It is only your stupid woman with the brilliant beauty that throws
heart, brain, and soul into the shade, who can inspire forgetfulness
like this; a clever woman never abuses her advantages; she must be
small-natured and silly to gain such a hold upon a man. Beaudenord
actually loved the solemn old Wirth--he has told me so himself!

"That old rogue regarded his future master with the awe which a good
Catholic feels for the Eucharist. Honest Wirth was a kind of Gaspard,
a beer-drinking German sheathing his cunning in good-nature, much as a
cardinal in the Middle Ages kept his dagger up his sleeve. Wirth saw a
husband for Isaure, and accordingly proceeded to surround Godefroid
with the mazy circumlocutions of his Alsacien's geniality, that most
adhesive of all known varieties of bird-lime.

"Mme. d'Aldrigger was radically 'improper.' She thought love the most
natural thing imaginable. When Isaure and Malvina went out together to
the Champs Elysees or the Tuileries, where they were sure to meet the
young men of their set, she would simply say, 'A pleasant time to you,
dear girls.' Their friends among men, the only persons who might have
slandered the sisters, championed them; for the extraordinary liberty
permitted in the d'Aldriggers' salon made it unique in Paris. Vast
wealth could scarcely have procured such evenings, the talk was good
on any subject; dress was not insisted upon; you felt so much at home
there that you could ask for supper. The sisters corresponded as they
pleased, and quietly read their letters by their mother's side; it
never occurred to the Baroness to interfere in any way; the adorable
woman gave the girls the full benefits of her selfishness, and in a
certain sense selfish persons are the easiest to live with; they hate
trouble, and therefore do not trouble other people; they never beset
the lives of their fellow-creatures with thorny advice and captious