Here and there one survives to make her mark
even in history. . . . And even that is not a very enviable fate.
They are at another pole from the so-called dangerous women who are
merely coquettes. A coquette has got to work for her success. The
others have nothing to do but simply exist. You perceive the view
I take of the difference?"
I perceived the view. I said to myself that nothing in the world
could be more aristocratic. This was the slave-owning woman who
had never worked, even if she had been reduced to live by her wits.
She was a wonderful old woman. She made me dumb. She held me
fascinated by the well-bred attitude, something sublimely aloof in
her air of wisdom.
I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a
mere slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of
that venerable head, the assured as if royal--yes, royal even flow
of the voice. . . . But what was it she was talking about now?
These were no longer considerations about fatal women. She was
talking about her son again. My interest turned into mere
bitterness of contemptuous attention. For I couldn't withhold it
though I tried to let the stuff go by. Educated in the most
aristocratic college in Paris .
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