“How they slander her!” whispered Lisbeth to Crevel, pointing to this picture as they opened the door.  “Look at her hair—­not in the least tumbled.  To hear Victorin, you might have expected to find two turtle-doves in a nest.”

“My dear Lisbeth,” cried Crevel, in his favorite position, “you see that to turn Lucretia into Aspasia, you have only to inspire a passion!”

“And have I not always told you,” said Lisbeth, “that women like a burly profligate like you?”

“And she would be most ungrateful, too,” said Crevel; “for as to the money I have spent here, Grindot and I alone can tell!”

And he waved a hand at the staircase.

In decorating this house, which Crevel regarded as his own, Grindot had tried to compete with Cleretti, in whose hands the Duc d’Herouville had placed Josepha’s villa.  But Crevel, incapable of understanding art, had, like all sordid souls, wanted to spend a certain sum fixed beforehand.  Grindot, fettered by a contract, had found it impossible to embody his architectural dream.

The difference between Josepha’s house and that in the Rue Barbet was just that between the individual stamp on things and commonness.  The objects you admired at Crevel’s were to be bought in any shop.  These two types of luxury are divided by the river Million.  A mirror, if unique, is worth six thousand francs; a mirror designed by a manufacturer who turns them out by the dozen costs five hundred.  A genuine lustre by Boulle will sell at a public auction for three thousand francs; the same thing reproduced by casting may be made for a thousand or twelve hundred; one is archaeologically what a picture by Raphael is in painting, the other is a copy.  At what would you value a copy of a Raphael?  Thus Crevel’s mansion was a splendid example of the luxury of idiots, while Josepha’s was a perfect model of an artist’s home.

“War is declared,” said Crevel, going up to Madame Marneffe.

She rang the bell.

“Go and find Monsieur Berthier,” said she to the man-servant, “and do not return without him.  If you had succeeded,” said she, embracing Crevel, “we would have postponed our happiness, my dear Daddy, and have given a really splendid entertainment; but when a whole family is set against a match, my dear, decency requires that the wedding shall be a quiet one, especially when the lady is a widow.”

“On the contrary, I intend to make a display of magnificence a la Louis XIV.,” said Crevel, who of late had held the eighteenth century rather cheap.  “I have ordered new carriages; there is one for monsieur and one for madame, two neat coupes; and a chaise, a handsome traveling carriage with a splendid hammercloth, on springs that tremble like Madame Hulot.”

“Oh, ho! You intend?—­Then you have ceased to be my lamb?—­No, no, my friend, you will do what I intend.  We will sign the contract quietly—­just ourselves—­this afternoon.  Then, on Wednesday, we will be regularly married, really married, in mufti, as my poor mother would have said.  We will walk to church, plainly dressed, and have only a low mass.  Our witnesses are Stidmann, Steinbock, Vignon, and Massol, all wide-awake men, who will be at the mairie by chance, and who will so far sacrifice themselves as to attend mass.