Marcel made no reply. With his elbows resting on the table and his head in his hands, he stared at his uncle.
He asked himself if he was really awake, if it was really his adopted father, the mentor of his childhood, the wise and virtuous Curé of St. Nicholas, who was talking to him so.
He knew the worthy man's somewhat eccentric character, his coarse witticisms in bad taste, but he never could have believed that he would have stated such theories before him with a cynisism like that. He quite understood that a man might commit faults, he even excused in petto certain crimes, and he excused them the more willingly because he himself had been guilty of them; but he did not understand how a man could dare to talk about them.
He was rather of that class of persons who are modest in words, but not in deeds, who are offended at the talk, while they delight in the acts. We hear them utter cries of horror and indignation at the slightest equivocal word, we see them stop their ears at the recital of a racy tale, chastely cover their face before the figure of the Callipygean Venus, treating Molière as obscene and Rabelais as debauched; yet, out of sight, sheltered by the curtains of the alcove, they love to strip in silence some lascivious Maritorne, and cautiously abandon themselves to disgusting orgies with Phrynes whom they chance to encounter.
Therefore the Curé of Althausen was offended and indignant at his uncle's cynicism, who had so crudely broached the chapter about the love of middle-aged women to him, who the evening before had abandoned himself to all the furies of a long-repressed passion, in the arms of a debauched old maid-servant.
At the same he felt that his brain was confused and that he was gradually losing the exact idea of things. The wine he had drunk was more than he was accustomed to; it was rising to his head and he was becoming intoxicated.
—Well, said Ridoux, you give me no answer and you stare at me like an earthen-ware dog.
—What answer do you wish me to give you? except that I believe I am dreaming; in truth, I believe I am dreaming.
—Be more sincere. I do not like hypocrisy.
—You talk of a giddy little thing; I know no giddy thing. As to the rest, I have not quite made out what it is you wanted to tell me. I think that you have intended to make a joke about your old women.