Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

"I!--and I meant to settle down and behave myself!--Look here, borrow twenty thousand francs for me, and I will set out to make my fortune in America, like my friend d'Aiglemont when Nucingen cleaned him out."

"You!" cried Josepha. "Nay, leave morals to work-a-day folks, to raw recruits, to the worrrthy citizens who have nothing to boast of but their virtue. You! You were born to be something better than a nincompoop; you are as a man what I am as a woman--a spendthrift of genius."

"We will sleep on it and discuss it all to-morrow morning."

"You will dine with the Duke. My d'Herouville will receive you as civilly as if you were the saviour of the State; and to-morrow you can decide. Come, be jolly, old boy! Life is a garment; when it is dirty, we must brush it; when it is ragged, it must be patched; but we keep it on as long as we can."

This philosophy of life, and her high spirits, postponed Hulot's keenest pangs.

At noon next day, after a capital breakfast, Hulot saw the arrival of one of those living masterpieces which Paris alone of all the cities in the world can produce, by means of the constant concubinage of luxury and poverty, of vice and decent honesty, of suppressed desire and renewed temptation, which makes the French capital the daughter of Ninevah, of Babylon, and of Imperial Rome.

Mademoiselle Olympe Bijou, a child of sixteen, had the exquisite face which Raphael drew for his Virgins; eyes of pathetic innocence, weary with overwork--black eyes, with long lashes, their moisture parched with the heat of laborious nights, and darkened with fatigue; a complexion like porcelain, almost too delicate; a mouth like a partly opened pomegranate; a heaving bosom, a full figure, pretty hands, the whitest teeth, and a mass of black hair; and the whole meagrely set off by a cotton frock at seventy-five centimes the metre, leather shoes without heels, and the cheapest gloves. The girl, all unconscious of her charms, had put on her best frock to wait on the fine lady.