in preference
to a notary or an attorney, whose superior social position is a ground
of suspicion; they are afraid of being scorned in the future by these
citizen bigwigs.

Madame Crevel, ugly, vulgar, and silly, had given her husband no
pleasures but those of paternity; she died young. Her libertine husband,
fettered at the beginning of his commercial career by the necessity
for working, and held in thrall by want of money, had led the life of
Tantalus. Thrown in--as he phrased it--with the most elegant women in
Paris, he let them out of the shop with servile homage, while admiring
their grace, their way of wearing the fashions, and all the nameless
charms of what is called breeding. To rise to the level of one of these
fairies of the drawing-room was a desire formed in his youth, but buried
in the depths of his heart. Thus to win the favors of Madame Marneffe
was to him not merely the realization of his chimera, but, as has been
shown, a point of pride, of vanity, of self-satisfaction. His ambition
grew with success; his brain was turned with elation; and when the
mind is captivated, the heart feels more keenly, every gratification is
doubled.

Also, it must be said that Madame Marneffe offered to Crevel a
refinement of pleasure of which he had no idea; neither Josepha nor
Heloise had loved him; and Madame Marneffe thought it necessary
to deceive him thoroughly, for this man, she saw, would prove an
inexhaustible till. The deceptions of a venal passion are more
delightful than the real thing. True love is mixed up with birdlike
squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a
quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, a piece of flattery to the
dupe's conceit.

The rare interviews granted to Crevel kept his passion at white heat.
He was constantly blocked by Valerie's virtuous severity; she acted
remorse, and wondered what her father must be thinking of her in the
paradise of the brave. Again and again he had to contend with a sort
of coldness, which the cunning slut made him believe he had overcome
by seeming to surrender to the man's crazy passion; and then, as if
ashamed, she entrenched herself once more in her pride of respectability
and airs of virtue, just like an Englishwoman, neither more nor less;
and she always crushed her Crevel under the weight of her dignity--for
Crevel had, in the first instance, swallowed her pretensions to virtue.

In short, Valerie had special veins of aff