"Well, I admire that!" cried Josepha, starting up in her enthusiasm.
"It is a general flare-up! It is Sardanapalus! Splendid, thoroughly
complete! I may be a hussy, but I have a soul! I tell you, I like a
spendthrift, like you, crazy over a woman, a thousand times better
than those torpid, heartless bankers, who are supposed to be so good,
and who ruin no end of families with their rails--gold for them, and
iron for their gulls! You have only ruined those who belong to you,
you have sold no one but yourself; and then you have excuses, physical
and moral."
She struck a tragic attitude, and spouted:
"'Tis Venus whose grasp never parts from her prey.
And there you are!" and she pirouetted on her toe.
Vice, Hulot found, could forgive him; vice smiled on him from the
midst of unbridled luxury. Here, as before a jury, the magnitude of a
crime was an extenuating circumstance. "And is your lady pretty at any
rate?" asked Josepha, trying as a preliminary act of charity, to
divert Hulot's thoughts, for his depression grieved her.
"On my word, almost as pretty as you are," said the Baron artfully.
"And monstrously droll? So I have been told. What does she do, I say?
Is she better fun than I am?"
"I don't want to talk about her," said Hulot.
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