"I am not downright bad; but that's all. I might perhaps be envious if I had more modesty and less pride. But as for always being kind, oh no, I am not. Life cures you of that just as it cures you of being a child. One gets over one's good-nature, Renee, just as one gets over teething." "Then you think that a kindly disposition and a good heart----" "Yes, I mean the goodness that endures in spite of men and in spite of experience--such goodness as I have met with in a primitive state in two or three men in my life. I look upon it as the best and most divine quality a man can have." "Yes, but if a man who is very good, as good as those you describe--this is just a supposition, you know--suppose he had feet that looked like lumps of cake in his boots. And then, suppose he were corpulent, this good man, this very good man?" "Well, one need not look at his feet nor at his corpulency--that's all. Oh, I beg your pardon, though, of course, I had completely forgotten." "What?" "Oh, nothing; except that you are a woman." "But that's very insulting to my sex--that remark of yours." Denoisel did not answer, and the conversation ceased for a few minutes. "Have you ever wished for wealth?" Renee began again. "Yes, several times; but absolutely for the sake of treating it as it deserves to be treated--to be disrespectful to it." "How do you mean?" "Why, yes, I should like to be rich just to show the contempt I have for money. I remember that two or three times I have fallen asleep with the idea of going to Italy to get married." "To Italy?" "Yes, there are more Russian princesses there than anywhere else, and Russian princesses are the only women left in this world who will marry a man without a farthing. Then, too, I was prepared to be contented with a princess who was not very well off. I was not at all exacting, and would have come down without a murmur to thirty thousand pounds a year. That was my very lowest figure though." "Indeed!" said Renee laughing. "And what should you have done with all that money?" "I should just have poured it away in streams between my fingers; it would have been something astounding to see; something that I have never seen rich people do with their money. I think all the millionaires ought to be ashamed of themselves. For instance, from the way in which a man lives who has four thousand a year, and the way a man lives who has forty thousand, could you tell their difference of fortune? Now with me you would have known. For a whole year I should have flung away my money in all kinds of caprices, fancies, and follies; I should have dazzled and fairly humiliated Paris; I should have been like a sun-god showering bank-notes down; I should have positively degraded my gold by all kinds of prodigalities; and at the end of a year, day for day, I should have left my wife." "Nonsense!"