Honore de Balzac: Cousin Betty

1. PART I: THE PRODIGAL FATHER (continued)

"Guess."

"A service of plate?"

"I have three."

"Diamonds?"

"I am selling them."

"A green monkey?"

"No. A picture by Raphael."

"What maggot is that in your brain?"

"Josepha makes me sick with her pictures," said Carabine. "I want some better than hers."

Du Tillet came with the Brazilian, the hero of the feast; the Duc d'Herouville followed with Josepha. The singer wore a plain velvet gown, but she had on a necklace worth a hundred and twenty thousand francs, pearls hardly distinguishable from her skin like white camellia petals. She had stuck one scarlet camellia in her black hair --a patch--the effect was dazzling, and she had amused herself by putting eleven rows of pearls on each arm. As she shook hands with Jenny Cadine, the actress said, "Lend me your mittens!"

Josepha unclasped them one by one and handed them to her friend on a plate.

"There's style!" said Carabine. "Quite the Duchess! You have robbed the ocean to dress the nymph, Monsieur le Duc," she added turning to the little Duc d'Herouville.

The actress took two of the bracelets; she clasped the other twenty on the singer's beautiful arms, which she kissed.

Lousteau, the literary cadger, la Palferine and Malaga, Massol, Vauvinet, and Theodore Gaillard, a proprietor of one of the most important political newspapers, completed the party. The Duc d'Herouville, polite to everybody, as a fine gentleman knows how to be, greeted the Comte de la Palferine with the particular nod which, while it does not imply either esteem or intimacy, conveys to all the world, "We are of the same race, the same blood--equals!"--And this greeting, the shibboleth of the aristocracy, was invented to be the despair of the upper citizen class.