Sometimes they discussed the merits of Ronsard, or a novel by the Marquis d'Urfe.

On my word of honor, Paul, to kiss her hand was the limit of my courage.
She fascinated; her eyes were pitfalls; men looked into them but to tumble in.

Gay one moment, sad the next; a burst of sunshine, a cloud!" "What! you are talking about yourself ?" asked the Chevalier.

"Poet that you are, how well you tell a story! And you feared to offend me?
I should have laughed.

Is she pretty ?" "She is like her mother when her mother was twenty: the handsomest woman in Paris, which is to say, in all France." "And you love her ?" "So much as that your poet's neck is very near the ax," lowly.
"Eh?
What's that ?" The poet glanced hastily about.