"Yes; but he is an old man, and I am sure that Marguerite is not his
mistress. Then, it is all very well to accept one liaison, but not two.
Such easiness in the matter is very like calculation, and puts the man
who consents to it, even out of love, very much in the category of those
who, in a lower stage of society, make a trade of their connivance, and
a profit of their trade."
"Ah, my dear fellow, how old-fashioned you are! How many of the richest
and most fashionable men of the best families I have seen quite ready
to do what I advise you to do, and without an effort, without shame,
without remorse, Why, one sees it every day. How do you suppose the kept
women in Paris could live in the style they do, if they had not three or
four lovers at once? No single fortune, however large, could suffice
for the expenses of a woman like Marguerite. A fortune of five hundred
thousand francs a year is, in France, an enormous fortune; well, my dear
friend, five hundred thousand francs a year would still be too little,
and for this reason: a man with such an income has a large house,
horses, servants, carriages; he shoots, has friends, often he is
married, he has children, he races, gambles, travels, and what not. All
these habits are so much a part of his position that he can not forego
them without appearing to have lost all his money, and without causing
scandal. Taking it all round, with five hundred thousand francs a year
he can not give a woman more than forty or fifty thousand francs in the
year, and that is already a good deal. Well, other lovers make up for
the rest of her expenses. With Marguerite, it is still more convenient;
she has chanced by a miracle on an old man worth ten millions, whose
wife and daughter are dead; who has only some nephews, themselves rich,
and who gives her all she wants without asking anything in return. But
she can not ask him for more than seventy thousand francs a year; and
I am sure that if she did ask for more, despite his health and the
affection he has for her he would not give it to her.
"All the young men of twenty or thirty thousand francs a year at Paris,
that is to say, men who have only just enough to live on in the society
in which they mix, know perfectly well, when they are the lovers of a
woman like Marguerite, that she could not so much as pay for the rooms
she lives in and the servants who wait upon her with what they give
her. They do not say to her that they know it; they pretend not to see
anything, and when they have had enough of it they go their way. If they
have the vanity to wish to pay for everything they get ruined, like the
fools they are, and go and get killed in Africa, after leaving a hundred
thousand francs of debt in Paris. Do you think a woman is grateful
to them for it? Far from it. She declares that she has sacrificed her
position for them, and that while she was with them she was losing
money. These details seem to you shocking? Well, they are true. You are
a very nice fellow; I like you very much. I have lived with these women
for twenty years; I know what they are worth, and I don't want to see
you take the caprice that a pretty girl has for you too seriously.