Oh, you Poles!" she said,
gathering some flowers in her greenhouse; "you are really
incomprehensible. Why are you not furious with him?"
"Poor Paz is--"
"Poor Paz, poor Paz, indeed!" she cried, interrupting him, "what good
does he do us? I shall take the management of the household myself.
You can give him the allowance he refused, and let him settle it as he
likes with his Circus."
"He is very useful to us, Clementine. He has certainly saved over
forty thousand francs this last year. And besides, my dear angel, he
has managed to put a hundred thousand with Nucingen, which a steward
would have pocketed."
Clementine softened down; but she was none the less hard in her
feelings to Thaddeus. A few days later, she requested him to come to
that boudoir where, one year earlier, she had been surprised into
comparing him with her husband. This time she received him alone,
without perceiving the slightest danger in so doing.
"My dear Paz," she said, with the condescending familiarity of the
great to their inferiors, "if you love Adam as you say you do, you
will do a thing which he will not ask of you, but which I, his wife,
do not hesitate to exact."
"About Malaga?" said Thaddeus, with bitterness in his heart.
"Well, yes," she said; "if you wish to end your days in this house and
continue good friends with us, you must give her up.
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