--My dear Henri, my first and only love, listen to me. That
husband of mine, a second clerk in the War Office, is bent on being a
head-clerk and officer of the Legion of Honor; can I help his being
ambitious? Now for the very reason that made him leave us our liberty
--nearly four years ago, do you remember, you bad boy?--he now
abandons me to Monsieur Hulot. I cannot get rid of that dreadful
official, who snorts like a grampus, who has fins in his nostrils, who
is sixty-three years old, and who had grown ten years older by dint of
trying to be young; who is so odious to me that the very day when
Marneffe is promoted, and gets his Cross of the Legion of Honor----"
"How much more will your husband get then?"
"A thousand crowns."
"I will pay him as much in an annuity," said Baron Montes. "We will
leave Paris and go----"
"Where?" said Valerie, with one of the pretty sneers by which a woman
makes fun of a man she is sure of. "Paris is the only place where we
can live happy. I care too much for your love to risk seeing it die
out in a _tete-a-tete_ in the wilderness. Listen, Henri, you are the
only man I care for in the whole world. Write that down clearly in
your tiger's brain."
For women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that
he is a lion with a will of iron.
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