"To speak to you, naturally."
"What can you have to say to me? I don't know you—at least, I don't think I know you. But perhaps you're that big Julie who goes to the Café du Cirque so often, near the Folies-Dramatiques, and who always wins at dominoes."
"I am not big Julie; I never go to the Café du Cirque, and I don't play dominoes. But you evidently go there, and I am not sorry to know it."
"I go where I please—what business is it of yours? What are you talking about? If you were looking for me just to say that, it wasn't worth putting yourself out, charming domino."
"I have something much more interesting to say to you; but first tell me this: what do you do? who are you? Not of much importance! I can see that by your manners and your language. No matter—I want to know; are you a milliner, flower-maker, seamstress—or something much lower down? Come—answer me."
"Ha! ha! ha! this is too good, on my word! Madame questions me, and with a tone of authority!—one would think she was talking to a slave! By what right do you ask me all this?"
"By what right? Oh! I'll show you that I have a right. Listen: you are Monsieur Edmond Didier's mistress."
"Oho! so you know that, my tall beauty! Very good! I understand it all now; you're one of Edmond's old ones; a poor creature whom he abandoned for me! Ha! ha! and you've come here to make a jealous row!"
"Well, yes, I was Edmond's mistress, I still am; for, if he has had a caprice for you, it's not what can be called love!"
"Really! you believe that? you think that a man may not love me? Well! you are mistaken, my dear; on the contrary, he loves me dearly, he adores me; he told me so just now."