siena alone; and though the Maremma was unhealthy, it was not yet a poisonous marsh: it is a fact that Flavio Blando, writing in 1450, describes Ostia as being merely less flourishing than in the days of the Romans, when she had numbered 50,000 inhabitants, whereas now in our own day there are barely 30 in all.
I was an easy victim, after all, and scarcely worth the powder and shot of an experienced franc-tireur; but Madame de Marignan, according to her own confession, had a taste for civilizing "handsome boys," and as I may, perhaps, have come under that category a good many years ago, the little victory amused her!
Of Madame de Marignan, I have neither heard, nor desired to hear, more. Even Josephine's pretty face is fast fading from my memory. It is ever thus with the transient passions of our première jeunesse. We believe in them for the moment, and waste laughter and tears, chaplets and sackcloth, upon them.
By the time, at all events, that Dalrymple returned to tell me it was past one o'clock in the morning, and I must be introduced to the mistress of the house before leaving, my head was as completely turned as that of old Time himself. "Past one!" I exclaimed. "Impossible! We cannot have been here half-an hour." At which neither Dalrymple nor Madame de Marignan could forbear smiling.
Again, in chap. 30, he says of the emperor: "The thought of measuring his strength with the hero of Marignan was far from alarming him, but a struggle with the monk of Wittenberg disturbed his sleep. He wished that they should try to overcome his obstinacy." For three months the Diet wrangled over the affair of Luther without reaching anything decided.
It was an oppressive autumnal night without a star in the sky, and so still that one might have carried a lighted taper through the streets. Finding it thus warm, Madame de Marignan proposed walking down the line of carriages, instead of waiting till her own came up; and so she and M. Delaroche led the way and I followed.
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