"
And so, in spite of the Baron's cruel lack of money, nothing was
lacking that public opinion could require, not even the trumpeting of
the newspapers over his daughter's marriage, which was solemnized in
the same way, in every particular, as his son's had been to
Mademoiselle Crevel. This display moderated the reports current as to
the Baron's financial position, while the fortune assigned to his
daughter explained the need for having borrowed money.
Here ends what is, in a way, the introduction to this story. It is to
the drama that follows that the premise is to a syllogism, what the
prologue is to a classical tragedy.
In Paris, when a woman determines to make a business, a trade, of her
beauty, it does not follow that she will make a fortune. Lovely
creatures may be found there, and full of wit, who are in wretched
circumstances, ending in misery a life begun in pleasure. And this is
why. It is not enough merely to accept the shameful life of a
courtesan with a view to earning its profits, and at the same time to
bear the simple garb of a respectable middle-class wife. Vice does not
triumph so easily; it resembles genius in so far that they both need a
concurrence of favorable conditions to develop the coalition of
fortune and gifts. Eliminate the strange prologue of the Revolution,
and the Emperor would never have existed; he would have been no more
than a second edition of Fabert. Venal beauty, if it finds no
amateurs, no celebrity, no cross of dishonor earned by squandering
men's fortunes, is Correggio in a hay-loft, is genius starving in a
garret.
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