“If my presence is unpleasant to Madame Murville, I shall be careful to avoid her.”
“Nonsense! that is just what I don’t propose to have, or I shall be angry with you. I mean that you shall come to the house more than ever; that is my desire and it must suffice. Are you not friendly enough to me to overlook my wife’s eccentric character?”
“Oh! my attachment to you has no bounds!”
“Dear Dufresne!—Look you, to prove how much confidence I have in you, and how little heed I pay to my wife’s fairy tales, I am going to confide a secret to you, and I rely on your friendship to help me in the matter.”
“I am entirely devoted to you—speak.”
“My friend, I love, I adore, I am mad over Madame de Géran.”
“Is it possible? Why, you have only known her since last night.”
“That is long enough to make me love her.—What would you have—we cannot control those things. It’s a caprice, a weakness, whatever you choose to call it! But I have lost my head.”
“You, Murville—such a reasonable man! and married, too!”
“Oh! my dear fellow, are married men any more virtuous than bachelors? You know very well that the contrary is true; a man can’t stick to his wife forever.”