I consider that only those persons have a good heart who give what they themselves possess, and who, before everything, pay their creditors and do not run into debt. If you make a present to a friend, if you open your purse to obsequious flatterers who surround you, you inflict a real injury on your tailor whom you do not pay, on the restaurant keeper whom you put off from day to day by giving him small sums on account; it is not with your money that you are generous, but with that of your creditors. There are people who distribute alms after becoming bankrupt, and who pose as benefactors of mankind. There are such people who have great reputations for kindness of heart, for whom I have very little esteem! If you scratch the surface, you soon come to the rock.
As Madame de Grangeville could not afford to keep both a lady’s maid and a cook, she had dismissed the latter, whom it would have been more sensible to keep; unfortunately, she could not do without a lady’s maid; she would gladly have kept her cook as well, but the latter had become tired of buying food on credit at the dealers’, who also were tired of supplying goods without being paid.
When Madame Roc, that was the cook’s name, went to her mistress to ask for money, she would throw herself back on her couch and hold a phial of smelling salts to her nose, crying:
“Oh! Madame Roc, have you come to talk about money again? Leave me in peace, I beg you. I have an attack of vapors already, and you will give me an attack of hysteria.”
“But, madame, for dinner——”
“Don’t bother me about dinner; do what you choose; I give you carte blanche!”
“Carte blanche isn’t money, and they all want money; I can’t say to the butcher: ‘I have carte blanche to pay for your fillet.’”
“Mon Dieu! how you tire me! how you make my head ache!”
“But, madame, if I shouldn’t get any dinner for you, would you like that?”
“Heavens! how you annoy me, how intolerable you are! Go away, I tell you again, and leave me!”