“‘Go and see if they’re coming, Jean!’”
“I realize that appearances are against us; and yet nothing can be more true than what I tell you. The explanation as to the couch being in the study is that she slept in my bedroom, and I slept here.”
“For ten minutes, very likely; but after that you joined her.”
“No; I swear that I did not.”
“You’d never have been donkey enough to stay here.”
“I understand that, in your eyes, virtue and innocence are the merest folly.”
“Ah! you are not polite, monsieur. But as I have never known you to be either virtuous or innocent, I may be permitted to express surprise at your virtuous qualities, which are entirely unfamiliar to me.”
“I am not trying to make myself out any better than I am, and I confess to you frankly that I attempted to triumph over this girl; but her resistance was so natural, her tears so genuine, her entreaties so touching, that I was really deeply moved and almost repented of what I had tried to do.”
“That is magnificent; and I presume that the virtuous and innocent orange girl came to your rooms in order that her resistance might be the better appreciated.—Ha! ha! what a fairy tale!”
“You may believe what you choose. It is none the less true that Nicette is virtuous and that she isn’t an orange girl.”