"What times do we live in? It's your fault, too."
"My fault!"
"Yes, your fault!"
"And how?"
"Your dress last night was too low, much too low. Besides, your mother told you so—"
"Oh, mamma—"
"You needn't say 'Oh, mamma!' Your mother was right. There, read: 'And whose shoulders—ah, what shoulders!' And it is of your shoulders they are speaking. And that prince who dares to award you a prize for beauty!"
The good man had plebeian, Gothical ideas—the ideas of a lawyer of old times, of a lawyer of the Rue Dragon; the lawyers of the Boulevard Malesherbes are no longer like that.
Mme. Derline very gently, very quietly, brought the rebel back to reason. Of course there was charm and eloquence in her speech, but how much more charm and eloquence in the tenderness of her glance and smile.
Why this great rage and despair? He was accused of being the husband of the most beautiful woman in Paris. Was that such a horrible thing, such a terrible misfortune? And who was the brother-lawyer, the good brother-lawyer, who had taken pleasure in coming to show him the hateful article?