He looked at her with a tear in his eye.

Marianne’s eyes gleamed with a sudden light.

“Well!” she said, “such is my life!  I have loved, I have been betrayed.  I have had faith in some one and I awakened one fine morning with this prospect before me:  to sink in the deep mud or to do like so many others,—­to take a lover and save myself through luxury, since I could not recover myself through passion.  Bah! the world shows more leniency toward those who succeed than toward those who repent.  All that is necessary is to succeed, and on my word—­you know Monsieur de Rosas well?”

“No,” stammered Vaudrey, before whose mind the duke’s blond face appeared.

“You heard him the other evening!”

“I mean that I have never spoken to him.  Well! what of Monsieur de Rosas?”

“Monsieur de Rosas loved me.  Oh!” she said, interrupting a gesture made by Vaudrey, “wait.  He said that he loved me.  He is rich.  Why should I not have been Rosas’s mistress?  Deal for deal, that was a good bargain, at least!  I accept Rosas!  It was to receive him that I was foolish enough to make my purchases without reckoning, without knowing.  What’s that for a Rosas?” she said, as she crushed the bundle of bills between her fingers.

“And—­Monsieur de Rosas?” asked Vaudrey, who was quite pale.

“He?”

Marianne laughed.

“Well, he has gone—­I have told you as much.  He has, moreover, perhaps, done wisely.  I regretted him momentarily—­but, bah!  I should have sent him away—­yes, very quickly, just so! without even allowing him to touch the tips of my fingers.”

“Rosas?” repeated the minister, looking keenly into Marianne’s eyes.

“Rosas!” she again said, lowering her voice.  “And do you know why I would have done that?”

“No—­” answered Sulpice trembling.

“Simply because I no longer loved him, and that I loved another.”

She had spoken these last words slowly and in such passionate, vibrating tones that Sulpice felt himself shudder with delight.

“Ah,” he said, as he went toward her, “is that the reason?  Truly, Marianne, is that the reason?”

She had not confessed whom she loved, she had spoken only by her looks.  But Sulpice felt that he belonged to her, he was burning with passion, transported, insane from this avowal; his hands sought hers and drew her to him.  He clasped her to his bosom, intoxicated by the pressure of this body against his own, and added in a very low tone while his fingers alternately wandered over her satiny neck and her silky hair: 

“How can I help loving you, Marianne?  Is it true, really true?  You love me?—­Ah! what the great nobleman has not done, do you think I cannot do?  You are in your own home, you understand, Marianne.—­Then, as he touched the young woman’s exquisite ears with his lips, he added: 

“Our home—­will you have it so?—­Our home!—­”