“Alas, my dear Crevel, it has nothing to do with the children, poor devoted souls!—­If your heart is closed to Victorin and Celestine, I shall love them so much that perhaps I may soften the bitterness of their souls caused by your anger.  You are punishing your children for a good action!”

“Yes, for a good action badly done!  That is half a crime,” said Crevel, much pleased with his epigram.

“Doing good, my dear Crevel, does not mean sparing money out of a purse that is bursting with it; it means enduring privations to be generous, suffering for liberality!  It is being prepared for ingratitude!  Heaven does not see the charity that costs us nothing—­”

“Saints, madame, may if they please go to the workhouse; they know that it is for them the door of heaven.  For my part, I am worldly-minded; I fear God, but yet more I fear the hell of poverty.  To be destitute is the last depth of misfortune in society as now constituted.  I am a man of my time; I respect money.”

“And you are right,” said Adeline, “from the worldly point of view.”

She was a thousand miles from her point, and she felt herself on a gridiron, like Saint Laurence, as she thought of her uncle, for she could see him blowing his brains out.

She looked down; then she raised her eyes to gaze at Crevel with angelic sweetness—­not with the inviting suggestiveness which was part of Valerie’s wit.  Three years ago she could have bewitched Crevel by that beautiful look.

“I have known the time,” said she, “when you were more generous—­you used to talk of three hundred thousand francs like a grand gentleman—­”

Crevel looked at Madame Hulot; he beheld her like a lily in the last of its bloom, vague sensations rose within him, but he felt such respect for this saintly creature that he spurned all suspicions and buried them in the most profligate corner of his heart.

“I, madame, am still the same; but a retired merchant, if he is a grand gentleman, plays, and must play, the part with method and economy; he carries his ideas of order into everything.  He opens an account for his little amusements, and devotes certain profits to that head of expenditure; but as to touching his capital! it would be folly.  My children will have their fortune intact, mine and my wife’s; but I do not suppose that they wish their father to be dull, a monk and a mummy!  My life is a very jolly one; I float gaily down the stream.  I fulfil all the duties imposed on me by law, by my affections, and by family ties, just as I always used to be punctual in paying my bills when they fell due.  If only my children conduct themselves in their domestic life as I do, I shall be satisfied; and for the present, so long as my follies—­for I have committed follies —­are no loss to any one but the gulls—­excuse me, you do not perhaps understand the slang word—­they will have nothing to blame me for, and will find a tidy little sum still left when I die.  Your children cannot say as much of their father, who is ruining his son and my daughter by his pranks—­”