"
"You fancy that you are not the father of our little Crevel?"
"What nonsense!" replied he, sure of his paternity.
"On my honor, I give it up!" said Madame Marneffe. "If I am expected
to extract my friend's woes as you pull the cork out of a bottle of
Bordeaux, I let it alone.--Go away, you bore me."
"It is nothing," said Crevel. "I must find two hundred thousand francs
in two hours."
"Oh, you can easily get them.--I have not spent the fifty thousand
francs we got out of Hulot for that report, and I can ask Henri for
fifty thousand--"
"Henri--it is always Henri!" exclaimed Crevel.
"And do you suppose, you great baby of a Machiavelli, that I will cast
off Henri? Would France disarm her fleet?--Henri! why, he is a dagger
in a sheath hanging on a nail. That boy serves as a weather-glass to
show me if you love me--and you don't love me this morning."
"I don't love you, Valerie?" cried Crevel. "I love you as much as a
million."
"That is not nearly enough!" cried she, jumping on to Crevel's knee,
and throwing both arms round his neck as if it were a peg to hang on
by. "I want to be loved as much as ten millions, as much as all the
gold in the world, and more to that. Henri would never wait a minute
before telling me all he had on his mind.
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