"His comparison is a eulogy in itself, but, unfortunately, infinitely more flattering than true. Adieu, madame, for I fear I must not ask to be allowed to pay my respects to you before your departure."
"I should lament to give you the trouble of calling on me, for I have pitched my tent for a few days in a furnished hôtel; but if, in the summer or autumn, you should be passing our way, en route to some of those fashionable châteaus where the leaders of ton dispute the pleasure of receiving you, pray give us a few days of your society, if it be only by way of contrast, and to rest yourself with us poor rustic folk from the whirl of your high life of fashion and distinction; for where you are it is always delightful to be."
"Madame!"
"I need not say how delighted M. d'Orbigny and myself would be to receive you; but adieu, sir, I fear the kind attorney (she pointed to Ferrand) will grow impatient at our gossip."
"Quite the reverse, madame, quite the reverse," said Ferrand, with an emphasis that redoubled the repressed rage of M. de Saint-Remy.
He will scold you awfully.
Original Etching by Adrian Marcel
"Is not M. Ferrand a terrible man?" said Madame d'Orbigny, affectedly. "Mind now, I tell you, that, if he has charge of your affairs, he will scold you awfully. He is the most unpitying man—But that's my nonsense; on the contrary, why, such an exquisite as you to have M. Ferrand for his solicitor is a proof of reformation, for we know very well that he never allows his clients to do foolish things; if they do, he gives up their business. Oh, he will not be everybody's lawyer!" Then, turning to Jacques Ferrand: "Do you know, most puritanical solicitor, that you have made a splendid conversion there? If you reform the exquisite of exquisites, the King of the Mode—"
"It is really a conversion, madame. The viscount left my study a very different man from what he entered it."