"Then the sufferings of others must afford you much joy, my friend,"
retorted Crevel with acrimony, "for you have come down with a face
that is positively beaming. Is Lisbeth likely to die? For your
daughter, they say, is her heiress. You are not like the same man. You
left this room looking like the Moor of Venice, and you come back with
the air of Saint-Preux!--I wish I could see Madame Marneffe's face at
this minute----"
"And pray, what do you mean by that?" said Marneffe to Crevel, packing
his cards and laying them down in front of him.
A light kindled in the eyes of this man, decrepit at the age of
forty-seven; a faint color flushed his flaccid cold cheeks, his
ill-furnished mouth was half open, and on his blackened lips a sort
of foam gathered, thick, and as white as chalk. This fury in such a
helpless wretch, whose life hung on a thread, and who in a duel would
risk nothing while Crevel had everything to lose, frightened the
Mayor.
"I said," repeated Crevel, "that I should like to see Madame
Marneffe's face. And with all the more reason since yours, at this
moment, is most unpleasant. On my honor, you are horribly ugly, my
dear Marneffe----"
"Do you know that you are very uncivil?"
"A man who has won thirty francs of me in forty-five minutes cannot
look handsome in my eyes."
"Ah, if you had but seen me seventeen years ago!" replied the clerk.
"You were so good-looking?" asked Crevel.
"That was my ruin; now, if I had been like you--I might be a mayor and
a peer.
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