"You are right, monsieur le marquis."
"St. Hilaire is in one of his mad fits," de Lacheville exclaimed.
"If it were not for the nobility there would be no poetry, no wit," murmured the poet.
"The nobility is the mainstay of the throne, the vitality of the country," said d'Arlincourt.
"What have we done?" cried the ladies in concert. "We ask for nothing better than to have everybody contented and happy." And they shrugged their pretty white shoulders as if to throw off the burden that St. Hilaire had placed there.
"Look at me," exclaimed St. Hilaire, rising and speaking with an animation he had not shown before. He was a man of twenty-five with a face so handsome that dissipation had not been able to mar its beauty. "I am a type of my class."
"An honor to it," said the poet.
"Thank you; then you will agree that the cap which I put on will fit other heads as well. I have wasted two fortunes."
"St. Hilaire is in one of his remorseful moods," whispered de Lacheville in the ear of Madame de Rémur.
"I have spent them in riotous living with men like myself." Here he looked at de Lacheville.