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Updated: June 9, 2025
He appeared greatly wrought up over the matter, as he stood leaning against the mantelpiece and speaking with the excited manner of a man disposed to make a personal question of the subject under discussion. Rocdiane was his friend, he said; and, though he might be criticised for frivolity in certain respects, no one could justly accuse him or even suspect him of any really unworthy action.
Musadieu was full of news; the ministry was about to fall, and there was a whisper of scandal about the Marquis de Rocdiane. He looked at the young girl, adding: "I will tell you about that a little later." The Countess raised her eyes to the clock and saw that it was about to strike ten. "It is time to go to bed, my child," she said to her daughter.
"Paris!" said he, a glass of kummel in his hand, "The only city where a man never grows old, the only one where, at fifty, if he is sound and well preserved, he will always find a young girl, as pretty as an angel, to love him." Landa, finding again his Rocdiane after the liqueurs, applauded him enthusiastically, and mentioned the young girls who still adored him every day.
At every instant some newcomer saluted the three friends, or approached them to shake hands. Among them were the big Duke of Harrison, the little Prince Epilati, Baron Flach, and others. Suddenly Rocdiane said: "How are you, Farandal?" The Marquis entered, his hands on his hips, with the easy air of well-made men, who never feel embarrassed at anything. "He is a gladiator, that chap!"
But Liverdy, more skeptical, and pretending to know exactly what women were worth, murmured: "Yes, they tell you that they adore you!" "They prove it to me, my dear fellow," exclaimed Landa. "Such proofs don't count." "They suffice me!" "But, sacrebleu! they do mean it," cried Rocdiane.
The cold douche that followed, freezing his palpitating flesh, reminded him of the baths of his twentieth year, when he used to plunge head first into the Seine from the bridges in the suburbs, in order to amaze the bourgeois passers-by. "Shall you dine here?" inquired Maldant. "Yes." "We have a table with Liverdy, Rocdiane, and Landa; make haste; it is a quarter past seven."
Landa murmured. Rocdiane resumed, turning toward Bertin: "Is it true that he is to marry the daughter of your friend?" "I think so," said the painter. But the question, before that man, in that place, gave to Olivier's heart a frightful shock of despair and revolt.
It appeared that rumor said that the Marquis de Rocdiane, amicably separated from his wife, who paid to him an allowance that he considered insufficient, had discovered a sure if singular means to double it.
I go out, nauseated, and go home to try to sleep a little until the hour for dinner, which I take at the club. "There I always find Adelmans, Maldant, Rocdiane, Landa, and many others, who bore and weary me as much as hand-organs.
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