“What a misfortune it would be,” said the countess, with charmingly affected satire, “if your marriage with Mademoiselle Celeste were prevented! Do you really care so much, monsieur, for that little school-girl?” In that last word, especially the intonation with which it was uttered, there was more than contempt, there was hatred. This expression did not escape an observer of la Peyrade’s strength, but not being a man to advance very far on a single remark he merely replied:-- “Madame, the vulgar expression, to ‘settle down,’ explains this situation, in which a man, after many struggles and being at an end of his efforts and his illusions, makes a compromise with the future. When this compromise takes the form of a young girl with, I admit, more virtue than beauty, but one who brings to a husband the fortune which is indispensable to the comfort of married life, what is there so astonishing in the fact that his heart yields to gratitude and that he welcomes the prospect of a placid happiness?” “I have always thought,” replied the countess, “that the power of a man’s intellect ought to be the measure of his ambition; and I imagined that one so wise as to make himself, at first, the poor man’s lawyer, would have in his heart less humble and less pastoral aspirations.” “Ah! madame,” returned la Peyrade, “the iron hand of necessity compels us to strange resignations. The question of daily bread is one of those before which all things bend the knee. Apollo was forced to ‘get a living,’ as the shepherd of Admetus.” “The sheepfold of Admetus,” said Madame de Godollo, “was at least a royal fold; I don’t think Apollo would have resigned himself to be the shepherd of a--bourgeois.” The hesitation that preceded that last word seemed to convey in place of it a proper name; and la Peyrade understood that Madame de Godollo, out of pure clemency, had suppressed that of Thuillier, had turned her remark upon the species and not the individual. “I agree, madame, that your distinction is a just one,” he replied, “but in this case Apollo has no choice.” “I don’t like persons who charge too much,” said the countess, “but still less do I like those who sell their merchandise below the market price; I always suspect such persons of trying to dupe me by some clever and complicated trick. You know very well, monsieur, your own value, and your hypocritical humility displeases me immensely. It proves to me that my kindly overtures have not produced even a beginning of confidence between us.” “I assure you, madame, that up to the present time life has never justified the belief in any dazzling superiority in me.” “Well, really,” said the Hungarian, “perhaps I ought to believe in the humility of a man who is willing to accept the pitiable finale of his life which I threw myself into the breach to prevent.”