“Mdlle. de Cardoville! She is coming into the stage-box with Morinval and his wife. It is a complete resuscitation: this morning on the Champs-Elysees; in the evening here.”
“Faith, you are right! It is Mdlle. de Cardoville.”
“Good heaven! how lovely she is!”
“Lend me your eyeglass.”
“Well, what do you think of her?”
“Exquisite—dazzling.”
“And in addition to her beauty, an inexhaustible flow of wit, three hundred thousand francs a year, high birth, eighteen years of age, and—free as air.”
“Yes, that is to say, that, provided it pleased her, I might be to morrow—or even to-day—the happiest of men.”
“It is enough to turn one’s brain.”
“I am told that her mansion, Rue d’Anjou, is like an enchanted palace; a great deal is said about a bath-room and bedroom, worthy of the Arabian Nights.”