the very reason that made him leave us our liberty
--nearly four years ago, do you remember, you bad boy?--he now
abandons me to Monsieur Hulot. I cannot get rid of that dreadful
official, who snorts like a grampus, who has fins in his nostrils, who
is sixty-three years old, and who had grown ten years older by dint of
trying to be young; who is so odious to me that the very day when
Marneffe is promoted, and gets his Cross of the Legion of Honor----"

"How much more will your husband get then?"

"A thousand crowns."

"I will pay him as much in an annuity," said Baron Montes. "We will
leave Paris and go----"

"Where?" said Valerie, with one of the pretty sneers by which a woman
makes fun of a man she is sure of. "Paris is the only place where we
can live happy. I care too much for your love to risk seeing it die
out in a _tete-a-tete_ in the wilderness. Listen, Henri, you are the
only man I care for in the whole world. Write that down clearly in
your tiger's brain."

For women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that
he is a lion with a will of iron.

"Now, attend to me. Monsieur Marneffe has not five years to live; he
is rotten to the marrow of his bones. He spends seven months of the
twelve in swallowing drugs and decoctions; he lives wrapped in
flannel; in short, as the doctor says, he lives under the scythe, and
may be cut off at any moment. An illness that would not harm another
man would be fatal to him; his blood is corrupt, his life undermined
at the root. For five years I have never allowed him to kiss me--he is
poisonous! Some day, and the day is not far off, I shall be a widow.
Well, then, I--who have already had an offer from a man with sixty
thousand francs a year, I who am as completely mistress of that man as
I am of this lump of sugar--I swear to you that if you were as poor as
Hulot and as foul as Marneffe, if you beat me even, still you are the
only man I will have for a husband, the only man I love, or whose name
I will ever bear. And I am ready to give any pledge of my love that
you may require."

"Well, then, to-night----"

"But you, son of the South, my splendid jaguar, come expressly for me
from the virgin forest of Brazil," said she, taking his hand and
kissing and fondling it, "I have some consideration for the poor
creature you mean to make your wife.--Shall I be your wife, Henri?"

"Yes," said the Brazilian, overpowered by this unbridled volubility of
passion. An