As She Had Displayed All Her Talents Of Wit And Eloquence To Engage Him,
She Looked On The Little Curiosity
She had been able to inspire in him
as an affront, and vexed she had thrown away so much time
On an
insensible, as she called him, flung hastily away, and joining with some
other company, left him at liberty to pursue his inclinations.
This lady had been a royal mistress, but not having the good fortune to
be made a mother, was not honoured with any title; her being forsaken by
the king, who indeed had few amours of any long continuance, did not in
the least abate the good opinion she had of her beauty; and to fee
herself followed by a train of lovers being the supreme pleasure of her
life, she spared nothing to attract and engage: whenever she failed in
this expectation it was a severe mortification; but her vanity and the
gaity of her humour would not suffer it to prey upon her spirits for
above a minute, and she diverted the shock of a rebuff in one place by
new attempts to conquer in another; therefore it is probable thought no
more of Horatio after she had turned from him.
He now carefully avoided all that might interrupt his wishes, and seeing
Charlotta had just broke off some conversation she had been entertained
with, made what haste he could to prevent her from being
re-engaged: - She immediately knew him; and as their mutual innocence
made them perfectly free in expressing themselves to each other, she
told him she was glad he was come; that they would keep together the
whole masquerade, provided he did not think it a confinement, to prevent
her being persecuted with the impertinencies of some people there, who
she found thought a masque a kind of sanction for saying any thing.
It is not to be doubted but Horatio gave her all the assurances that
words could form, of feeling the most perfect pleasure in her society,
and that he should not; without the extremest reluctance, find himself
obliged to abandon the happiness she offered him to any other person in
the company: to recompence this complaisance, as she called it, she gave
him a brief detail of the characters of as many as she knew thro' their
habits; and in doing this discovered a sweet impartiality and love of
truth, which was no small addition to her other charms. She blamed the
baroness de Guiche for not being able to return the affection of a
husband who had married her with an inconsiderable fortune, and had
since she had been his wife pardoned a thousand miscarriages in her
conduct: - she praised the virtue of mademoiselle de Mareau, who being at
fifteen the bride of a man of seventy, behaved to him with a tenderness,
and exact conformity to his will, which, if owing alone to duty, was not
to be distinguished from inclination: - she expressed a concern that the
gaity of the dutchess of Vendome gave the world any room for censure,
and highly condemned the duke for being guilty of actions which had made
her sometimes give into parties of pleasure by way of retaliation:
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