Her quarrel with
society has brought her no happiness, and her outward charm is only the
mask of a dangerous discontent. Her imagination is lodged where her
heart should be! So long as you amuse it, well and good; she's radiant.
But the moment you let it flag, she is capable of dropping you without a
pang. If you land on your feet you are so much the wiser, simply; but
there have been two or three, I believe, who have almost broken their
necks in the fall."
"You are reversing your promise," I said, "and giving me an opinion, but
not an anecdote."
"This is my anecdote. A year ago a friend of mine made her acquaintance
in Berlin, and though he was no longer a young man, and had never been
what is called a susceptible one, he took a great fancy to Madame
Blumenthal. He's a major in the Prussian artillery--grizzled, grave, a
trifle severe, a man every way firm in the faith of his fathers. It's a
proof of Anastasia's charm that such a man should have got into the habit
of going to see her every day of his life. But the major was in love, or
next door to it! Every day that he called he found her scribbling away
at a little ormolu table on a lot of half-sheets of note-paper. She used
to bid him sit down and hold his tongue for a quarter of an hour, till
she had finished her chapter; she was writing a novel, and it was
promised to a publisher.
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