"Did the gentleman limp very badly? For, after all, he was a consul." "Oh, as to that, his position is a magnificent one. It seems that in the country where he is consul people are carried in palanquins." "That's the least thing they can do for lame people. As for me, I think she has done quite right. I have a horror of deformed people: one is never sure that it may not be something catching. Do you remember Sister Adelaide at the convent, who had one leg shorter than the other? Well, I wouldn't have sat down in her chair for a hundred thousand francs." "What would you have done if you had had to marry her?" "How silly you are!--Don't look over there: I see M. Pincette coming to ask us to dance. The more I see of him, the more I detest him. He is stupid, he is fair, his whiskers are too large, he doesn't dance in time: he has no attractions. Don't you think he looks like the Abbe Julien, who used to hear our catechisms, and who was always saying, 'Not another word, my children'?" "Yes, he does look like him, especially when he is waltzing: he has the same eyes. As for me, I don't like a man who looks like a priest. That is not saying anything against priests, my dear. In the first place, a man ought to have brown moustaches: without them he is not worth looking at. Have you seen my brother's moustaches since he left Saint-Cyr? That is the kind of moustaches I like--pointed, pointed and waxed. I used to do them for him last summer, and I fully understand them." "Ernest is a fine-looking young man; and then he's so strong." "I hate a Hercules. M. de Saint-Flair is not handsome, is he? Well, I can see very well how he fascinated Adele with his pale face, thin hair and his look of illness." "Your M. de Saint-Flair looks as if he were just getting over a fever. When he is sitting round in the corners I am always tempted to offer him a bowl of gruel." "Oh, that's all very well, but as for distinction, I don't see any one who comes up to him. And then, too, they say he writes poetry." "Still, I must say I prefer M. de P----." "What an idea! M. de P----! He's a perfect barrel, and besides he's forty-six or forty-eight years old." "Well, my dear, a man has to be as old as that to be able to offer a woman an acceptable position. It's not at all bad to be the wife of a banker."