"A doctor in good society never talks of medicine, true nobles never
speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not discuss their works,"
said Josepha; "why should we talk business? If I got the opera put off
in order to dine here, it was assuredly not to work.--So let us change
the subject, dear children."
"But we are speaking of real love, my beauty," said Malaga, "of the
love that makes a man fling all to the dogs--father, mother, wife,
children--and retire to Clichy."
"Talk away, then, 'don't know yer,'" said the singer.
The slang words, borrowed from the Street Arab, and spoken by these
women, may be a poem on their lips, helped by the expression of the
eyes and face.
"What, do not I love you, Josepha?" said the Duke in a low voice.
"You, perhaps, may love me truly," said she in his ear, and she
smiled. "But I do not love you in the way they describe, with such
love as makes the world dark in the absence of the man beloved. You
are delightful to me, useful--but not indispensable; and if you were
to throw me over to-morrow, I could have three dukes for one."
"Is true love to be found in Paris?" asked Leon de Lora. "Men have not
even time to make a fortune; how can they give themselves over to true
love, which swamps a man as water melts sugar? A man must be
enormously rich to indulge in it, for love annihilates him--for
instance, like our Brazilian friend over there.
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