Lais, in Paris, must first and foremost find a rich man mad
enough to pay her price. She must keep up a very elegant style, for
this is her shop-sign; she must be sufficiently well bred to flatter
the vanity of her lovers; she must have the brilliant wit of a Sophie
Arnould, which diverts the apathy of rich men; finally, she must
arouse the passions of libertines by appearing to be mistress to one
man only who is envied by the rest.
These conditions, which a woman of that class calls being in luck, are
difficult to combine in Paris, although it is a city of millionaires,
of idlers, of used-up and capricious men.
Providence has, no doubt, vouchsafed protection to clerks and
middle-class citizens, for whom obstacles of this kind are at least
double in the sphere in which they move. At the same time, there are
enough Madame Marneffes in Paris to allow of our taking Valerie to
figure as a type in this picture of manners. Some of these women yield
to the double pressure of a genuine passion and of hard necessity, like
Madame Colleville, who was for long attached to one of the famous
orators of the left, Keller the banker. Others are spurred by vanity,
like Madame de la Baudraye, who remained almost respectable in spite
of her elopement with Lousteau. Some, again, are led astray by the
love of fine clothes, and some by the impossibility of keeping a house
going on obviously too narrow means. The stinginess of the State--or
of Parliament--leads to many disasters and to much corruption.
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