not a courtesan for the wishing!

"Woman is soup for man," as Moliere says by the mouth of the judicious
Gros-Rene. This comparison suggests a sort of culinary art in love.
Then the virtuous wife would be a Homeric meal, flesh laid on hot
cinders. The courtesan, on the contrary, is a dish by Careme, with its
condiments, spices, and elegant arrangement. The Baroness could not
--did not know how to serve up her fair bosom in a lordly dish of lace,
after the manner of Madame Marneffe. She knew nothing of the secrets
of certain attitudes. This high-souled woman might have turned round
and round a hundred times, and she would have betrayed nothing to the
keen glance of a profligate.

To be a good woman and a prude to all the world, and a courtesan to
her husband, is the gift of a woman of genius, and they are few. This
is the secret of long fidelity, inexplicable to the women who are not
blessed with the double and splendid faculty. Imagine Madame Marneffe
virtuous, and you have the Marchesa di Pescara. But such lofty and
illustrious women, beautiful as Diane de Poitiers, but virtuous, may
be easily counted.

So the scene with which this serious and terrible drama of Paris
manners opened was about to be repeated, with this singular difference
--that the calamities prophesied then by the captain of the municipal
Militia had reversed the parts. Madame Hulot was awaiting Crevel with
the same intentions as had brought him to her, smiling down at the
Paris crowd from his _milord_, three years ago. And, strangest thing
of all, the Baroness was true to herself and to her love, while
preparing to yield to the grossest infidelity, such as the storm of
passion even does not justify in the eyes of some judges.

"What can I do to become a Madame Marneffe?" she asked herself as she
heard the door-bell.

She restrained her tears, fever gave brilliancy to her face, and she
meant to be quite the courtesan, poor, noble soul.

"What the devil can that worthy Baronne Hulot want of me?" Crevel
wondered as he mounted the stairs. "She is going to discuss my quarrel
with Celestine and Victorin, no doubt; but I will not give way!"

As he went into the drawing-room, shown in by Louise, he said to
himself as he noted the bareness of the place (Crevel's word):

"Poor woman! She lives here like some fine picture stowed in a loft by
a man who knows nothing of painting."

Crevel, seeing Comte Popinot, the Minister of Commerce, buy pictures