I did not reflect at all. It did not please me at all that the tradespeople should have the power of hunting and humiliating you. I paid them. I did not wish you to be sorrowful; I could not endure to see you poor. It is a fancy, like any other, and I am willing to take the consequences of my fancy. If you had been in my place you would have done what I have done.
Lionnette.
No! If I were a man and pretended to love an honest woman, whatever might come of it, I would respect her dignity and the proprieties of the society in which she moves.
Nourvady.
Is it really a woman of your superiority who speaks of the proprieties of society? Are not women like you above all that? Was I to come delicately and hypocritically to offer your husband the sum he stood in need of? "Arrange your affairs, my dear friend; you can give me back that trifle when you are able." I should certainly have acted like that if I had not loved you; loving you, ought I to do it, that is to say, to speculate upon your gratitude, upon the impossibility of your husband discharging his debt, and upon fresh and unavoidable necessities? That is a course that would have been unworthy of him, of me, and of you. No, you know it well, the proprieties and dignity are nothing any longer, when passion or necessity predominates. Did your grandmother respect the dignity of her daughter when she gave her up to a prince?
Lionnette.
Sir!...
Nourvady.
You do not fear words! There they are, those words, saying quite well all they have to say. Why do you rebel against them? Did your husband respect the dignity of his mother, the traditions of his family, the proprieties of the society in which he moved, when he issued a public summons to that irreproachable mother, to enable him to marry you? And you, yourself, while following your mother's counsel, did you say to that man: "My dignity is entirely opposed to marrying you under those circumstances, disowned, repulsed, disgraced by your mother"? Ah! well, I too, if I had met you when you were a young girl, I should have loved you as I love you now; and if my father had wished to prevent my marrying you, I should have acted like the Count. I envy him the sacrifice he was able to make for you, and that I can never make now.
Lionnette (half mockingly, half sincerely).