"But, no! Divine justice must
be hanging over her head."
"You know nothing of the world, my beauty," said the great politician,
deeply offended. "The world, my Adeline, loves success! Say, now, has
it come to seek out your sublime virtue, priced at two hundred
thousand francs?"
The words made Madame Hulot shudder; the nervous trembling attacked
her once more. She saw that the ex-perfumer was taking a mean revenge
on her as he had on Hulot; she felt sick with disgust, and a spasm
rose to her throat, hindering speech.
"Money!" she said at last. "Always money!"
"You touched me deeply," said Crevel, reminded by these words of the
woman's humiliation, "when I beheld you there, weeping at my feet!
--You perhaps will not believe me, but if I had my pocket-book about
me, it would have been yours.--Come, do you really want such a sum?"
As she heard this question, big with two hundred thousand francs,
Adeline forgot the odious insults heaped on her by this cheap-jack
fine gentleman, before the tempting picture of success described by
Machiavelli-Crevel, who only wanted to find out her secrets and laugh
over them with Valerie.
"Oh! I will do anything, everything," cried the unhappy woman.
"Monsieur, I will sell myself--I will be a Valerie, if I must."
"You will find that difficult," replied Crevel. "Valerie is a
masterpiece in her way. My good mother, twenty-five years of virtue
are always repellent, like a badly treated disease.
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