The Baron, on his part, admiring in Madame Marneffe such propriety, education, and breeding as neither Jenny Cadine nor Josepha, nor any friend of theirs had to show, had fallen in love with her in a month, developing a senile passion, a senseless passion, which had an appearance of reason.  In fact, he found here neither the banter, nor the orgies, nor the reckless expenditure, nor the depravity, nor the scorn of social decencies, nor the insolent independence which had brought him to grief alike with the actress and the singer.  He was spared, too, the rapacity of the courtesan, like unto the thirst of dry sand.

Madame Marneffe, of whom he had made a friend and confidante, made the greatest difficulties over accepting any gift from him.

“Appointments, official presents, anything you can extract from the Government; but do not begin by insulting a woman whom you profess to love,” said Valerie.  “If you do, I shall cease to believe you—­and I like to believe you,” she added, with a glance like Saint Theresa leering at heaven.

Every time he made her a present there was a fortress to be stormed, a conscience to be over-persuaded.  The hapless Baron laid deep stratagems to offer her some trifle—­costly, nevertheless—­proud of having at last met with virtue and the realization of his dreams.  In this primitive household, as he assured himself, he was the god as much as in his own.  And Monsieur Marneffe seemed at a thousand leagues from suspecting that the Jupiter of his office intended to descend on his wife in a shower of gold; he was his august chief’s humblest slave.

Madame Marneffe, twenty-three years of age, a pure and bashful middle-class wife, a blossom hidden in the Rue du Doyenne, could know nothing of the depravity and demoralizing harlotry which the Baron could no longer think of without disgust, for he had never known the charm of recalcitrant virtue, and the coy Valerie made him enjoy it to the utmost—­all along the line, as the saying goes.

The question having come to this point between Hector and Valerie, it is not astonishing that Valerie should have heard from Hector the secret of the intended marriage between the great sculptor Steinbock and Hortense Hulot.  Between a lover on his promotion and a lady who hesitates long before becoming his mistress, there are contests, uttered or unexpressed, in which a word often betrays a thought; as, in fencing, the foils fly as briskly as the swords in duel.  Then a prudent man follows the example of Monsieur de Turenne.  Thus the Baron had hinted at the greater freedom his daughter’s marriage would allow him, in reply to the tender Valerie, who more than once had exclaimed: 

“I cannot imagine how a woman can go wrong for a man who is not wholly hers.”

And a thousand times already the Baron had declared that for five-and-twenty years all had been at an end between Madame Hulot and himself.

“And they say she is so handsome!” replied Madame Marneffe.  “I want proof.”