“She, an angel? I must say that she is a demon—This woman—”
“Do you not adore her?”
“I hate her, I abhor her, she makes me shudder. You may laugh, if you like!”
As he said these words, Gerfaut struck a violent blow upon the table with his fist.
“You forget that Mademoiselle de Corandeuil’s room is just beneath us,” said the artist, in a teasing way.
“Listen to me, Marillac! Your system with women is vulgar, gross, and trivial. The daisies which you gather, the maidens from whom you cut handfuls of hair excellent for stuffing mattresses, your rustic beauties with cheeks like rosy apples are conquests worthy of counter-jumpers in their Sunday clothes. That is nothing but the very lowest grade of love-making, and yet you are right, a thousand times right, and wonderfully wise compared with me.”
“You do me too much honor! So, then, you are not loved?”
“Truly, I had an idea I was, or, if I was not loved to-day, I hoped to be to-morrow. But you are mistaken as to what discourages me. I simply fear that her heart is narrow. I believe that she loves me as much as she is able to love; unfortunately, that is not enough for me.”
“It certainly seems to me that, so far, she has not shown herself madly in love with you.”
“Ah, madly! Do you know many women who love madly with their hearts and souls? You talk like a college braggart. There are conquerors like yourself who, if we are to believe them, would devour a whole convent at their breakfast. These men excite my pity. As for me, really, I have always felt that it was most difficult to make one’s self really loved. In these days of prudery, almost all women of rank appear ‘frappe a la glace’, like a bottle of champagne. It is necessary to thaw them first, and there are some of them whose shells are so frigid that they would put out the devil’s furnace. They call this virtue; I call it social servitude. But what matters the name? the result is the same.”