"You have heard me sing in public. What do you say of me?"
"I say you would be a great artist if you could sing for the devils as well as you do for the angels."
"I don't understand. What do you mean by the devils?"
"You surely have heard from the pulpit that the theatre is the devil's synagogue?"
"You rude man! Don't you know that I belong to the theatre?"
"I beg pardon a thousand times. I believed that in the daytime you were an abbess and at night you were an actress; that would be a fair bargain."
"You silly boy! Why do you think I am an abbess?"
"Because you are dressed as such."
"This is only a penitential dress. You godless creature, you are making fun of religion!"
"No, madame. I agree that it is a great mortification to wear gray silk, a great penance to play the coquette with downcast eyes, a real fast to eat crawfish at twenty francs the dish. I am also told that the reason the fashionable ladies of Paris have taken to wearing high dresses is that they discipline the flesh so severely that their shoulders and necks are one mass of scars, and therefore the effects of their flagellations must be concealed."