First Part Chapter 32

MME. DE MACUMER TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE
March 1826.

Do you know, dear, that it is more than three months since I have
written to you or heard from you? I am the more guilty of the two, for
I did not reply to your last, but you don't stand on punctilio surely?

Macumer and I have taken your silence for consent as regards the
baby-wreathed luncheon service, and the little cherubs are starting
this morning for Marseilles. It took six months to carry out the design.
And so when Felipe asked me to come and see the service before it was
packed, I suddenly waked up to the fact that we had not interchanged a
word since the letter of yours which gave me an insight into a
mother's heart.

My sweet, it is this terrible Paris--there's my excuse. What, pray, is
yours? Oh! what a whirlpool is society! Didn't I tell you once that in
Paris one must be as the Parisians? Society there drives out all
sentiment; it lays en embargo on your time; and unless you are very
careful, soon eats away your heart altogether. What an amazing
masterpiece is the character of Celimene in Moliere's Le
Misanthrope!

She is the society woman, not only of Louis XIV.'s time,
but of our own, and of all, time.

Where should I be but for my breastplate--the love I bear Felipe? This
very morning I told him, as the outcome of these reflections, that he
was my salvation. If my evenings are a continuous round of parties,
balls, concerts, and theatres, at night my heart expands again, and is
healed of the wounds received in the world by the delights of the
passionate love which await my return.