hours Madame Marneffe went on talking nonsense, and Crevel made
this judicious reflection:

"How can so light-hearted a creature be utterly depraved?
Feather-brained, yes! but wicked? Nonsense!"

"Well, and what did the young people say about me?" said Valerie to
Crevel at a moment when he sat down by her on the sofa. "All sorts of
horrors?"

"They will have it that you have a criminal passion for Wenceslas--you,
who are virtue itself."

"I love him!--I should think so, my little Wenceslas!" cried Valerie,
calling the artist to her, taking his face in her hands, and kissing his
forehead. "A poor boy with no fortune, and no one to depend on! Cast off
by a carrotty giraffe! What do you expect, Crevel? Wenceslas is my poet,
and I love him as if he were my own child, and make no secret of it.
Bah! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in everything. Bless
me, could they not sit by a man without doing wrong? I am a spoilt child
who has had all it ever wanted, and bonbons no longer excite me.--Poor
things! I am sorry for them!

"And who slandered me so?"

"Victorin," said Crevel.

"Then why did you not stop his mouth, the odious legal macaw! with the
story of the two hundred thousand francs and his mamma?"

"Oh, the Baroness had fled," said Lisbeth.

"They had better take care, Lisbeth," said Madame Marneffe, with a
frown. "Either they will receive me and do it handsomely, and come to
their stepmother's house--all the party!--or I will see them in lower
depths than the Baron has reached, and you may tell them I said so!--At
last I shall turn nasty. On my honor, I believe that evil is the scythe
with which to cut down the good."

At three o'clock Monsieur Berthier, Cardot's successor, read the
marriage-contract, after a short conference with Crevel, for some of
the articles were made conditional on the action taken by Monsieur and
Madame Victorin Hulot.

Crevel settled on his wife a fortune consisting, in the first place, of
forty thousand francs in dividends on specified securities; secondly, of
the house and all its contents; and thirdly, of three million francs not
invested. He also assigned to his wife every benefit allowed by law;
he left all the property free of duty; and in the event of their dying
without issue, each devised to the survivor the whole of their property
and real estate.

By this arrangement the fortune left to Celestine and her husband was
reduced to two millions of francs in capit