“He’s enormously ugly!”
“He’s an ex-financier, contractor, promoter.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“He gives delightful balls.”
“Not for himself, surely.”
“Oh! he’s still quite a rake.”
“He doesn’t look it.”
“Because he drags his leg a little; but that doesn’t prevent his making conquests.”
“From buying them, you mean.”
“That’s what I mean; but it all comes to the same thing. Between ourselves, I admit that he didn’t invent gunpowder, and that his education is confined to the rules of subtraction and multiplication, which he understands perfectly. But still, for all that, he has the prettiest women in Paris.”