id, letting her eyes shine like
two fixed stars.

"What would you do?"

"Why, he should manage my affairs for me."

Diane de Maufrigneuse was divinely dressed; she meant her toilet to do
honor to Victurnien. The levity with which she treated his affairs or,
more properly speaking, his debts fascinated him.

The charming pair went to the Italiens. Never had that beautiful and
enchanting woman looked more seraphic, more ethereal. Nobody in the
house could have believed that she had debts which reached the sum total
mentioned by de Marsay that very morning. No single one of the cares of
earth had touched that sublime forehead of hers, full of woman's pride
of the highest kind. In her, a pensive air seemed to be some gleam of
an earthly love, nobly extinguished. The men for the most part were
wagering that Victurnien, with his handsome figure, laid her under
contribution; while the women, sure of their rival's subterfuge, admired
her as Michael Angelo admired Raphael, in petto. Victurnien loved Diane,
according to one of these ladies, for the sake of her hair--she had
the most beautiful fair hair in France; another maintained that Diane's
pallor was her principal merit, for she was not really well shaped, her
dress made the most of her figure; yet others thought that Victurnien
loved her for her foot, her one good point, for she had a flat figure.
But (and this brings the present-day manner of Paris before you in
an astonishing manner) whereas all the men said that the Duchess was
subsidizing Victurnien's splendor, the women, on the other hand, gave
people to understand that it was Victurnien who paid for the angel's
wings, as Rastignac said.

As they drove back again, Victurnien had it on the tip of his tongue a
score of times to open this chapter, for the Duchess' debts weighed more
heavily upon his mind than his own; and a score of times his purpose
died away before the attitude of the divine creature beside him. He
could see her by the light of the carriage lamps; she was bewitching in
the love-languor which always seemed to be extorted by the violence of
passion from her madonna's purity. The Duchess did not fall into the
mistake of talking of her virtue, of her angel's estate, as provincial
women, her imitators, do. She was far too clever. She made him, for whom
she made such great sacrifices, think these things for himself. At the
end of six months she could make him feel that a harmless kiss on her
hand was a