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The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honoré de Balzac
page 134 of 666 (20%)
"Must I tell you all our secrets?"

"Ah! you don't love me," she replied, looking at him with the
coquettish slyness of a woman who is not quite decided in her mind.

"Well, since you tell me yours," he said, letting himself go to the
lively impulse of Provencal gaiety, always so charming and apparently
so natural, "I will not conceal from you an anxiety in my heart."

He took her back to the same window and said, smiling:--

"Colleville, poor man, has seen in me the artist repressed by all
these bourgeois; silent before them because I feel misjudged,
misunderstood, and repelled by them. He has felt the heat of the
sacred fire that consumes me. Yes I am," he continued, in a tone of
conviction, "an artist in words after the manner of Berryer; I could
make juries weep, by weeping myself, for I'm as nervous as a woman.
Your husband, who detests the bourgeoisie, began to tease me about
them. At first we laughed; then, in becoming serious, he found out
that I was as strong as he. I told him of the plan concocted to make
_something_ of Thuillier, and I showed him all the good he could get
himself out of a political puppet. 'If it were only,' I said to him,
'to make yourself Monsieur _de_ Colleville, and to put your
charming wife where I should like to see her, as the wife of a
receiver-general, or deputy. To make yourself all that you and she
ought to be, you have only to go and live a few years in the Upper or
Lower Alps, in some hole of a town where everybody will like you, and
your wife will seduce everybody; and this,' I added, 'you cannot fail
to obtain, especially if you give your dear Celeste to some man who can
influence the Chamber.' Good reasons, stated in jest, have the merit of
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