; but there was no time for that. Poor Adeline, incapable of
imagining a patch, of pinning a rosebud in the very middle of her bosom,
of devising the tricks of the toilet intended to resuscitate the ardors
of exhausted nature, was merely well dressed. A woman is 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 Lou