"
Hulot started with horror.
"He would leave me alone on condition of being head-clerk. It is
abominable--but logical."
"Valerie, do you love me?"
"In the state in which I am, my dear, the question is the meanest
insult."
"Well, then--if I were to attempt, merely to attempt, to ask the
Prince for a place for Marneffe, I should be done for, and Marneffe
would be turned out."
"I thought that you and the Prince were such intimate friends."
"We are, and he has amply proved it; but, my child, there is authority
above the Marshal's--for instance, the whole Council of Ministers.
With time and a little tacking, we shall get there. But, to succeed, I
must wait till the moment when some service is required of me. Then I
can say one good turn deserves another--"
"If I tell Marneffe this tale, my poor Hector, he will play us some
mean trick. You must tell him yourself that he has to wait. I will not
undertake to do so. Oh! I know what my fate would be. He knows how to
punish me! He will henceforth share my room----
"Do not forget to settle the twelve hundred francs a year on the
little one!"
Hulot, seeing his pleasures in danger, took Monsieur Marneffe aside,
and for the first time derogated from the haughty tone he had always
assumed towards him, so greatly was he horrified by the thought of
that half-dead creature in his pretty young wife's bedroom.
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