"Ah! that's like your great folk! sharper and stingier than the parvenus they despise!"
"The Comtesse d'Estrelle despises no one."
"Yes, she does! she's a fool like all the others. We are separated by a wall, and in the four years she's been living in the hôtel d'Estrelle, she's never had the curiosity to look into my garden."
"Perhaps she doesn't know anything about rare plants."
"Say rather that she would consider herself dishonored if she put her foot inside a plebeian's door!"
"Bah! do you expect a young woman in mourning to compromise herself by strolling about in the garden of a bachelor of your age?"
"Of my age? You are joking, I suppose! Am I of an age to make people talk?"
"Why, who can say? you used to be a volcano once!"
"I! What are you saying, you brute?"
"You cannot make me believe that you were never in love."