"Yes, since then, my boy, I have seen puppets, both dolls and
manikins. I know something of the ways of the fine ladies whose bodies
we attend to, saving that which is dearest to them, their child--if
they love it--or their pretty faces, which they always worship. A man
spends his nights by their pillow, wearing himself to death to spare
them the slightest loss of beauty in any part; he succeeds, he keeps
their secret like the dead; they send to ask for his bill, and think
it horribly exorbitant. Who saved them? Nature. Far from recommending
him, they speak ill of him, fearing lest he should become the
physician of their best friends.

"My dear fellow, those women of whom you say, 'They are angels!' I
--I--have seen stripped of the little grimaces under which they hide
their soul, as well as of the frippery under which they disguise their
defects--without manners and without stays; they are not beautiful.

"We saw a great deal of mud, a great deal of dirt, under the waters of
the world when we were aground for a time on the shoals of the Maison
Vauquer.--What we saw there was nothing. Since I have gone into high
society, I have seen monsters dressed in satin, Michonneaus in white
gloves, Poirets bedizened with orders, fine gentlemen doing more
usurious business than old Gobseck! To the shame of mankind, when I
have wanted to shake hands with Virtue, I have found her shivering in
a loft, persecuted by calumny, half-starving on a income or a salary
of fifteen hundred francs a year, and regarded as crazy, or eccentric,
or imbecile.

"In short, my dear boy, the Marquise is a woman of fashion, and I have
a particular horror of that kind of woman. Do you want to know why? A