Our conversation was interrupted by a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Davis, who come every day to see my father.  He is an English Jew, and she an Italian nobleman’s daughter who married him for the sake of his wealth.  Mr. Davis himself is a valetudinarian, who took out of his life twice as much as his poor organization could bear.  He is ill, threatened with softening of the brain, indifferent to everything that goes on around him,—­one of those specimens of mankind one meets at hydropathic establishments.  Mrs. Davis looks like a Juno; her eyebrows meet on her forehead, and she has the figure of a Greek statue.  I do not like her; she reminds me of the leaning tower at Pisa,—­leans but does not fall.  A year ago I paid her some attentions; she flirted with me outrageously, that was all.  My father has a singular weakness for her; I thought at times he was in love with her.  At any rate, he admires her from a thinker and artist’s point of view; for beautiful she is,—­there can be no two opinions as to that,—­and of more than average intelligence.  Their conversations, which my father calls “causeries Romaines,” are endless, and they never seem to get tired of them; maybe these discussions about life’s problems with a beautiful woman appear Italian to him, poetical, and worthy of the times of the Renaissance.  I very seldom take part in these conversations because I do not believe in Mrs. Davis’ sincerity.  It seems to me that her intellect is merely a matter of brain, and not of soul, and that in reality she does not care for anything except her beauty and the comforts of life.  I have often met women who seem full of lofty aspiration; upon closer acquaintance it seems that religion, philosophy, art, and literature, are only so many items of their toilet.  They dress themselves in either as it suits their style of beauty.  I suppose it is the same with Mrs. Davis; she drapes herself in problems of life, sometimes in Greek and Roman antiquities, in the Divina Commedia, or the Renaissance, the churches, museums, and so forth.  I can understand a powerful intellectual organism making itself the centre of the universe; but in a woman, and one who is bent upon futile things, it is mere laughable egoism and vanity.

I ask myself what makes Mrs. Davis so fond of my father; and I fancy I know the reason.  My father, with his fine head of a patrician philosopher, and his manners reminding one of the eighteenth century, is for her a kind of objet d’art, and still more, a grand intelligent mirror, in which she can admire her own beauty and cleverness; besides, she feels grateful that he never criticises her, and likes her very much.  Upon this basis has sprung up a friendship, or rather a kind of affection for my father which gradually has become a necessity of her life.  Moreover, Mrs. Davis has the reputation of a coquette, and coming here to see my father every day, she says to the world:  “It is not true; this old man is seventy, and nobody can suspect me of flirting