If I die, you will be the mistress of my poor imbecile uncle; 'bene sit.' If I remain on my pins, you'll have to walk straight, and keep him supplied with first-class happiness.
If you don't, I know girls in Paris who are, with all due respect, much prettier than you; for they are only seventeen years old: they would make my uncle excessively happy, and they are in my interests.

Begin your attentions this very evening; if the old man is not as gay as a lark to-morrow morning, I have only a word to say to you; it is this, pay attention to it,--there is but one way to kill a man without the interference of the law, and that is to fight a duel with him; but I know three ways to get rid of a woman: mind that, my beauty!" During this address, Flore shook like a person with the ague.
"Kill Max-- ?" she said, gazing at Philippe in the moonlight.
"Come, here's my uncle." Old Rouget, turning a deaf ear to Monsieur Hochon's remonstrances, now came out into the street, and took Flore by the hand, as a miser might have grasped his treasure; he drew her back to the house and into his own room and shut the door.
"This is Saint-Lambert's day, and he who deserts his place, loses it," remarked Benjamin to the Pole.
"My master will shut your mouth for you," answered Kouski, departing to join Max who established himself at the hotel de la Poste.
On the morrow, between nine and eleven o'clock, all the women talked to each other from door to door throughout the town.

The story of the wonderful change in the Rouget household spread everywhere.

The upshot of the conversations was the same on all sides,-- "What will happen at the banquet between Max and Colonel Bridau ?" Philippe said but few words to the Vedie,--"Six hundred francs' annuity, or dismissal." They were enough, however, to keep her neutral, for a time, between the two great powers, Philippe and Flore.
Knowing Max's life to be in danger, Flore became more affectionate to Rouget than in the first days of their alliance.

Alas! in love, a self-interested devotion is sometimes more agreeable than a truthful one; and that is why many men pay so much for clever deceivers.