“Well, at any rate, I have found you,” said Lisbeth, taking Valerie’s hand, “that is some consolation in this dreadful trouble.—­We shall be true friends; and why should we ever part?  I shall never cross your track.  No one will ever be in love with me!—­Those who would have married me, would only have done it to secure my Cousin Hulot’s interest.  With energy enough to scale Paradise, to have to devote it to procuring bread and water, a few rags, and a garret!—­That is martyrdom, my dear, and I have withered under it.”

She broke off suddenly, and shot a black flash into Madame Marneffe’s blue eyes, a glance that pierced the pretty woman’s soul, as the point of a dagger might have pierced her heart.

“And what is the use of talking?” she exclaimed in reproof to herself.  “I never said so much before, believe me!  The tables will be turned yet!” she added after a pause.  “As you so wisely say, let us sharpen our teeth, and pull down all the hay we can get.”

“You are very wise,” said Madame Marneffe, who had been frightened by this scene, and had no remembrance of having uttered this maxim.  “I am sure you are right, my dear child.  Life is not so long after all, and we must make the best of it, and make use of others to contribute to our enjoyment.  Even I have learned that, young as I am.  I was brought up a spoilt child, my father married ambitiously, and almost forgot me, after making me his idol and bringing me up like a queen’s daughter!  My poor mother, who filled my head with splendid visions, died of grief at seeing me married to an office clerk with twelve hundred francs a year, at nine-and-thirty an aged and hardened libertine, as corrupt as the hulks, looking on me, as others looked on you, as a means of fortune!—­Well, in that wretched man, I have found the best of husbands.  He prefers the squalid sluts he picks up at the street corners, and leaves me free.  Though he keeps all his salary to himself, he never asks me where I get money to live on——­”

And she in her turn stopped short, as a woman does who feels herself carried away by the torrent of her confessions; struck, too, by Lisbeth’s eager attention, she thought well to make sure of Lisbeth before revealing her last secrets.

“You see, dear child, how entire is my confidence in you!” she presently added, to which Lisbeth replied by a most comforting nod.

An oath may be taken by a look and a nod more solemnly than in a court of justice.

“I keep up every appearance of respectability,” Valerie went on, laying her hand on Lisbeth’s as if to accept her pledge.  “I am a married woman, and my own mistress, to such a degree, that in the morning, when Marneffe sets out for the office, if he takes it into his head to say good-bye and finds my door locked, he goes off without a word.  He cares less for his boy than I care for one of the marble children that play at the feet of one of the river-gods in the Tuileries.  If I do not come home to dinner, he dines quite contentedly with the maid, for the maid is devoted to monsieur; and he goes out every evening after dinner, and does not come in till twelve or one o’clock.  Unfortunately, for a year past, I have had no ladies’ maid, which is as much as to say that I am a widow!