"Upon my word, I don't understand you! What reason, what motives, can have prompted your refusal? The Comte de la Bérinière has thirty thousand francs a year; and he would make you a countess. Just think of it--a countess! Isn't it perfectly bewildering to think of being called Madame la Comtesse?"
"To be sure, the count is no longer young; but, once married, if you knew, my dear girl, how little you think about your husband's age! Auguste might be sixty years old, now, and it would be all the same to me."
"My ideas are not at all the same as yours, as I have already told you."
"But I have had experience now, and you ought to listen to me. Come, let us admit that you refused the count because you thought he was too old, which is the merest childishness--that reason doesn't apply in the case of Monsieur de Raincy; he is young, good-looking----"
"He has a stupid, self-sufficient manner."
"But what difference does that make? I have always heard it said that a stupid man makes an excellent husband. I should be glad enough if my husband was stupid! Then he wouldn't keep flinging little sarcastic remarks at me when I talk about the state of the market--of the rise or fall in railway shares. Auguste is clever--yes, very clever. But what good does it do me to have him clever and agreeable in society? In his own home, a husband never uses his wit except to make sport of his wife. Monsieur Anatole de Raincy isn't as rich as the count, but he has a very good position in society. Where do you expect to find a better match?"
"Ah! an excellent reason! How absurd you are, my poor Adolphine! Happiness in wedlock does not consist in love, but in wealth, in luxury, in the power to buy whatever we please, to have magnificent dresses which drive other women mad, to go to balls and parties every day, to have the best boxes at the theatre; not in having to sit sighing by your husband while you watch the soup-kettle."
"I have told you before that my tastes aren't the same as yours."
"Oh! you say that, but, in reality, you would be very glad to cut as fine a figure yourself. But you are romantic! perhaps you have a passion hidden away in your heart. Oh! yes, to refuse two such chances as you have had, you must be in love with somebody!"