Pascal stood a moment dazzled, fascinated.
He beheld Madeleine a thousand times more beautiful, more attractive, more interesting than the day before. And, although a fine judge, as he had said to the prince, although he had enjoyed and abused all those treasures of beauty, grace, and youth which misery renders tributary to wealth, never in his life had he dreamed of such a creature as Madeleine; and strange, or rather natural to this brutalised man, deprived by satiety of all pleasures, he evoked the same moment the virginal figure of Antonine by the side of the marquise. For him, Venus Aphrodite was perfected by Hebe.
Madeleine, taking advantage of the involuntary silence of Pascal, said in a dry, haughty tone, and without making the slightest allusion to the scene of the day before, notwithstanding the words added to her name on the card:
"Monsieur, I have a letter of credit on you: here it is. I wished to see you in order to arrange some business matters."
This short and disdainful accent disconcerted Pascal; he expected some explanation of the scene of the day before, if not an excuse for it, so he said, stammering:
"What, madame, you come here—only—to learn about this letter of credit?"
"For this letter first, then for something else."
"I suspected it," said Pascal to himself, with a light sigh of relief, "this letter of credit was only a pretext. It is a good sign."
Then he said aloud:
"The letter of credit, madame, is in the hands of my cashier; he has the order to attend to your demand. As to the other thing which brings you, is it, as I hope, personal?"