This is the inexperience of virtue. Vice asks for nothing, as we have
seen in Madame Marneffe; it gets everything offered to it. Women of
that stamp are never exacting till they have made themselves
indispensable, or when a man has to be worked as a quarry is worked
where the lime is rather scarce--going to ruin, as the quarry-men say.
On hearing these words, "Two hundred thousand francs," Crevel
understood all. He cheerfully raised the Baroness, saying insolently:
"Come, come, bear up, mother," which Adeline, in her distraction,
failed to hear. The scene was changing its character. Crevel was
becoming "master of the situation," to use his own words. The vastness
of the sum startled Crevel so greatly that his emotion at seeing this
handsome woman in tears at his feet was forgotten. Besides, however
angelical and saintly a woman may be, when she is crying bitterly her
beauty disappears. A Madame Marneffe, as has been seen, whimpers now
and then, a tear trickles down her cheek; but as to melting into tears
and making her eyes and nose red!--never would she commit such a
blunder.
"Come, child, compose yourself.--Deuce take it!" Crevel went on,
taking Madame Hulot's hands in his own and patting them.
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