people see in each other. Even as a book is read through, people are talked through. One needs change of acquaintance; it is to the mind what change of air is to the body. As Hortense says of the gilded knicknackery of her saloon,—
"Est-ce utile?
C'est plus, c'est nécessaire."
I have never yet been able to steer my lovers through the Scylla of presence, or the Charybdis of absence. If I see much of them I get tired; if I do not see them, I utterly forget them. I hear a great deal of the necessity of loving: I better understand the difficulty of doing it. I wonder whether Sir George Kingston has ever been in love. Does any body ever go through life without feeling it? yet the generality of what are called love affairs appear to be the most insipid things in the world. They put me in mind of the French-woman, who, at a masquerade, was tormented by a full grown Cupid exclaiming,
"Mais regardez-moi, je suis l'Amour."
