[A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac]@TWC D-Link book
A Daughter of Eve

CHAPTER VI
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Marie was far from knowing the solution to the riddle given by Raoul to his friends at Very's.

The struggle of this writer, risen from the lower classes, had cost him the ten first years of his youth; and now in the days of his success he longed to be loved by one of the queens of the great world.

Vanity, without which, as Champfort says, love would be but a feeble thing, sustained his passion and increased it day by day.
"Can you swear to me," said Marie, "that you belong and will never belong to any other woman ?" "There is neither time in my life nor place in my heart for any other woman," replied Raoul, not thinking that he told a lie, so little did he value Florine.
"I believe you," she said.
When they reached the alley where their carriages were waiting, Marie dropped Raoul's arm, and the young man assumed a respectful and distant attitude as if he had just met her; he accompanied her, with his hat off, to her carriage, then he followed her by the Avenue Charles X., breathing in, with satisfaction, the very dust her caleche raised.
In spite of Marie's high renunciations, Raoul continued to follow her everywhere; he adored the air of mingled pleasure and displeasure with which she scolded him for wasting his precious time.

She took direction of his labors, she gave him formal orders on the employment of his time; she stayed at home to deprive him of every pretext for dissipation.
Every morning she read his paper, and became the herald of his staff of editors, of Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist, whom she thought delightful, of Felicien Vernou, of Claude Vignon,--in short, of the whole staff.

She advised Raoul to do justice to de Marsay when he died, and she read with deep emotion the noble eulogy which Raoul published upon the dead minister while blaming his Machiavelianism and his hatred for the masses.


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