“The wretch always addresses me as Madame, and preserves the most perfect coolness imaginable at moments when every man is more or less amenable. To him love-making!--on my word, it is nothing more nor less than shaving himself. He wipes the razor, puts it back in its case, and looks in the glass as if he were saying, ‘I have not cut myself!’ “Then he treats me with such respect as is enough to send a woman mad. That odious Milord Potboiler amuses himself by making poor Theodore hide in my dressing-room and stand there half the day. In short, he tries to annoy me in every way. And as stingy!--As miserly as Gobseck and Gigonnet rolled into one. He takes me out to dinner, but he does not pay the cab that brings me home if I happen not to have ordered my carriage to fetch me.” “Well,” said Esther, “but what does he pay you for your services?” “Oh, my dear, positively nothing. Five hundred francs a month and not a penny more, and the hire of a carriage. But what is it? A machine such as they hire out for a third-rate wedding to carry an epicier to the Mairie, to Church, and to the Cadran bleu.--Oh, he nettles me with his respect. “If I try hysterics and feel ill, he is never vexed; he only says: ‘I wish my lady to have her own way, for there is nothing more detestable--no gentleman--than to say to a nice woman, “You are a cotton bale, a bundle of merchandise.”--Ha, hah! Are you a member of the Temperance Society and anti-slavery?’ And my horror sits pale, and cold, and hard while he gives me to understand that he has as much respect for me as he might have for a Negro, and that it has nothing to do with his feelings, but with his opinions as an abolitionist.” “A man cannot be a worse wretch,” said Esther. “But I will smash up that outlandish Chinee.” “Smash him up?” replied Madame du Val-Noble. “Not if he does not love me. You, yourself, would you like to ask him for two sous? He would listen to you solemnly, and tell you, with British precision that would make a slap in the face seem genial, that he pays dear enough for the trifle that love can be to his poor life;” and, as before, Madame du Val-Noble mimicked Peyrade’s bad French. “To think that in our line of life we are thrown in the way of such men!” exclaimed Esther. “Oh, my dear, you have been uncommonly lucky. Take good care of your Nucingen.” “But your nabob must have got some idea in his head.” “That is what Adele says.” “Look here, my dear; that man, you may depend, has laid a bet that he will make a woman hate him and pack him off in a certain time.” “Or else he wants to do business with Nucingen, and took me up knowing that you and I were friends; that is what Adele thinks,” answered Madame du Val-Noble. “That is why I introduced him to you this evening. Oh, if only I could be sure what he is at, what tricks I could play with you and Nucingen!” “And you don’t get angry?” asked Esther; “you don’t speak your mind now and then?”