despise it; and why? For some giddy little thing who will bring upon you
every kind of vexation and unpleasantness. _Dixi_. You can speak now.

Marcel made no reply. With his elbows resting on the table and his head in
his hands, he stared at his uncle.

He asked himself if he was really awake, if it was really his adopted
father, the mentor of his childhood, the wise and virtuous Cure of St.
Nicholas, who was talking to him so.

He knew the worthy man's somewhat eccentric character, his coarse
witticisms in bad taste, but he never could have believed that he would
have stated such theories before him with a cynisism like that. He quite
understood that a man might commit faults, he even excused _in petto_
certain crimes, and he excused them the more willingly because he himself
had been guilty of them; but he did not understand how a man could dare to
talk about them.

He was rather of that class of persons who are modest in words, but not in
deeds, who are offended at the talk, while they delight in the acts. We
hear them utter cries of horror and indignation at the slightest equivocal
word, we see them stop their ears at the recital of a racy tale, chastely
cover their face before the figure of the Callipygean Venus, treating
Moliere as obscene and Rabelais as debauched; yet, out of sight, sheltered
by the curtains of the alcove, they love to strip in silence some
lascivious Maritorne, and cautiously abandon themselves to disgusting
orgies with Phrynes whom they chance to encounter.

Therefore the Cure of Althausen was offended and indignant at his uncle's
cynicism, who had so crudely broached the chapter about the love of
middle-aged women to him, who the evening before had abandoned himself to
all the furies of a long-repressed passion, in the arms of a debauched old
maid-servant.

At the same he felt that his brain was confused and that he was gradually
losing the exact idea of things. The wine he had drunk was more than he was
accustomed to; it was rising to his head and he was becoming intoxicated.

--Well, said Ridoux, you give me no answer and you stare at me like an
earthen-ware dog.

--What answer do you wish me to give you? except that I believe I am
dreaming; in truth, I believe I am dreaming.

--Be more sincere. I do not like hypocrisy.

--You talk of a giddy little thing; I know no giddy thing. As to the rest,
I have not quite made out what it is you wanted to tell me. I think that
you have int