fter dinner, Miss Bell was sketching in the drawing-room. She was
tracing, on canvas, profiles of bearded Etruscans for a cushion which
Madame Marmet was to embroider. Prince Albertinelli was selecting the
wool with an almost feminine knowledge of shades. It was late when
Choulette, having, as was his habit, played briscola with the cook at
the caterer's, appeared, as joyful as if he possessed the mind of a
god. He took a seat on a sofa, beside Madame Martin, and looked at her
tenderly. Voluptuousness shone in his green eyes. He enveloped her,
while talking to her, with poetic and picturesque phrases. It was like
the sketch of a lovesong that he was improvising for her. In oddly
involved sentences, he told her of the charm that she exhaled.

"He, too!" said she to herself.

She amused herself by teasing him. She asked whether he had not found in
Florence, in the low quarters, one of the kind of women whom he liked
to visit. His preferences were known. He could deny it as much as he
wished: no one was ignorant of the door where he had found the cordon of
his Third Order. His friends had met him on the boulevard. His taste for
unfortunate women was evident in his most beautiful poems.

"Oh, Monsieur Choulette, so far as I am able to judge, you like very bad
women."

He replied with solemnity:

"Madame, you may collect the grain of calumny sown by Monsieur Paul
Vence and throw handfuls of it at me. I will not try to avoid it. It is
not necessary you should know that I am chaste and that my mind is pure.
But do not judge lightly those whom you call unfortunate, and who should
be sacred to you, since they are unfortunate. The disdained and lost
girl is the docile clay under the finger of the Divine Potter: she is
the victim and the altar of the holocaust. The unfortunates are nearer
God than the honest women: they have lost conceit. They do not glorify
themselves with the untried virtue the matron prides herself on. They
possess humility, which is the cornerstone of virtues agreeable to
heaven. A short repentance will be sufficient for them to be the first
in heaven; for their sins, without malice and without joy, contain
their own forgiveness. Their faults, which are pains, participate in the
merits attached to pain; slaves to brutal passion, they are deprived
of all voluptuousness, and in this they are like the men who practise
continence for the kingdom of God. They are like us, culprits; but shame
falls on their cri