s the stamp of individuality. The wisest invest in
annuities. Family pride is destroyed.

The bitter pressure of poverty which had stung Valerie to the quick on
the day when, to use Marneffe's expression, she had "caught on" with
Hulot, had brought the young woman to the conclusion that she would make
a fortune by means of her good looks. So, for some days, she had been
feeling the need of having a friend about her to take the place of a
mother--a devoted friend, to whom such things may be told as must be
hidden from a waiting-maid, and who could act, come and go, and think
for her, a beast of burden resigned to an unequal share of life. Now,
she, quite as keenly as Lisbeth, had understood the Baron's motives for
fostering the intimacy between his cousin and herself.

Prompted by the formidable perspicacity of the Parisian half-breed,
who spends her days stretched on a sofa, turning the lantern of her
detective spirit on the obscurest depths of souls, sentiments, and
intrigues, she had decided on making an ally of the spy. This supremely
rash step was, perhaps premeditated; she had discerned the true nature
of this ardent creature, burning with wasted passion, and meant to
attach her to herself. Thus, their conversation was like the stone
a traveler casts into an abyss to demonstrate its depth. And Madame
Marneffe had been terrified to find this old maid a combination of Iago
and Richard III., so feeble as she seemed, so humble, and so little to
be feared.

For that instant, Lisbeth Fischer had been her real self; that Corsican
and savage temperament, bursting the slender bonds that held it under,
had sprung up to its terrible height, as the branch of a tree flies
up from the hand of a child that has bent it down to gather the green
fruit.

To those who study the social world, it must always be a matter of
astonishment to see the fulness, the perfection, and the rapidity with
which an idea develops in a virgin nature.

Virginity, like every other monstrosity, has its special richness, its
absorbing greatness. Life, whose forces are always economized,
assumes in the virgin creature an incalculable power of resistance and
endurance. The brain is reinforced in the sum-total of its reserved
energy. When really chaste natures need to call on the resources of
body or soul, and are required to act or to think, they have muscles
of steel, or intuitive knowledge in their intelligence--diabolical
strength, or the black magi