ing is fresh here, even the fish; it is what the house is famous
for," said Carabine.

Baron Montes looked good-naturedly at the painter, and said:

"Very good! I drink to your very good health," and bowing to Leon de
Lora, he lifted his glass of port wine and drank it with much dignity.

"Are you then truly in love?" asked Malaga of her neighbor, thus
interpreting his toast.

The Brazilian refilled his glass, bowed to Carabine, and drank again.

"To the lady's health then!" said the courtesan, in such a droll tone
that Lora, du Tillet, and Bixiou burst out laughing.

The Brazilian sat like a bronze statue. This impassibility provoked
Carabine. She knew perfectly well that Montes was devoted to Madame
Marneffe, but she had not expected this dogged fidelity, this obstinate
silence of conviction.

A woman is as often gauged by the attitude of her lover as a man
is judged from the tone of his mistress. The Baron was proud of his
attachment to Valerie, and of hers to him; his smile had, to these
experienced connoisseurs, a touch of irony; he was really grand to look
upon; wine had not flushed him; and his eyes, with their peculiar lustre
as of tarnished gold, kept the secrets of his soul. Even Carabine said
to herself:

"What a woman she must be! How she has sealed up that heart!"

"He is a rock!" said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining that the whole
thing was a practical joke, and never suspecting the importance to
Carabine of reducing this fortress.

While this conversation, apparently so frivolous, was going on at
Carabine's right, the discussion of love was continued on her left
between the Duc d'Herouville, Lousteau, Josepha, Jenny Cadine, and
Massol. They were wondering whether such rare phenomena were the result
of passion, obstinacy, or affection. Josepha, bored to death by it all,
tried to change the subject.

"You are talking of what you know nothing about. Is there a man among
you who ever loved a woman--a woman beneath him--enough to squander his
fortune and his children's, to sacrifice his future and blight his past,
to risk going to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill an uncle
and a brother, to let his eye be so effectually blinded that he did
not even perceive that it was done to hinder his seeing the abyss into
which, as a crowning jest, he was being driven? Du Tillet has a cash-box
under his left breast; Leon de Lora has his wit; Bixiou would laugh
at himself for a fool if he loved an