r the sake
of her hair--she had the most beautiful fair hair in France; another
maintained that Diane's pallor was her principal merit, for she was
not really well shaped, her dress made the most of her figure; yet
others thought that Victurnien loved her for her foot, her one good
point, for she had a flat figure. But (and this brings the present-day
manner of Paris before you in an astonishing manner) whereas all the
men said that the Duchess was subsidizing Victurnien's splendor, the
women, on the other hand, gave people to understand that it was
Victurnien who paid for the angel's wings, as Rastignac said.

As they drove back again, Victurnien had it on the tip of his tongue a
score of times to open this chapter, for the Duchess' debts weighed
more heavily upon his mind than his own; and a score of times his
purpose died away before the attitude of the divine creature beside
him. He could see her by the light of the carriage lamps; she was
bewitching in the love-languor which always seemed to be extorted by
the violence of passion from her madonna's purity. The Duchess did not
fall into the mistake of talking of her virtue, of her angel's estate,
as provincial women, her imitators, do. She was far too clever. She
made him, for whom she made such great sacrifices, think these things
for himself. At the end of six months she could make him feel that a
harmless kiss on her hand was a deadly sin; she contrived that every
grace should be extorted from her, and this with such consummate art,
that it was impossible not to feel that she was more an angel than
ever when she yielded.

None but Parisian women are clever enough always to give a new charm
to the moon, to romanticize the stars, to roll in the same sack of
charcoal and emerge each time whiter than ever. This is the highest
refinement of intellectual and Parisian civilization. Women beyond the
Rhine or the English Channel believe nonsense of this sort when they
utter it; while your Parisienne makes her lover believe that she is an
angel, the better to add to his bliss by flattering his vanity on both
sides--temporal and spiritual. Certain persons, detractors of the
Duchess, maintain that she was the first dupe of her own white magic.
A wicked slander. The Duchess believed in nothing but herself.

By the end of the year 1823 the Kellers had supplied Victurnien with
two hundred thousand francs, and neither Chesnel nor Mlle. Armande
knew anything about it. He had h