"You have no need to play the petitioner, fair lady," replied the
Baron. "It is I who should ask the favor of seeing you."
"Very well, if mademoiselle allows it, pray come!" said Madame
Marneffe.
"Yes--go, Cousin, I will join you," said Lisbeth judiciously.
The Parisienne had so confidently counted on the chief's visit and
intelligence, that not only had she dressed herself for so important
an interview--she had dressed her room. Early in the day it had been
furnished with flowers purchased on credit. Marneffe had helped his
wife to polish the furniture, down to the smallest objects, washing,
brushing, and dusting everything. Valerie wished to be found in an
atmosphere of sweetness, to attract the chief and to please him enough
to have a right to be cruel; to tantalize him as a child would, with
all the tricks of fashionable tactics. She had gauged Hulot. Give a
Paris woman at bay four-and-twenty hours, and she will overthrow a
ministry.
The man of the Empire, accustomed to the ways to the Empire, was no
doubt quite ignorant of the ways of modern love-making, of the
scruples in vogue and the various styles of conversation invented
since 1830, which led to the poor weak woman being regarded as the
victim of her lover's desires--a Sister of Charity salving a wound, an
angel sacrificing herself.
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