“You know nothing of the world, my beauty,” said the great politician, deeply offended.  “The world, my Adeline, loves success!  Say, now, has it come to seek out your sublime virtue, priced at two hundred thousand francs?”

The words made Madame Hulot shudder; the nervous trembling attacked her once more.  She saw that the ex-perfumer was taking a mean revenge on her as he had on Hulot; she felt sick with disgust, and a spasm rose to her throat, hindering speech.

“Money!” she said at last.  “Always money!”

“You touched me deeply,” said Crevel, reminded by these words of the woman’s humiliation, “when I beheld you there, weeping at my feet!  —­You perhaps will not believe me, but if I had my pocket-book about me, it would have been yours.—­Come, do you really want such a sum?”

As she heard this question, big with two hundred thousand francs, Adeline forgot the odious insults heaped on her by this cheap-jack fine gentleman, before the tempting picture of success described by Machiavelli-Crevel, who only wanted to find out her secrets and laugh over them with Valerie.

“Oh!  I will do anything, everything,” cried the unhappy woman.  “Monsieur, I will sell myself—­I will be a Valerie, if I must.”

“You will find that difficult,” replied Crevel.  “Valerie is a masterpiece in her way.  My good mother, twenty-five years of virtue are always repellent, like a badly treated disease.  And your virtue has grown very mouldy, my dear child.  But you shall see how much I love you.  I will manage to get you your two hundred thousand francs.”

Adeline, incapable of uttering a word, seized his hand and laid it on her heart; a tear of joy trembled in her eyes.

“Oh! don’t be in a hurry; there will be some hard pulling.  I am a jolly good fellow, a good soul with no prejudices, and I will put things plainly to you.  You want to do as Valerie does—­very good.  But that is not all; you must have a gull, a stockholder, a Hulot.—­Well, I know a retired tradesman—­in fact, a hosier.  He is heavy, dull, has not an idea, I am licking him into shape, but I don’t know when he will do me credit.  My man is a deputy, stupid and conceited; the tyranny of a turbaned wife, in the depths of the country, has preserved him in a state of utter virginity as to the luxury and pleasures of Paris life.  But Beauvisage—­his name is Beauvisage—­is a millionaire, and, like me, my dear, three years ago, he will give a hundred thousand crowns to be the lover of a real lady.—­Yes, you see,” he went on, misunderstanding a gesture on Adeline’s part, “he is jealous of me, you understand; jealous of my happiness with Madame Marneffe, and he is a fellow quite capable of selling an estate to purchase a—­”

“Enough, Monsieur Crevel!” said Madame Hulot, no longer controlling her disgust, and showing all her shame in her face.  “I am punished beyond my deserts.  My conscience, so sternly repressed by the iron hand of necessity, tells me, at this final insult, that such sacrifices are impossible.—­My pride is gone; I do not say now, as I did the first time, ‘Go!’ after receiving this mortal thrust.  I have lost the right to do so.  I have flung myself before you like a prostitute.