"
For two hours Madame Marneffe went on talking nonsense, and Crevel
made this judicious reflection:
"How can so light-hearted a creature be utterly depraved?
Feather-brained, yes! but wicked? Nonsense!"
"Well, and what did the young people say about me?" said Valerie to
Crevel at a moment when he sat down by her on the sofa. "All sorts of
horrors?"
"They will have it that you have a criminal passion for Wenceslas
--you, who are virtue itself."
"I love him!--I should think so, my little Wenceslas!" cried Valerie,
calling the artist to her, taking his face in her hands, and kissing
his forehead. "A poor boy with no fortune, and no one to depend on!
Cast off by a carrotty giraffe! What do you expect, Crevel? Wenceslas
is my poet, and I love him as if he were my own child, and make no
secret of it. Bah! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in
everything. Bless me, could they not sit by a man without doing wrong?
I am a spoilt child who has had all it ever wanted, and bonbons no
longer excite me.--Poor things! I am sorry for them!
"And who slandered me so?"
"Victorin," said Crevel.
"Then why did you not stop his mouth, the odious legal macaw! with the
story of the two hundred thousand francs and his mamma?"
"Oh, the Baroness had fled," said Lisbeth.
"They had better take care, Lisbeth," said Madame Marneffe, with a
frown. "Either they will receive me and do it handsomely, and come to
their stepmother's house--all the party!--or I will see them in lower
depths than the Baron has reached, and you may tell them I said so!
--At last I shall turn nasty.
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