Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

For two hours Madame Marneffe went on talking nonsense, and Crevel made this judicious reflection:

"How can so light-hearted a creature be utterly depraved? Feather-brained, yes! but wicked? Nonsense!"

"Well, and what did the young people say about me?" said Valerie to Crevel at a moment when he sat down by her on the sofa. "All sorts of horrors?"

"They will have it that you have a criminal passion for Wenceslas-- you, who are virtue itself."

"I love him!--I should think so, my little Wenceslas!" cried Valerie, calling the artist to her, taking his face in her hands, and kissing his forehead. "A poor boy with no fortune, and no one to depend on! Cast off by a carrotty giraffe! What do you expect, Crevel? Wenceslas is my poet, and I love him as if he were my own child, and make no secret of it. Bah! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in everything. Bless me, could they not sit by a man without doing wrong? I am a spoilt child who has had all it ever wanted, and bonbons no longer excite me.--Poor things! I am sorry for them!

"And who slandered me so?"

"Victorin," said Crevel.

"Then why did you not stop his mouth, the odious legal macaw! with the story of the two hundred thousand francs and his mamma?"

"Oh, the Baroness had fled," said Lisbeth.

"They had better take care, Lisbeth," said Madame Marneffe, with a frown. "Either they will receive me and do it handsomely, and come to their stepmother's house--all the party!--or I will see them in lower depths than the Baron has reached, and you may tell them I said so!-- At last I shall turn nasty. On my honor, I believe that evil is the scythe with which to cut down the good."