"Good-day, my dear!" said the two women, kissing each other.
"Why are you come so early?" asked Emilie.
"Oh! my dear, cannot you guess? I came to have an understanding with you!"
"What, a duel?"
"Precisely, my dear. I am not like you, not I! I love my husband and am jealous of him. You! you are beautiful, charming, you have the right to be a coquette, you can very well make fun of B——-, to whom your virtue seems to be of little importance. But as you have plenty of lovers in society, I beg you that you will leave me my husband. He is always at your house, and he certainly would not come unless you were the attraction."
"What a very pretty jacket you have on."
"Do you think so? My maid made it."
"Then I shall get Anastasia to take a lesson from Flore—"
"So, then, my dear, I count on your friendship to refrain from bringing trouble in my house."
"But, my child, I do not know how you can conceive that I should fall in love with your husband; he is coarse and fat as a deputy of the centre. He is short and ugly—Ah! I will allow that he is generous, but that is all you can say for him, and this is a quality which is all in all only to opera girls; so that you can understand, my dear, that if I were choosing a lover, as you seem to suppose I am, I wouldn't choose an old man like your baron. If I have given him any hopes, if I have received him, it was certainly for the purpose of amusing myself, and of giving you liberty; for I believed you had a weakness for young Rostanges."