Damas. Good morning, cousin Deschappelles.—Well, Pauline, are you recovered from last night’s ball?—So many triumphs must be very fatiguing. Even M. Glavis sighed most piteously when you departed; but that might be the effect of the supper.
Pauline. M. Glavis, indeed!
Mme. Deschap. M. Glavis?—as if my daughter would think of M. Glavis!
Damas. Hey-day!—why not?—His father left him a very pretty fortune, and his birth is higher than yours, cousin Deschappelles. But perhaps you are looking to M. Beauseant,—his father was a marquis before the Revolution.
Pauline. M. Beauseant!—Cousin, you delight in tormenting me!
Mme. Deschap. Don’t mind him, Pauline!—Cousin Damas, you have no susceptibility of feeling,—there is a certain indelicacy in all your ideas.—M. Beauseant knows already that he is no match for my daughter!
Damas. Pooh! pooh! one would think you intended your daughter to marry a prince!
Mme. Deschap. Well, and if I did?—what then?—Many a foreign prince—
Damas [interrupting her]. Foreign prince!—foreign fiddlestick!—you ought to be ashamed of such nonsense at your time of life.
Mme. Deschap. My time of life!—That is an expression never applied to any lady till she is sixty-nine and three-quarters;—and only then by the clergyman of the parish.