“Must I place her in a convent?” asked the Baroness. “But in such cases religion is impotent to subdue nature, and the most piously trained girls lose their head!--Get up, pray, monsieur; do you not understand that everything is final between us? that I look upon you with horror? that you have crushed a mother’s last hopes----” “But if I were to restore them,” asked he. Madame Hulot looked at Crevel with a frenzied expression that really touched him. But he drove pity back to the depths of his heart; she had said, “I look upon you with horror.” Virtue is always a little too rigid; it overlooks the shades and instincts by help of which we are able to tack when in a false position. “So handsome a girl as Mademoiselle Hortense does not find a husband nowadays if she is penniless,” Crevel remarked, resuming his starchiest manner. “Your daughter is one of those beauties who rather alarm intending husbands; like a thoroughbred horse, which is too expensive to keep up to find a ready purchaser. If you go out walking with such a woman on your arm, every one will turn to look at you, and follow and covet his neighbor’s wife. Such success is a source of much uneasiness to men who do not want to be killing lovers; for, after all, no man kills more than one. In the position in which you find yourself there are just three ways of getting your daughter married: Either by my help--and you will have none of it! That is one.--Or by finding some old man of sixty, very rich, childless, and anxious to have children; that is difficult, still such men are to be met with. Many old men take up with a Josepha, a Jenny Cadine, why should not one be found who is ready to make a fool of himself under legal formalities? If it were not for Celestine and our two grandchildren, I would marry Hortense myself. That is two.--The last way is the easiest----” Madame Hulot raised her head, and looked uneasily at the ex-perfumer.