"The dotal husband owes his wife three
nights each month."
Attic Laws.
"Good," Entragues said, as he heard the bell ring. "It is the Russian angel... Ah! I have written a fine blasphemy! '... in his arms.' And to think that for want of understanding, people will tax me with impiety, I who make the Roman breviary my daily reading no less than a clergyman who holds the name of Voltaire as an infamous word."
"My dear Moscowitch, I made you wait. The reason was that I was finishing a phrase and that this phrase ended a chapter."
The Russian angel drank tea while Entragues breakfasted. He spoke little, seeming to hold himself in reserve.
"Have you your manuscripts, your plans, your theories?" asked Entragues.
"My theory," said Moscowitch, "is to make a school of pity out of the theater."
"Orphans, bastards, picked up children, widows, persons condemned to death, serfs of capital, girl mothers, invalids of labor, vagabonds and victims of duty. Well! by dressing them in Russian smocks, by giving the men names ending in itch and the women names ending in ia, with some troikas thrown in, snow, Siberia, a priest or two, policemen in flat caps, some angelic street-walkers, and a studied selection of Darwinian assassins, one can write masterpieces, true masterpieces, while—and here you see what fortune hangs on—were these same tatters passed under a French dye, the most respectable manufacturers and the most influential tradesmen, men wearing the ribbon, people who have country homes at Ville-d'Avray, would not dare to place them in their shop-windows."
"Why?" Moscowitch asked.
"Because it would not be profitable."