These words of Adrienne made D’Aigrigny and the princess start, and then rapidly exchange a glance of uneasiness and anxiety.  Adrienne did not seem to perceive it, but thus continued:  “To have done with your demands, madame, here is my final resolve.  I shall live where and how I please.  I think that, if I were a man, no one would impose on me, at my age, the harsh and humiliating guardianship you have in view, for living as I have lived till now—­honestly, freely, and generously, in the sight of all.”

“This idea is absurd! is madness!” cried the princess.  “To wish to live thus alone, is to carry immorality and immodesty to their utmost limits.”

“If so, madame,” said Adrienne, “what opinion must you entertain of so many poor girls, orphans like myself, who live alone and free, as I wish to live?  They have not received, as I have, a refined education, calculated to raise the soul, and purify the heart.  They have not wealth, as I have, to protect them from the evil temptations of misery; and yet they live honestly and proudly in their distress.”

“Vice and virtue do not exist for such tag-rag vermin!” cried Baron Tripeaud, with an expression of anger and hideous disdain.

“Madame, you would turn away a lackey, that would venture to speak thus before you,” said Adrienne to her aunt, unable to conceal her disgust, “and yet you oblige me to listen to such speeches!”

The Marquis d’Aigrigny touched M. Tripeaud with his knee under the table, to remind him that he must not express himself in the princess’s parlors in the same manner as he would in the lobbies of the Exchange.  To repair the baron’s coarseness, the abbe thus continued:  “There is no comparison, mademoiselle, between people of the class you name, and a young lady of your rank.”

“For a Catholic priest, M. l’Abbe, that distinction is not very Christian,” replied Adrienne.

“I know the purport of my words, madame,” answered the abbe, dryly; “besides the independent life that you wish to lead, in opposition to all reason, may tend to very serious consequences for you.  Your family may one day wish to see you married—­”

“I will spare my family that trouble, sir, if I marry at all, I will choose for myself, which also appears to me reasonable enough.  But, in truth, I am very little tempted by that heavy chain, which selfishness and brutality rivet for ever about our necks.”

“It is indecent, madame,” said the princess, to speak so lightly of such an institution.”

“Before you, especially, madame, I beg pardon for having shocked your highness!  You fear that my independent planner of living will frighten away all wooers; but that is another reason for persisting in my independence, for I detest wooers.  I only hope that they may have the very worst opinion of me, and there is no better means of effecting that object, than to appear to live as they live themselves.  I rely upon my whims, my follies, my sweet faults, to preserve me from the annoyance of any matrimonial hunting.”